MBA after 30: In Retrospect [older applicant story]

Question

I had a chance to hear a very interesting story from an older applicant. I had a lunch with a long-time moderator from GMAT Club who joined almost 10 years ago (he has not been active for a number of years) but we just met for the first time. It was a chance encounter but a very successful and interesting one. I have encouraged him to share his story with other older applicants to set their expectations and improve their success chances. He agreed and earlier this week sent me the below story, which I am posting on his behalf (for a number of reasons, he preferred to stay anonymous, which is understandable taking into consideration how blunt the story is).

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First of all, I would like to wholeheartedly thank my friend BB, a wonderful person with big big heart, the founder of the GMAT Club, who for many years advised, helped and inspired me (and thousands like me on this website) in my MBA journey from the GMAT preparation to MBA applications and who helped me navigating my MBA experience. He recently inspired me to write about my MBA journey to share my thoughts and experiences. I am happy to give back to the GMAT Club community and hope that at least a few of you will find this post useful.

Hey, congrats on getting the admissions offer to the US top business school! Now what?!

Intended audience:  So if you are a 30+ years old non-US resident (aka “a non-green card holder” or US citizen) considering getting your MBA degree in the US and hoping to get a job in the US, this post is for you. It’s based mostly on my experience so please watch out for biases.

My background:  I am 35 years old European, married, have completed recently a full-time MBA at a top-15 US business school, went through on/off campus recruiting, hunting for the job in the US. As for career path before MBA: 6 years of BIG 4 advisory practice (non-US) as a manager and then + 4 years internal consulting in industry (non-US) as a senior manager. So, I had much more experience than most of my classmates.

My goal  is to help you make an informative decision on whether to pursue an MBA degree at this age, considering factors outside of your control (such as visa lottery, Trump’s anti-immigration policy, cost of living in the US, etc.). Stop reading if you been lucky enough and got a full ride, just go for it, why not?!

Main idea:  MBA does not give any significant advantage in getting a great job post-graduation in the US (or make you happier or more successful), period. If you think MBA will open you a lot of doors for you and employers are going to hunt you (yes … even if you are from Harvard/Stanford/Wharton), lol ? - keep dreaming, the reality is harsher than these rosy dreams. Of course, if you are a superstar then you don’t need an MBA even from Stanford to succeed in life.

Reasoning:  
   You are in a highly competitive job market, employers’ market. So let’s get this started. There were a lot of articles and posts about a mismatch of between ever-growing cost of master’s education and stalled growth of post-MBA compensation. What does it mean is less and less let’s name it “profit margin” or residual income an MBA gets after paying tax, loans and cost of living. Isn’t it unfair? Sorry, if you feel it sucks, but this is the harsh reality. However, I have not yet encountered (m)any article(s) speaking about high degree of competition for the post-MBA jobs in the US. 
Each year let’s say top-30 schools produce about 10,000 MBAs (assume 330-average class size*30 schools). Every ambitious MBA graduate wants to get a job offer from a great PE/VC firm, bulge bracket bank, top consulting firm, a blue-chip corporation or an ambitious start-up, or ______ (there is a placeholder for your dream job). People from PE/VC firms tend to stay longer there, and banks and consulting firms rotate their staff often. So, most ex-MBAs end-up either working for start-ups or corporations in the US. Guess what?! Each year there are not as many great positions (with a good compensation and promising career path trajectory). Over the last 20 years corporations have already employed thousands of MBAs and these people are still working there, are not going to leave and still repaying their MBA and car loans and mortgages. So, you are going to compete with the local ambitious talent in a highly competitive market. This is a just a piece of an equation, which is called “getting a job in the US”.

You are an alien in the US. If you are 30+ perhaps early in your life you had watched a science fiction movie by James Cameron called “Aliens”, hadn’t you? For millennials, there was an alien in the movie from the other planet, a horribly looking aggressive creature, which incubated (or parasited) inside humans ultimately killing them. Normally, people in the movie were afraid of it, hated it and wanted to kill. In the US, they call us “aliens” (well at least in all legislative documents). How do you like that? ? (Of course nobody’s is going to hate or kill you in the US). I mean why the hell they don’t name us foreigners, expatriates, potential immigrants, non-residents, non-Americans, Europeans (Asians), but aliens? The old good story tells us that the US was formed of immigrants and they are the core of the nation. However, more than 50-80 years have already passed since the immigrants massively had come to settle to the US. They are and their kids are Americans now. And they all have a non-restricted right to work in their own country. Aliens don’t have that right. They have the right to apply for H1B lottery (literally gamble) to a get the right to work in the US. And if one is laid off, he/she is given by law 30 days to leave the country unless the person finds another job. Sorry, if you feel it sucks, but this is the harsh reality and these are the current laws and regulations. From my experience only a limited number of companies: tech corporations such as Alphabet, Amazon, other big corporations, or top banks/consulting houses are ready to offer an alien an H1B sponsorship and then, if an alien does well, offer a green-card sponsorship. Tshh… a little dirty secret is that corporations tend to pay aliens a bit lower than to US-residents …. and keep an alien in a hanging position as longer as possible, I mean extending as much as possible paperwork for green-card. Another little dirty secret is that top banks/consulting houses/big4 keep rotating people quite often, so they won’t proceed with the green card application unless you are good enough and get a promotion to manager (consulting) or VP (banking). I have numerous friends and classmates, who were not offered interviews, denied offers, or not offered green-card sponsorship (after being loyal for 5 years to the company). Sorry, if you feel it sucks, but this is the harsh reality. Add to this Trump’s anti-immigration intentions and upcoming laws. So, if you want a job in the US, you are disadvantaged to compete for even more competitive companies, have limited rights (less options) and have to gamble for work visa and then hope for green card.

You are old. What?! Yes, for most companies in the US, if you are over 30, unless you are an army veteran, you are old =read less productive. Why?! Because if you are married or considering to marry soon or even have kids you also therefore have other priorities, you are just smarter and not getting any more this fancy sh*t about marvelous career trajectory after just a few years on the wall street while working for pennies (I mean per hour) overnights after overnights, crunching models and presentations. If you are 30+ you want a more or less comfortable life and a manageable work-life balance, have time with your loved ones (kids, spouse) and a well-paid job with a pay slip every second week. Sweat shops (i-banks, consulting firms) understand what you starting to realize after 30, and therefore they are hungry for naive, full of ambitions young blood to grind. A better choice for a 30+ would be working for a US corporation but that is not easy, I would say even harder, in my humble opinion, as you have already read above.

You don’t have US experience. Among other things while screening for candidates, recruiters of US-based companies look for candidate’s experience either living or working in the US. This is, perhaps, to make sure a potential employee would fit well into company’s culture and working environment (as if 2 years spent in the US while studying for MBA + internship is not enough for that). If one does not have US experience, recruiters then look for candidate’s experience working for US companies abroad, preferably for McKinsey, i-banks, international listed corporations and big4 firms. (if you wonder why during my MBA I did not apply to US big4 firms? - I had worked there before, big4 was not my goal, I could have transferred there earlier without getting an MBA from top school and having zero loan, + perhaps I was already “old” for them, so all four firms even did not even invite for the interview although I had exact the experience they are looking for – all is fair they were not my first choice, neither do I for them).
So, if you don’t have US experience (in US or abroad), unless you were an Olympic champion or adviser to your country’s president etc, your chances of getting a job in the US are pretty slim. Recruiters don’t really know what (and they don’t care much about) you did a few years ago before your MBA at a “GHajTRak no-name LLC” in India/China/Poland/Colombia. Therefore, recruiters multiply your non-US experience by zero. Sorry, if you feel it sucks, but this is the harsh reality. Recruiters/hiring managers approach recruiting conservatively because there is an abundance of quality candidates, because it is the employers’ market. Btw, it is interesting how Americans could be at the same time very innovative in business and quite conservative in social life and many other non-business areas, i.e. there is NFC payment technology in every iPhone, which allows you to pay with your phone, without swiping your credit card, but still this payment technology is not used in the US, while widely used in other countries.

You don’t have US network. Besides your school’s alumni network, most likely you don’t have friends, relatives, former colleagues, undergrad alums, or even your mom’s/uncle’s friend in the US who would be happy to help you to get a post-MBA job in the US. By the way, networking is the only way to get a job in the US. I wish I knew it much earlier (at the beginning I naively had thought that the most competitive job market looks for most competitive/experienced candidates, leaving all other factors aside, and having an MBA from a top business school would place you in a privileged circle – wrong!).

In conclusion:  if you add up above mentioned factors (most of them outside of your control and you most likely are not aware of them before MBA), hundreds of hours of networking and interview preparation, much stress and gamble for work visa all of this adjusted for luck - you would get a pretty accurate expectation of what it takes to get a job in the US being an alien. MBA does not give any significant advantage in getting a job post-graduation in the US. But there is still a chance ?. Welcome to the most competitive job market in the world and a chance to work and live one of the most developed countries in the world!

p.s. Happy end? Ultimately, a number of months after graduation, everyday networking and stress (psychologically an financially being unemployed for more than 2 years really sucks), I got two job offers in the US (all through networking only): a boring one at a well-known corporation and an offer at a locally-only-known consulting boutique. I chose the first job offer (why? to secure an opportunity to transfer abroad if I don’t get the H1B visa with the hope to return back to US later) and lived from a pay slip to pay slip (life in San Francisco is so expensive) without getting a clue of what to do and expect next. Few months later, I did not get the H1B visa. The company, I worked for did not have vacancies abroad for my role (I think the real reason was that I worked for them for a few months only and they did not care to take any effort to help me – does it suck? Yes, and you know what follows…lol). Without much hesitation I left the US with my wife, went back to my home country, finally getting a relief from everyday stress and uncertainty. Would I repeat my experience in the US again? Perhaps I would, if I had known all the hidden obstacles and factors outside of your control, like you know them now.

I sincerely hope my post was helpful for you and now you are fully armed for this interesting, life-changing, but challenging journey.

Good luck!

ThiruN · Answer

Thank you for sharing this..Very different perspective though..

AliciaSierra · Answer

Much needed retrospective. Thanks for sharing it. I have to explore other options now.

nishant88agarwal · Answer

I want to do MBA for learning purpose. Is it helpful to start own business with the refurbished mind of new skills?

sapper9 · Answer

The visa troubles and career troubles are in for anyone above or below 30. What matters is the reason why you want to do an MBA and why at that particular school.
1000’s of MBA’s (Native an ‘Aliens’) will be minted every year whether it is under trumpian visa policies or Obamite visa policies. So at the end of the day if you are not sure why you are doing an MBA ...it is you who is to be blamed.

There will always be a point in every professional life where you just won’t move past that glass ceiling (with or without an MBA) ..now when you realize that do you want to continue working in a supressed/demotivating environment or do something on your own or with your cohort? That is where an MBA comes in. Its not easy to get a startup running without leadership(not managerial) skills and other tools that are required. So if you have the zeal and passion to pursue what you set out to do then do it. At worse you are down by 150k$( whats the big deal?) You will have built a network of imaginative leaders through your journey which is priceless.

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MBACrystalBall · Answer

Heart-breaking to read such stories, but it's important to know this perspective too. Thanks for sharing this, BB.

He's spot on about the (mis)use of the term 'aliens'.

It's ironic that a country that spends millions of dollars searching for intelligent life on other planets, gives a cold shoulder to the most capable  aliens  from our own world.

On a more serious note, the story also highlights the importance of  fit .

While many of these challenges (mostly stemming from visa policies) are applicable to younger candidates too, it does help in many ways by being closer to the class median.

And the big one that many applicants skip - having a backup plan.

Hope this candidate's story helps many mature applicants take an informed decision.

GMATNinja · Answer

This was such a great read. Thank you for posting this  bb , and please thank the writer for us.

I don't know many people who regret their MBA experience, exactly, but as a community, I do think that we fetishize the degree and the experience a little bit, and it's hard for reality to match the pre-MBA hype. Most people with top MBAs get paid really well, but it takes some hustle to land those high-paying jobs... and yup, everything is harder for "aliens" in America, especially right now.

(And I also never understood why we use that term. It's always bugged me. I'm tempted to go on a vicious rant about U.S. immigration policies, but that probably wouldn't be productive.)

Anyway, thank you again for this. It's the type of perspective that provides some nice balance to the MBA world.

kitipriyanka · Answer

Thanks for posting this story  bb . Please thank the author on our behalf.
This is a reality check for 'aliens'. There are lot of learnings to be taken from his experience, but foremost make sure to have a back up plan..!!

GMATaxe001 · Answer

Can anyone add some perspective and comparison with mba in Europe?

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MBAbot · Answer

Hello from the GMAT Club MBAbot!

Thanks to another GMAT Club member, I have just discovered this valuable topic, yet it had no discussion for over a year. I am now bumping it up - doing my job. I think you may find it valuable (esp those replies with Kudos).

Want to see all other topics I dig out? Follow me (click follow button on profile). You will receive a summary of all topics I bump in your profile area as well as via email.

MBA after 30: In Retrospect [older applicant story]

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