Switching jobs pre mba?

Hi. This is a fairly typical situation many people find themselves in. One of the main reasons they want to do an MBA is to change their career and because they’re not happy with the current job…. Why else would you take a painful test and go through lots of personal doubting and writing silly essays. 😂

Anyway, it used to be a pretty detrimental step but pandemic has changed quite a few things and business schools have started looking at job changes a lot more leniently. There is still a few traps related to a job change but it’s fairly easy to avoid.

The biggest challenges obviously the letters of recommendation. If you get a new job in October, and come December or November and you approach your new boss who just hired you about leaving and going to business school, the two things that happen. First your boss gets pretty upset because when you joined you basically did not intend on staying. That means whatever investment they make into you or training will be wasted. Second, at this point they would’ve known you only for about a month or two and it will be fairly challenging for them to write a good, thorough or comprehensive feedback on your recommendation. A better option would be to have your former supervisor provide the recommendation. Some schools ask for two and some ask for one. You have to think about how to resolve this dilemma.

In today’s world explaining why you change the job has become fairly easy and as long as you don’t become an Uber driver, and show some kind of a progression or growth, you can potentially spinet as a good opportunity or a promotion. A lot of times, it may be a promotion and will improve your chances at business school and recruiting afterwards. Let’s say you were a manager and then you were getting promoted to a senior manager or a Director in another company, that shows growth and that’s important for the admissions directors and for your future employers. That way they won’t be hiring a manager but rather someone who had a director level.

At this point, many MBA applicants decide that it’s not worth changing a job and they will just stick it out. It sounds like you’re applying in round two and is definitely a potential plan. You technically only need to keep your job until you submit the application and so you could submit in late December and be done in January and hopefully collect your bonus for the past year. However, I’m not sure that’s the right move. First of all, what happens if your GMAT doesn’t go the right way off whatever reason you don’t get that admit. You don’t have a Plan B. Not having a Plan B will put a lot of stress on you and that will show itself in your application in numerous ways. He will come off desperate and over eager and too nervous and will be the opposite of the confidence business schools look for.

So I would look at your future from a more strategic and higher level perspective. Ultimately your career goal is not to go to business school but to pivot to a better career or a better job or a better something. I would look at options you have to day to pivot without an MBA or at least to potentially improve your situation significantly so that it would make a decent Plan B. A number of people, though not a large number, have found their new jobs to be more satisfying and engaging and rewarding and half shelved their plans for an MBA as the result. On one hand, they were closer to their ultimate goal and on the other they weren’t desperate enough to go through the painful application experience.

Anyway, this was a very long way to say find the best job you can find. You can definitely explain why you’re getting your old supervisor to write the recommendations. Ideally, you would be upfront with your new supervisor about your business school plans but since you have not taken the GMAT and your chances of going are less than 50%, I think it would also be understandable if you did not disclose them.


BB.

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