What if my work experience does not match my goals?

Question

Hi,

I have worked my whole life in IT but I have to transition into investment banking post MBA. How should I address this when being asked about my post MBA goals?

Admissionado · Answer

Well the honest answer: those are not good goals, and the best way to address them is to change them.

I mean you may not realize this from your side, but EVERY IT guy wants to go into finance, and VERY FEW do, which makes that totally unrealistic. Instead try going with "management in IT" goals. Best, JF

merper · Answer

I don't see how going to IB from IT is a tough goal if you go to something like a Top 10 school. But the thing is that you can't be honest about that in your application unless you have a long history of tinkering with finance and leading extracurricular activities outside of finance - Even then, it's still a hard sell. Just lie and make up a more smooth story about working for Google or something. If you've done it well enough, you'll believe it!

Admissionado · Answer

You could do it in reality. BUT you have to get in first. Now from the school's perspective, they are gonna get 500 applications from Indian applicants with IT backgrounds of guys with no background at all in IB who all want to go into IB. very very few of these guys will get in because the schools have alternatives - they can from the Indian pool, pull people who have done more unique things and have a greater chance of success (family business people, BGO people, etc.) and from the IB pool, they have enough Americans with 2-5 years IB experience who are already guaranteed to get a fantastic IB job when they leave.

So what happens to the IT Indian guy who proposes this very unlikely change? He doesn't usually get in, and doesn't get the chance to make it int he Top 10 school, although yes, if he were to make it in, and change his mind once he did, with the right amount of hard work and networking it should be possible. However, from a strategic perspective, for the applications, its a pretty bad idea unless you have at least some concrete experience you can latch on to.

What if my work experience does not match my goals?

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