How to get the job you want in business school

Question

How to get the job you want in business school 
Okay - it is that time of the year. Most first-year MBAs know where they are going for the summer, and most final year MBAs are either pondering over their choices and contemplating the last few months before real life hits on their faces. On the other side of the aisle, a host of new admits is coming to business school for the first time in their lives with a bagful of hope and aspiration and a large chunk of anxiety. I was in those shoes last year this time, and I wish someone had given me just a quick glimpse of what to expect or what to do (and of course, what not to do). Sure your mileage may vary, but I am pretty convinced that most of the experiences in top business schools are largely similar, so I am working with the hypothesis that the experience at Ross will act as a decent proxy for a large number of business schools.

Almost everyone I talked to while I was applying to business schools gave me this piece of advice -

It is going to get very stressful in the next few months when you are actually in school - I would recommend chilling or resting or pursuing something that you did not because you were always working!
 
I hate that advice.

I mean, sure, I get why people would say that. But what if sitting idle or "chilling" was the thing that made you anxious? The fact that I was going to be a part of an extremely stressful and supposedly rewarding environment in three months made me dizzy with anxiety so I wanted to do everything I can. I wanted to sign up to basic accounting, finance and marketing courses on Coursera, learn some basics of excel modelling, practice casing and see what the whole hype is about and everything that I could learn about recruiting and give myself a massive advantage over my peers.

Very Indian of me, I know!

By the end of three months, I basically accomplished very little. I ended up going pretty hard at the gym, met my closest friends many times, bid goodbye to a city I loved.

Basically, I followed the advice that people gave me.

I chilled.

Now that I am a year wiser, I am fairly confident that the advice I got was pretty great. There is simply no need to get involved in academic exercises before going to business school. Business school curricula offer plenty of time and opportunity to learn things and anything that you learn before orientation is going to get out of your memory box pretty quickly.

Anyway, clearly, I have digressed quite a bit. Let me get back on track and focus on recruiting and what to do both before and during the first year at business school. In order to avoid derailment, I am going to use the internet's favorite format of presenting dense textual information.

5 ways to land a job you want out of business school:

1.  Start Early  – By early I do not mean before going to campus, unless you are recruiting tech, in which case I absolutely recommend networking in the summer before going to school. But more in that in a while. For consulting recruiting, I would advice going against your intuition which will make you buy all the Case in Points of the world. Hold your horses. There will be plenty of time to case. Instead, focus on soft skills. Do you seem approachable to a random person? If you approached me in a networking event, would I want to continue the conversation? Do you have a sense of humor? None of these skills are “talents” that you are supposed to be born with. You can develop them and excel at social situations over time, so I would start with that. YouTube channels such as Charisma on Command are very helpful. Reading books and just fostering your curiosity is also pretty useful in social situations. I was able to chat up a Bain recruiter with my opinions on Thinking Fast and Slow (a highly recommended book from my Kindle library), and we had a great time exploring common interests which included cats, science fiction and Game of Thrones. For tech recruiting on the other hand, you have to jump into LinkedIn quite early. I recommend reaching early to your school alumni who are working in firms in the roles that you want. Send them a message like this:

Hey Product Manager at Apple,

I am joining the Ross School of Business this fall and I am very excited to connect with you. I have always been passionate about technology and looking to make a transition to a big tech company with a focus on consumer services. I am inspired by the transition you have made from McKinsey to Apple and I would love to connect with you. Would you be open to a quick chat sometime this or next week?

Thank you and Go Blue,

Souvik

Generally this template would work. I want to emphasize that you should not blindly Connect with someone on LinkedIn. Use the feature that lets you send a short note and introduce yourself but do not go into the depths of what you have done prior to business school. You have all that stuff on LinkedIn so they can see it. (on that note, deck up your LinkedIn a little bit will ya?)

2.  Start with intention : Nobody likes a rolodex hoarder. You do not want to come across as someone who is sending the same vanilla message to everyone else and is checking off the next connection on LinkedIn. Don’t be that guy. Everybody can see through it. When you want to make a connection, be intentional. Have a specific reason as to why you are connecting with him/her and have a reasonable ask that the person will not scoff at. An example of a message like this would be:

I just got into Ross and would love to know more about Apple from you. Would you have some time to chat this or next week?
 
- this screams bad messaging. The person you want to connect with gets thousands of messages like these and something like this will not make you stand out.

3.  Focus Focus and did I say FOCUS! : Business school can be a whirlwind of an experience and it is plenty common that people get carried away with so many things. People come to business school with different purposes. Some come to find their dream job, some come to find their spouses, some come to get a great education and some come to party. I cannot stress the importance of figuring out why you came to business school in the first place and stick to it. There will be an amazing set of opportunities (or they will present themselves as so) to distract you: clubs, leadership roles, investment funds in the school, extracurricular clubs, partying, drinking and many things that business school students like to do. Don’t want to go to the Halloween party and prep for an interview instead? DO IT. FOMO is real and I am very proud of navigating it well. It is important to surround yourself with people who want similar things as you and feed off of their ability to navigate FOMO, and you will be in a good shape. Most of my leisurely activities in school was to get lunch/dinners with people I wanted to get to know more and have at most 4 very close friends. I achieved my objectives early on and I can count on every single one of them.

4.  Drag your body through some discomfort : For some reason everybody keeps talking about how busy business school is. Sure it is busy, but it is not earth shattering. I saw some posts on this forum about “typical day at school X” which starts off at an ungodly 5 AM and ends at 11 PM or something. No, that is NOT a typical day at any school. You do not have group work every day and you definitely do not work out every day or go drinking every day. If you do, you need some alone time for sure. I have plenty of days when I wake up at 8 AM and finish things by 5 PM. Sure they are not the most common but there are many of them. But my point is a bit countered to my own argument. Sometimes business school will have a way of making you think “I don’t  really  need to do this” but you know you are lying to yourself. For example, I presented with my team for the Microsoft Business Innovation Challenge on a Thursday evening and had to run to a McKinsey event immediately after. This was preceded by an all-nighter and I had very little energy left to talk to strangers after spending at least 15 hours straight on a deck. My friend in the business innovation challenge (who is not even recruiting consulting) came with me to give me moral support. I networked with a few consultants and engagement managers while he feasted on the buffet. If it weren’t for him, I would probably just be in the “s#$% it, I need sleep” mode. That’s the real benefit of surrounding yourself with people who want you to succeed.

5.  Detach yourself from the outside world : Okay this might be controversial, but I would go out on a limb to say it is important to meaningfully detach yourself from what you used to do and be before you came to business school. Business school can be a transformative experience and you would do yourself an incredible disservice if you are constantly rushing for a comfort zone every week when the going gets tough. This includes but is not limited to:

A. A toxic relationship with someone who is not around
B. A part time job that you think you can hack your way around while trying to do business school. Lots of people try to do this, including myself, and quit a month in. 
C. Unreasonable expectations around what business school is supposed to give you. 
D. Inflexibility with time and resources.

6.  Don’t be an a$$#0!3 : Plenty of opportunities will work together to bring the inner a$$#0!3 in you. Sometimes it will be in the form of not letting your peer speak in a circle of death at a recruiting event (look it up – circle of death), taking up all the space in a 2 on 1 coffee chat with a recruiter, raising your hand in class when someone else is speaking, mixing disagreements and biases, hating people who got the jobs you wanted but did not. Just don’t be that guy. This is pretty obvious but crucial and that’s why it deserves the secret #6 to getting a job you want. 
Have questions? Make a reply and I will get back soon.

bb · Answer

Thanks for posting Souvik!

Fantastic tips and perspective from the other side. I see you have not touched at all on any of the recruiting options/resources/etc. What are the ways you see most people get jobs these days?

Is it on campus recruiting? Off campus on their own through networking?

Posted from my mobile device

j.shivank · Answer

Thank you  souvik101990

Thank you so much for shedding light on an area that is totally dark for many MBA aspirants and especially for international applicants.
Thank you.

I would like to ask you just  3 questions :

Q1 
As opposed to Indian B-schools, where campus placements are just handed to you on a silver platter, the "American way" of networking and finding an opportunity for yourself is a bit alien to me.
And the advice I get from many people is if you do lots of internships, and network with the start-ups or boutique consulting firms in the area, there is a good chance that you will have multiple job offers by the time you graduate.

But as you pointed out that it's hard to sustain B-school and a part-time job/internship together, is the above advice correct.
If yes, how should one go about it?

Q2 
Do clubs play an important role in securing a job? And can clubs be of any help while networking?

Q3 
What are the 3 most important pieces of advice you would want to give to a person who wants to pursue a future in consulting and is trying to network, attending various events, going on coffee dates with alumni/employees, etc?

souvik101990 · Answer

Thanks for the questions  j.shivank . I am happy to answer them.

The first thing that you said about Indian business schools hand jobs to their students on a silver platter does not sound right to me. I have many examples of people struggling to find the job (or the job that they really want) in the best schools in the country. You are right in that networking works differently in India than in the US. India tries to be more "meritocratic" which essentially means an over-reliance on test scores and GPAs vs relying on entrepreneurial and enterprising mindsets that tend to set people apart in the US. Nobody in US B schools care about your GPA (unless it is less than a 2.0 which might get you placed on probation or something).

The other advice on doing lots of internships does not hold up either. When will you do them? First off, you are legally not allowed to do internships in your first year. In your second year you can only do one in the summer and maybe a campus job the rest of the year, so your choices are slim.

Networking with startups and boutique consulting firms (you do have to specify what do you mean by boutique, as even small consulting firms have a very structured recruitment process) can help a lot and you can do that without formally working for them. Cold calling on LinkedIn and then getting on multiple conversations is the way to go.

MBAbot · Answer

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How to get the job you want in business school

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