MBA Career Paths: What Are You Going to Do?
This post was written by Harold Simansky, an mbaMission Senior Consultant.
A couple of contradictory truisms are floating around the business school admissions world: 1) the most successful applicants articulate a very clear career trajectory when they apply to business school; and 2) 80% of business school students go off and do something completely different from what they said they were going to do on their application.
When you think about it, this is not too much of a contradiction. On the one hand, business schools do not want students who are still “figuring things out” and who may spin their wheels when it is time to find a job. By laying out a detailed career trajectory, candidates assure business schools that they know what a real career looks like—that they understand that going to business school does not mean you can go from being an accountant to an astronaut, regardless of which school you attend. On the other hand, business school is a transformative experience for most and will almost certainly get students thinking in new ways about themselves and their careers. If 80% of MBAs are doing something unexpected after business school, that sounds about right.
So, the question becomes…
What do business school students actually do once they graduate?
If you guessed working in consulting, you are probably right (though it is somewhat school dependent). Anywhere from a quarter to a third or more of business school graduates will be headed into consulting, be it at one of the big three strategy firms (McKinsey, Bain, and BCG); more tech- or operationally focused firms such as Deloitte and EY; or any number of specialty firms. If you think this is a large number, you should have seen it a few years ago when consulting firms were basically grabbing anyone they could. The reason for this decline in MBAs going into consulting is because the tech giants have begun drawing more and more MBAs to their companies.
When you look at the names of top MBA recruiters, you will likely see Amazon, Google, Facebook, Apple, and other tech firms gathering more than their fair share of business school graduates. Interestingly, many of the graduates who are going to these big companies are not your classic “let me go to Amazon so I can be a product manager and have a job for life” types. Instead, they may be the exact opposite in that they are “wanna-be” entrepreneurs who join one of Apple’s or Facebook’s internal start-up groups to learn how to actually pursue an opportunity and build a company around it. For example, if you want to be a biotech entrepreneur, there is no better place to start than Verily, Google’s life sciences group, where you live entrepreneurship without having to eat ramen every night and sleep on your parents’ couch.
Of course, if you do want to eat ramen every night and sleep on your parents’ couch (i.e., be a real entrepreneur), will you find your cofounder in business school? Probably not. The exciting notion of two classmates writing a business plan on a napkin in the school cafeteria and riding it to an IPO is a great story but not much more. Although exact numbers are hard to find, the average number of MBAs heading to a true start-up is likely very low, maybe 5% if not lower.
A similar “I thought it was more” number is the number of business school graduates going into the world of nonprofits and social impact. While writing about how you want to join a triple-bottom-line company makes for a compelling business school essay, few graduates actually do. For example, at Yale—the grandfather of all schools focused on preparing leaders for social impact and the nonprofit world—fewer than 5% of graduates go into this space, while almost 50% go into consulting. Wow!
And what about all the other things MBA graduates do? While one traditional choice was investment banking (IB), that is no longer quite the case. More investment bankers are now lacking an MBA, as are folks in private equity (PE) and venture capital (VC)—though for both IB and PE, where you go to school matters. This does not just mean Harvard or Wharton; future masters of the universe should check out NYU and Cornell, which both have a very strong pipeline to Wall Street. Another industry where there are fewer and fewer MBAs is consumer products, which includes companies such as Procter & Gamble and Kraft. However, the reason for the drop in MBAs in this industry has more to do with student interest than anything else: MBAs are simply less interested in these more staid companies despite them providing the ultimate “finishing school” for MBAs interested in marketing and operations.
How are MBAs finding jobs after graduation?
Although MBAs are landing in plenty of other places—including real estate, human resources, financial services, and manufacturing—one place students are not visiting as much is their school’s career center. Only a few years ago, more than 90% of all MBAs got their jobs through the formal recruiting process, but that number keeps on shrinking and shrinking. Now, 75% is closer to the mark at most schools, and that number is even lower in some instances. This speaks to the fact that business school students must own the process of finding a career and a job. Completing your business school application was your first attempt at laying out a career; the next step is the recruiting process, when you must go out there, plan your career, and then find the right job for you.
Are you looking for more information on popular MBA career paths? mbaMission’s Career Guides were written in conjunction with industry insiders who provide intriguing perspectives on the fields. Each guide delivers valuable information including the following:
- A detailed organizational chart and salary structure
- A wealth of anecdotes that answer the question: “What is the job, really?”
- An honest look at the job’s most enjoyable aspects and its pain points
- Brief descriptions of the leading firms and notable players in the space
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A graduate of the MIT Sloan School of Management, Harold Simansky offers his clients more than five years’ experience as a dedicated MBA admissions consultant, in addition to several years helping his colleagues complete their business school applications. His clients have been accepted at more than 30 different institutions, including all the top U.S. and international MBA programs. Among his success stories are applicants who “ran the table” and were granted admission to every school they targeted, as well as candidates with distinct backgrounds for whom Harold found programs that uniquely suited their personalities and needs.
mbaMission is the leader in MBA admissions consulting with a full-time and comprehensively trained staff of consultants, all with profound communications and MBA experience. mbaMission has helped thousands of candidates fulfill their dream of attending prominent MBA programs around the world. Take your first step toward a more successful MBA application experience with a free 30-minute consultation with one of mbaMission’s senior consultants.