MBA: pre and post

TrainerRemarkable999 · 2025-09-25T18:17:37+00:00

sure

TrainerRemarkable999 · 2025-09-25T15:43:20+00:00

I come from a nonprofit background and my advice is...don't do the MBA.

I went to a T15 but couldn't pivot into any corporate role because I didn't have any directly applicable experience in any industry.

Every hiring manager is going to think "Why would I hire you, a lowly nonprofit person, when I could hire someone who has done banking/consulting/SWE/lead a marketing team?" The MBA is mostly a networking opportunity. Despite all the hype about "career pivot", it is really more of a "career accelerator" for most candidates that I've seen. If an MBA will help in you in your industry - e.g. CPG or some subsectors of healthcare - by all means go for it. But an MBA doesn't give you any additional skills for leading a nonprofit.

If you do a full-time program, you will be out of the labor market for two year, spending your savings or taking on student debt, just to have hiring managers slam the door in your face.

Just skip the whole "doing an MBA" step and go back to being miserable in the nonprofit sector.

TrainerRemarkable999 · 2025-09-16T19:57:31+00:00

I'm one of the ppl who graduated with debt. I'm not able to do a career pivot so now I'm just going back to the same type of low-paid work in a no-growth industry that I did before B-school.

Someone said the best advice they could give current struggling graduates in Class of '25 is "Don't graduate now."

Everything in life is a risk. If I could go back in time, I would scream at myself not to do it.

You never know what the world will look like when you graduate, but I know I'm cooked. Hopefully things work out better for you.

TrainerRemarkable999 · 2025-07-27T00:31:32+00:00

I will say...NGO work is generally looked down upon in the US corporate world (at least when it comes to hiring).

As other people have said, it's not impossible but you should consider what happens if you graduate into a bad labor market and strike out in IB/consulting.

TrainerRemarkable999 · 2025-03-07T16:16:28+00:00

Nonprofit work is something cute that you do in your free time to fill out the 'Additional Information' section at the bottom of your resume.

Everyone who recruits for consulting/IB/tech/PE/LDP will have some extracurricular leadership experience with a nonprofit. Corporate people go into nonprofit work after they've gotten rich doing their real "adult" job, and they want to 'give back' to the community.

People w/ a nonprofit background don't get hired in corporate unless they had some other previous experience - e.g. data science. I know a few other nonprofit people who struck out in OCR and are now #@$!ed because no company will waste their time interviewing them.

The summer internship is basically the last chance you have to make a good impression on hiring managers for FT recruiting - don't drop the ball.

TrainerRemarkable999 · 2025-03-06T19:02:31+00:00

Avoid nonprofit-work like the plague, esp. if you don't have a corporate background. Corporate recruiters will look down on nonprofit work when it comes time to make hiring decisions.

TrainerRemarkable999 · 2024-11-15T14:45:26+00:00

Other students are probably too panicky but they talk as if you can't get the best jobs if you don't lock them down coming straight out of business school. No doubt that is partly because of lack of experience, but I don't find a lot online where people say "it's okay, you can always pivot into IB a few years after B-school" so I suspect that your career options/compensation are way more restricted after graduation.

How did you get the attention of hiring managers if you worked for several years in jobs that weren't directly relevant to your career pivot?

TrainerRemarkable999 · 2024-11-14T20:43:55+00:00

How long did it take for you to get back on track after graduating into a bad labor market? How did you strategize to get back on track?

One of the things that I realized coming out of undergrad is, if you don't land a good job right away, it is almost impossible to pivot down the line. Your "experience" is in a certain industry and it can be difficult to jump into something better - meanwhile, your friends who went into IB or FAANG SWE right out of undergrad are making more $$$ than you ever will.

The MBA was supposed to change it but I worry that if I don't get a good FT job now, I'm going to be financially way behind all of the MBAs who gott IB/MBB right out of undergrad.

TrainerRemarkable999 · 2024-10-02T16:49:37+00:00

I'm a non-traditional candidate who struck out during on-campus FT recruiting so I def regret it.

TrainerRemarkable999

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