A week or so back, The Wall Street Journal featured an article in their personal finance section centering on an MBA’s journey, which led him back to the world he wanted to escape: accounting.
After working in public accounting for three years, Joe Fusco, wanted to become an investment banker. So he invested more than $70,000 and two years into an M.B.A.
But as he prepares to graduate from the University of Notre Dame in Indiana next month, Mr. Fusco, 27 years old, hasn’t had any luck landing a position in finance. The only solution he has is to go back to his accounting roots. “It’s a tough pill to swallow, but I’ve come to the conclusion that I can’t sit and wait and cross my fingers,” he says.
The overall point of the article points out that getting an MBA does not guarantee new opportunities. Recruiters, if they even visit schools, are now looking for experienced hires. What they look for: Young, freshly minted students with experience deep enough where they don’t have to train them, and young enough with no family so that they can grind them to the bone.
The article is incorrect in one area. You see, the Wall Street Journal indicates that this is something happening only just now–mostly due to the economy. When, in fact, this has been the case for much longer. There have been accounts of this since 2004. It may have been around for much longer.
It doesn’t matter what business school you’re at, you’ll be faced with the same obstacle: recruiters want experienced hires, not some engineer who decides to enroll in B-School at age 26. Harvard Business School faces this problem, too. In fact, every school does.
Here’s an excerpt from “Ahead of The Curve,” which chronicles two years at the Harvard Business School (2004-2006) from an insider’s perspective. Philip Delves Broughton, a successful journalist, came to HBS hoping the degree would open new doors. (I’ll be writing a full review soon):
Approaching the summer without a job was daunting. On the one hand, I knew that the companies that came for hell week did not come to HBS looking for people like me. In their eyes I was an oddity. But it was still depressing to be made to feel like that. One job I interviewed for and thought I had a chance of getting was The Washington Post. But my interviewer, a woman, barely let me say a word as she rattled off the history of the newspaper and descriptions of the kinds of people who succeeded there. When I was not offered a second interview, an alumnus at the company told me that ex-journalists were not thought to make effective executives. The divide between the journalism and business operations was too wide to jump. Now if I had been a banker before HBS… This was maddening. But I was not alone in struggling to change my career. Luis, the Franco-Argentine, complained to me that many people felt HBS failed in its promise to give people a new start.
“They say this is your chance to change industry, but very few are succeeding. You see, the problem is that the path of least resistance is to do banking or consulting. Now, if you wanted to do either of those, you probably could. But if you wanted to get out of them, you really have to fight,” he said, driving a fist into his palm. “If you don’t have experience in an industry, they don’t want you, so you end up going back to the industries you do have experience in.”