Early Promotion or Rotational Program for B School
I have a question regarding a career option I've been faced with and how it relates to my potential future B school application. I am currently nearing the end of my first rotational in a Finance Rotational program at a top tech company on the west coast.
I'm in a Corp FP&A role and have taken on a lot of additional responsibilities during the role. I've gotten a lot of positive feedback during my six months here and as I've started thinking about my next rotation, my manager approached me and offered to keep me on full time. I have a lot of visibility with the other managers and directors on my team and they all really like me. I don't love the work, but its fairly interesting and I could see myself here for another year or two without getting bored.
On the other hand, I could keep rotating and try and settle into a "sexier" role within the company (Corporate Strategy, Biz Dev, etc).
So my dilemma is, do I take the offer and move into a full time role in Corp FP&A? Or should I keep rotating? Full time in the FP&A role would come with a pretty significant pay bump.
In my not so humble opinion, take the offer. You will be competing with a ton of FLDP candidates (that's your bucket), and so you can really stand out with a promotion so early and the pay bump. Most people don't get this opportunity, but everyone rotates in these type of programs.
MBA programs LOVE promotions, and even though they don't say it, they look at your pay. So if you went from making $45k to $60k in 6 months, that is pretty darn significant and shows upward trajectory. And by the way, FP&A is looked at quite favorably from the outside (not us loser ibankers here) of finance, because you can spin it in a way that you are an internal consultant providing data to make strategic decisions.
Take the promotion. I don't understand this obsession with branding and MBA. Take the promotion!!!! You may even discover that the MBA isn't even necessary.
Is this even allowed in your rotational program? In my experience it's strongly frowned upon internally, and you are likely to have the executives that support the program trying to block this unless the manager can prove it's a necessity. Is it really a promotion, or just a permanent role in the group?
One piece of advice, in corporate fin your breadth of experience is very important. If you're not planning on staying in corp fin long term obviously this doesn't matter, but just something to think about.
If we're only talking about b school admissions, I'd strongly consider the promotion if your title would clearly indicate you got promoted, the salary would be a significant increase, and you can explain you were promoted in an atypical fashion due to strong performance/leadership.
However, if you're really interested in the other rotations, then I would think about what your exit from the program would look like and what role you'd end up in. If that will look impressive enough, give yourself the chance to see the other teams that might be a better fit for you. Also think about what you want to do after b school. Will the other rotations look more valuable than FP&A?
Again, I'd take the promotion. I don't understand the linear get an MBA mindset on this board. Everyone doesn't have to do a linear BA/BBA/BS, 2 years then get an MBA from Ivy path.
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