No luck with MBA Summer Intern recruiting - what now?

Hi Monkeys, I am at a top10 MBA with prior Big4 tech consulting background. I was aiming for both MBB and T2 firms (ATK, LEK etc) for the summer internship recruiting but had no luck (got a lot of interviews but could not advance past R1 interviews). Would like to try it again for FT, but would like to hear some thoughts on what should I do for the future.

**1) Summer: Boutique Consulting firm -> FT: Try MBB/T2 again **- think this would make the most sense in terms of resume. However would the boutique firm name raise any red flags and make my resume less attractive?

2) Summer: Non-Consulting role -> FT: Try MBB/T2 again - thinking of using the summer to find something I might be interested in. Does not necessarily need to be in a brand name company but something that fits my interest area. If summer internship doesn't impact the brand of my resume I might just try some small but interesting firms

**3) Summer: Non-Consulting role -> FT: Non-Consulting role **- the fact that I got a lot of interviews but no luck with even second round bummed me out a lot. I feel like there's gotta be some fundamental thing that's wrong with me since I know people who were at best at par with me for both fit and casing were able to advance to R2 and/or got offers. Perhaps I am wrong and they are better in me in both regards but the real question is how much can I really improve between now and September? Perhaps I should look at other career paths and think what's best for my personality.

Thanks!

3 Comments
 
Best Response

Best advice is to intern at a company that you could honesty see yourself working at post b-school. Full-time interviews are a crap shoot and many firms won't re-interview students who didn't get to final rounds as a rule so if it doesn't work out for you, at least you have a good potential fallback plan. But in general, MBBs like companies that are leaders in their industry and shit on no-name consulting firms so if you really want to gun for it, it is better to go the non-consulting route and network like crazy over the summer. Good luck!

 

I worked at a boutique after my masters, we had a summer MBA intern go from there to a tier 2 from a top 10 B school. My question would be what are you flubbing? Obviously the resume is ok if you’re getting interviews, but clearly you’re struggling to convert. Have you talked to your career center or to a peer who will be brutally honest?

 

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