Last month, after a year in the “real world”, I returned to Europe for my first business school reunion. After spending a week catching up with friends, I finally had the time to reflect on my post-MBA experience and hear how my classmates were doing. Below are a few of my thoughts one year out, which I hope will give recent graduates and future MBAs some additional perspective.
1) Student Leadership Matters
I chose London Business School (LBS) primarily for its location and focus on finance. A year later in my role as an investment manager at an impact-investing firm, I am beginning to recognize the importance of student engagement as I recruit MBA’s from other schools. Financial modeling and project management are good skills to have, but are easy learn. It’s much harder to teach someone initiative and professionalism, which LBS does fairly well since the clubs, events, etc. are all student run. To my knowledge, none of my friends who went to other MBA programs had a student body decide to host bi-annual reunions across the globe, such as the LBS reunion, which brought me back to Europe. It’s definitely something I would keep in mind if I were looking at MBA programs all over again.
2) Beware the Brands (or at least pick the right one)
Over 150 of my classmates went to our first reunion. Many of my peers were already polishing up their resumes and applying to other jobs after less than a year in their current positions. Job satisfaction is not the only thing that matters, but managers and firm culture are more important than they initially seem. The people I knew who were happiest in post-MBA careers such as consulting, banking, etc. were the ones who had chosen firms or had managers that fit their personalities. An additional observation - people who started their own company or were working for smaller firms seemed to enjoy what they were doing more than many people working for Fortune 500 companies.
3) The Network is Immediately Valuable
Over the past year, LBS connections have proved to be professionally valuable. When my firm was going to make an investment in Zimbabwe, a student in the Masters in Finance program put me in touch with active investors there so we could learn more about the landscape. A classmate of mine almost brought a quarter billion dollar deal to his firm because another person in our class reached out to him about the transaction. This was a surprise to me, as I didn’t expect the network to start being valuable until 5-10 years after school.
4) MBA Life is Awesome
As much as I love my job and making money again, the MBA is a pretty unique and amazing experience. Reliving “the dream” for a week was a reminder of how good I had it as an MBA student. To those of you still in MBA programs, make the most of it. Two years goes by pretty fast!
I saw a stat somewhere that said 40-50% of MBA graduates change firms within two years of graduation. The stat blew my mind. At the same time though, a lot of my classmates that were going into consulting/banking/big corporate finance just for a bigger salary and the "prestige." Some of them were already looking to jump ship before they even started full time.
Thanks for sharing!
My pleasure!
Thank you for the takeaways.
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