Is it Possible to Go from BB Compliance role to top Business School
How favorably would a top b-school (HSW or even KF and Darden) look at a compliance role at top BB (think MS/GS) in regards to admissions. Do they care? Assume median range GMAT.
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Interested in this as well
Honestly, too early to tell.
Compliance has been historically in tandem with Legal and a prerequisite has been a law degree for each side. Due to this, those people were not gunning for business schools. Since this has recently changed with more undergraduates and back office employees going into middle office compliance roles, many of the roles are now filled with non-law degree people. Over the next 5-10 years I think you will see a lot more Compliance people going into business school programs, and I would like to believe it would look good for admissions. I would think the applicants from IBD, PE, MBB, etc. will still do better than Compliance applicants, however it would probably be safe to pool them together with applicants from Risk Management roles.
thanks for the write up interested in this myself
Is it possible? Absolutely. You just need to find ways to differentiate yourself and your experience. Find interesting projects, take on leadership opportunities, build strong relationships with your more senior colleagues, and start to get involved in activities outside of work. Meanwhile, figure out why you want to go to business school, and study for the GMAT. Come up with a unique story.
I think that any reasonably intelligent person with a decent job (compliance certainly qualifies) that approaches the business school process seriously (i.e., takes steps outlined above) should be able to get into a top 20 program no problem.
Being in compliance to begin with differentiates OP, does it not? lol But I agree--having a unique story and a "why" would be important, since OP has to explain why, if he's so interested in going to business school, he wasn't in a front office role out of college.
I think the name recognition of those firms would take OP far with respect admissions, as would good grade/activities/honors at a top undergrad school.
@graham2829 Yes to your second paragraph. SB'ed. Would only add that the caveat that they didn't totally screw around in college (well below 3.0 GPA).
top 5 MBA graduate here. it is absolutely possible depending on your essays and gpa and undergrad school ( and assuming you have the median GMAT or above). I would recommend taking on compliance projects or even going on global assignments to enhance your odds. Also doing volunteer work or starting an organization would be bonus points. There were many middle office folks at school so don't give up and prepare early!
It's very possible. I have a close friend who did this and he's attending a top 5 program. PM me for more info.
For the most part, you career field before b-school is irrelevant. Big brand names matter but, more importantly, a track record of success and being able to coherently relate how that career has prepared you for b-school matters.
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I just started in compliance at a HF and I was hired because my predecessor (who'd been here for 5 years) got into Yale School of Management. Obviously HF BB but similar idea
I started at Citi ops, and got into a M7/Top-5 school. I'd recommend going for above average, not median, GMAT.
I was just about to tag you in this.
Here is something that no one on WSO seems to realize. I'm surprised that people like @"OpsDude" haven't caught on to this.
The thing is there is a certain stigma associated with working in the Back Office/Ops/Compliance/Project Management in a Investment Bank/Financial Industry because 1.) They are very prestige driven and 2.) The mentioned job categories do not bring in revenue, so they are seen as dispensable by the "FO" people.
So my advice for college kids and prospective B-School application is this - if you work a Ops/Compliance/PM role, do so in a NON-Financial Industry firm. If you work in Ops/Compliance/PM in a "regular" F500 company, you are not seen as a 2nd class citizen as you would be in the Finance Industry.
Plus, let's say you work in Compliance for a medical device manufacturer, when you apply to B-School, you will be considered as an applicant from the "healthcare industry" which makes you a little more unique since there are tons of people applying from the Financial Industry. Also, for your personal sake, you get a lot more respect working in Ops at a normal company compared to Banks. (Source: Personal experience)
@"OpsDude" Feel free to disagree with me, but I think you are the exception, not the norm.
Honestly, I'm not sure. From the people I've met in business school, there really aren't people many people who worked at run-of-the-mill fortune 500 jobs, once you exclude prestige tech companies, finance, consulting, and marketing. Most of the CPG/Retail type of people were doing marketing or product develop/management type of positions, and most of the healthcare people were doing things I wouldn't consider operations (seems closer to "internal consulting" types of roles...but I'm very unfamiliar with healthcare).
Personally, I think people lose focus that adcoms are mostly academics, not people who understand any industry extremely well. They know what companies are good, and they know the difference between revenue generating and not revenue generating I assume, but I doubt the understand the nuances of the people here. I also tend to think they value the company over the exact work experience. I get the vibe they'd choose a GS non-front office person over regional IB front office person in most cases (even though its harder to get a regional IB gig).
I think what keeps most people from ops out of the top schools is the following: 1) Low GPA's from non-top schools. If they had better grades from better schools, they'd be working front-office in most cases. 2) Lack of progression or leadership...a lot of ops/compliance roles aren't very impactful. Some certainly are, and its pretty easy to steer your career to the "global project manager", change management, ops strategy types of roles if you want to. These make great application story.
3) A lot of people in ops/compliance just aren't too bright and can't get a high GMAT/strong application out the door.
So I guess, it's more that top prospects probably aren't going to take an ops finance role, which is why you don't see too many...but if top students from undergrad did take ops roles, they'd have pretty decent odds at getting into top business schools. Front office is of course better, but I don't know if corp 500 ops is necessarily better.
This just isn't true.
Maybe I'm naive, but schools will always value academic success higher than actual work. If your GPA and GMAT were excellent it's hard to imagine having poor prospects unless you worked as a greeter at Wal-mart. I was reading about the reject pile from Stanford and it seemed like the common denominator was always one of the two (if not both) being less than stellar. Anecdotally I know several people with mediocre work experience but highly competitive academic stats who all got in at top schools.
Getting Into Business School by working as a compliance analyst (Originally Posted: 03/31/2018)
Hello all, I just got offered a legal compliance job as a rising junior in undergrad. The position will be for 13 months, and I plan on obtaining an MBA degree in the future. Is compliance a good sector to work for if you want to go to business school? Ideally I would apply with 4-6 years of experience in the field.
Hey maxtoncline, I'm the WSO Monkey Bot...do any of these help:
Calling relevant pros to the rescue! Harshad-Purandare Trey-Pierce mlistner
Fingers crossed that one of those helps you.
Yeah, I guess your company brand name does matter. The person who I replaced at my current position went to Darden.
I also think that the culture at F500 has a little bit of self selection in terms of not applying to full time MBA programs. These jobs are cushy with low hours, so most people don't want to leave and would rather do a PT MBA at a local school. Even some people with jobs that WSO would deem "prestigious" got their PT MBAs while working here. Also very easy to switch departments if you are a top performer.
I worked at BO at a BB and just graduated from a top B-School. I definitely don't think people in my BO team were "not too bright." The #1 reason those people didn't pursue b-school was mostly that they came from working class backgrounds and did not want to take 2 years off and accumulate huge amounts of debt.They also seemed to be very pessimistic about what an MBA could do for them or their chances of getting into a top school. It is true that most of us in the BO tend not to come from top undergrad schools.
I do agree 100% with what @"OpsDude" said about admissions looking at the company name first and not differentiating between BO and FO as much as people think.
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