By Bri Taylor, MBA’22
Making the transition from employee to MBA student is a journey in and of itself. Now add the pressure of having to secure an internship by the end of your first year, while navigating core and maintaining some sort of social life, and one can become extremely overwhelmed.
When looking back at my recruiting journey, the tips I received from my second years, Kelley alumni, and the Graduate Career Services team were extremely helpful as I prepared for recruiting season and ultimately secured my product marketing internship offer from Microsoft. As future Kelleys are preparing themselves for their first year and the upcoming recruiting season, I thought I would share a few tips that were passed down to me.
Spend time reflecting on the types of problems you enjoy solving, what areas you’d like to grow in, and what your strengths are. While I was preparing for the Consortium Orientation Program and the Forté MBA Women’s Leadership Conference, I was paired with an alumnus and a second-year mentor who challenged me to think about the types of problems I like to solve and the key strengths I would bring to my internship. Identifying those problem types helped me pinpoint my growth opportunities, which came in handy as I narrowed down the list of roles and companies I would apply to and began developing my CAR statements (mentioned in tip #4). To circle back to the pre-MBA recruiting conferences I mentioned above – the Consortium Orientation Program is an annual conference hosted by the Consortium for Graduate Study in Management and Forté MBA Women’s Leadership Conference is an annual conference hosted by the Forte Foundation. The purpose of these conferences is to provide incoming MBAs with career development advice and early exposure to corporations as they prepare to begin their business school journey. Other pre-MBA recruiting conferences and opportunities available to future Kelleys are Poets & Quants Pre-MBA Networking Festival, Jumpstart Advisory Group Career Forums, and Management Leadership for Tomorrow MBA Professional Development. (more…)