Job Hopping

Graduate School Business School - MBA
1

<p>I’m about to graduate with my BS in industrial engineering. Right now, I’m looking at taking a manufacturing job. I’m also interested in consulting too, so I’m thinking maybe after working for awhile in manufacturing (maybe not even a year) I might try to work in consulting. I’m also interested in working with an NGO in international development. Basically, I have a lot of different interests. If I purse each one for a short term and move on, will the job hopping be viewed negatively by admissions at top MBA schools?</p>

<p>The main reason I’m interested in doing mulitple things over the next few years is that I feel that the combination of them would collectively give me experiences I could not gain from any one job. I’m not completely settled on how I’ll spend the rest of my career (hey, most people aren’t, right) but I’m very interested in someday managing a multinational development organization serving the world’s poor. Yeah, I’m an oddball–saving the world sounds more interesting to me than getting rich. Here are the merits I see of some of these different job possiblities:</p>

<ul>
<li><p>Initially working as an “Industrial Engineer” with other industrial engineers for a top manufacturing organization will hopefully help me learn to apply a lot of the industrial engineering book knowledge I’ve gained in school. These industrial engineering skills will then be useful in many ways, even beyond the scope of working explicitly as an industrial engineer.</p></li>
<li><p>Working in consulting will give me a broad knowledge and experience in business that will be valuable for a broad range of potential future endeavors. Specifically I think the experience would be valuable in the future if I work to improve developing countries through an organization (such as a microfinance insitution) to improve the private sector, or through an organization that works cross-sector (private, public, and nonprofit) in these countries to bring about improvement.</p></li>
<li><p>Working for a development-oriented NGO will give me the most direct kind of experience for the things I’m interested in doing in the long run.</p></li>
</ul>

<p>I think getting an MBA from a top school would help give me the opportunies to lead in such organizations and significantly aid in my training to do so. And to be fully honest, if I don’t work every moment of my career for a nonprofit, I also like the idea that a top MBA would give me excellent earning potential and opportunties to lead if I wanted to work a business job in the private sector some too. Though that’s not my # 1 reason. Some of the best memories of my life are of doing development work in Africa, and I hope to do more of this long-term.</p>

<p>So that gives you some insight on me, maybe more than you cared to know.</p>

<p>Anyway, would the job hopping be a bad idea? Thanks in advance for any help. I really appreciate that those of you that are so knowledgable about business schools are willing to help out clueless people like me.</p>

2

<p>I would say that job-hopping will look bad (especially to top schools, i.e. top 10-15) if there is no path or connection between them. If you, for example, went to work for an engineer and then decided to become a volunteer in Africa and then applied to b-school with the stated aim of working in investment banking, then that just plain doesn’t make sense.</p>

<p>You need to be able to show that the experiences are all contributing to you as a professional and it’s not a case of running away from jobs. For example, if you worked for a consultancy and were involved with an NGO through this work (or had been associated with them during college for community service) then it would make sense if went and worked in the management of the NGO. If you then went to get an MBA with the desire to either establish a charity or move up the management chain, then that creates logic.</p>

<p>Basically, there needs to be a sense of linear progression (however sketchy) which probably doesn’t exist in your current plans. Is it too late to get a few internships (they needn’t be with the elite organisations; just to get a sense of the work) or have you done so already? Try not to enter a career with the aim of leaving within a year, in life and in b-school planning.</p>

3

<p>What if you looked for “internships” rather than “jobs”?</p>