The official start of summer internship recruiting is in about a week. Summer internship can be quite important for long term employment, and particularly so for the non-traditional candidate because it may be the only business experience he will have on his resume.
Historically, many MBA students get a full time offer after their summer internship and choose to return, so it is also a great vehicle to get a highly desirable job after business school. On the other hand, some MBA students take an internship and figure out that it's not at all the function or industry they want to be in, and thereby avoid seeking a full time position in a field they wouldn't enjoy. Both of those experiences, positive and negative, are therefore extremely valuable in helping one determine his next step in life. The only bad summer internship, is therefore one that neither confirms nor denies a career interest (and perhaps also doesn't add any skill).
Conventional wisdom for non-traditional applicants is to take a summer internship that is not within their core competency... something that will add a new skill set to their took kit. While possibly obvious to those in the business world, it took me a long time to just figure out what were the types of jobs out there, and what their corresponding internship positions are. While I am certainly not an expert on the matter yet, for simplicity I have them broken down into four broad categories. Again, I warn that this may be very obvious to many, but for some non-traditional candidates, it may be the first time they've heard of these "options," as was the case for me.
Broadly speaking, I lump most post-MBA jobs so far into 4 categories:
1. Finance.
So what is "finance?" I think different people will define it differently, but to me finance simply means: the business of making money with money. In other words, moving money around to create value and money. Examples are investment bankers, private equity firms, wall street traders, venture capitalists, etc. They all use their financial expertise to identify investment opportunities, whether short or long term, and leverage that expertise to make a profit. They don't actually make a tangible product. They don't sell widgets. Rather, they make a return on an investment.
This is generally a very intense and competitive field. Almost no former investment banker at HBS desires to return to investment banking, though many do so anyway for reasons of practicality. Several friends who did an "i-banking" internship last summer told me that their hours were generally from 9am to 2am each weekday (that's not a typo), while working maybe 7 hours on Saturday and again on Sunday. So why do people do it? You probably could have guessed... Finance tends to be the highest paying... though there may be people out there who also enjoy the challenge, the thrill, etc. There are also exceptions, as venture capital is not always as time intensive, but as a whole, it's a very dedicated lifestyle. There's not a lot of leadership involved (at least early in one's career), and it's a very focused, analytical profession. Many aim to do this for just a year or two to gain hard finance skills, before moving on to a totally new field. If one wants really to learn "finance," there is probably no better path.
2. Consulting
The other major group of jobs is consulting. I never heard of consulting until after I got into HBS, but it's actually the largest single demographic here. They are companies that get hired by other companies to come in and evaluate a situation, analyze a problem or a limitation, and propose a solution. For a military analogy, they basically serve as outsourced staff that come in and pitch an idea to the commander after studying your unit. The positive side of consulting is that you get exposed to a wide variety of businesses and industries. Most projects last only a few months, and you are immediately exposed to senior management despite having virtually no business background. The downside is that you are usually traveling Monday-Thursday (this I imagine gets rather difficult after long enough... a year? two years?), and from a leader's point of view, it must be incredibly frustrating to come into a company, make connections, build rapport, and then abruptly leave without real closure. You suggest a course of action which may or may not be adopted by the customer company. For many military leader's, this is not an ideal environment; you are not a decision maker, and you can never execute your own plans.
On the other hand, many people actually enjoy consulting for the same reasons some don't. They don't get bogged down with one position for too long, they have a lot of variety, and it's a relatively safe route (you never have to actually execute any of the plans).
Consulting is generally the default route for most military HBS MBA candidates possibly because it's the main field that doesn't require work experience, consulting firms love military applicants, and it's generally a great bridge to working in an industry of choice down the road. However, for the reasons listed above, it's often just considered the lesser of two evils.
For a spoof on Bankers versus Consultants, check out this YouTube video
3. General Management
General Management is not traditionally sought after as much as finance or consulting, possibly because it doesn't pay quite as much at the immediate post-MBA level. General Management however has a great deal of appeal to military people because it's the closest thing to what they were doing before business school, and has many of the traits that military people tend to appreciate: leadership, leading people/organization, project management, making things happen, building things, etc. In very broad terms, it's sort of what most people think of when they think of "business," running a project, or a team.
I would note here that entering category #1 or #2 doesn't mean you don't eventually end up in #3. For example, working at a top consulting firm may be a fast path to enter general management at a higher level down the road; higher possibly than compared to somebody who entered general management directly. I haven't figured out some these nuances yet.
4. Independent job searching (start-ups, unique opportunities)
The first three types of jobs listed above all recruit heavily on campus. The fourth major category, or bucket, is simply everything else. This can include entrepreneurship (start a business), start-ups (join a new business), or some other position that doesn't fall into the first three main categories. This is by far the riskiest of the categories, and is therefore probably least followed. However, for those who know what they want to do, and have the skills and disposition to follow it, this may end up the most personally fulfilling of all jobs. I would guess that most HBS grads eventually end up blazing towards this eventually (perhaps after 5 or 10 years). Based on school stats, about 50% of HBS grads start their own business or join a start-up within 10 years. However, it's very difficult for many to do so right after school. Some don't believe they have the experience, the confidence, or simply can't afford the risk given all the loans (and expectations) that accumulate.
So that is my perspective on recruiting as I enter it. I will certainly keep an open mind as I go through recruiting season, and perhaps I will have a new perspective when I come out the other end. There are of course many other job functions out there, but broadly speaking, the above 4 are largely inclusive.
The sooner one knows which way he wants to go, the better off he will be. It is just too time intensive to keep all those options open for too long, else you just spread your efforts too thin.
Let the recruiting season begin...
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