Internship Opportunities
Regardless of your background, the minute you step on campus, a dizzying array of internship opportunities will be at your doorstep. HBS students are lucky because HBS is the only school with enough clout to keep firms off campus until later in the Fall. (Many schools’ internship recruiting processes start in the first weeks of school!) That said, it is still crucial to start thinking early about how to spend your time over the next Summer because the recruiting process is very involved, and it tends to sneak up on you.
My recommendation is to use your internship as an exploratory period for something that you’re interested in or might not have the opportunity to do otherwise. The internship is your golden opportunity to embark on a pursuit of a new dream with no real risk. While this is uncommon, you may even consider two internships over the Summer. I had a friend who interned at both Goldman Sachs and Boston Consulting Group (5 weeks each), for example.
In order to start honing in on the internship recruiting processes of which you want to be a part, you should immediately start networking and attending informational sessions. Seek out classmates who worked in your company or industry of interest. Read all of the HBS resources widely. Attend the industry 101 sessions your section will put on.
It is important to start early, as the internship recruiting processes are time-consuming. For typical industries like consulting and finance, you literally have a multi-month courtship filled with info sessions, networking events, coffee chats, follow-up phone calls, thank-you notes, and everything else that comes with the territory. It’s no small endeavor, so limiting the number of companies you choose to pursue can save you precious time.
Full-time Job Opportunities
As you would expect, HBS graduates do very well on the job market every year. Fully 90% of graduates get hired within three months of graduating with a base salary of over $100,000. Notably, 34% end up in financial services, and 24% in consulting.
You can review official HBS statistics here: www.hbs.edu/about/statistics/mba.html.
You can find even more detailed information here:www.hbs.edu/recruiting/mba/data-and-statistics/employment-statistics.html. Much of what I’ve written about the internship applies to the job search as well. If anything, it is even more arduous of a process, especially if you are conducting a networked job search (doing it on your own, essentially) rather than using HBS’s formal processes on campus. One important phenomenon to be aware of is the herd mentality around a hot industry every year. One year, venture capital might be hot; the next it’s consulting. It’s easy to fall into the trap of following the trend. Don’t do it. The more certain you are about your career vision and your values, the narrower (and less stressful) a job search you can conduct.
One final note is that HBS has a vast set of helpful resources to help you navigate both the internship and job search processes. Career coaches, psychological evaluations, info sessions, practice interviews, industry and function guides, networking events, and easy-to-use online systems are only the tip of the iceberg. Godspeed!
