Sunday, May 25, 2014

Jobs after Business School

If you're in some fancy business school, or thinking about enrolling, I want to tell you about the kind of jobs people take post-MBA.  I compiled this list using an extensive corpus of two three people 10 years out of Wharton and INSEAD, so I must be right and you're wrong.  If you want my general advice, learn something like medicine, farming, or carpentry -- at least you'd be useful during the inevitable zombie apocalypse.

Management consulting
What is it? Talking to management who already knows what needs to be done, telling them that they need to do it. Providing your stamp of approval so they can go to their board.  Especially if your client is a government-linked entity, or a big private equity fund, you're giving them a CYA when (note I didn't say "if") a deal/project/undertaking completely blows up.
Advising clueless management that don't want to ever change anything. Coming up with a 150-page recommendation that would never be implemented, using complicated buzzwords nobody understands like 6-sigma and lean manufacturing.

Investment Banking/M&A
Liaising between buyer and seller who already know what they want to do and at what price. Coming up with a 50-slide deck and 300-page prospectus (which is 90% copy-and-paste job) justifying the transaction and price to the outside public (who doesn't know any better).

Investing/Private Equity
Screening 200 potential investment leads, searching for hidden gems. Eventually realizing that the good companies don't need your money and that the ones that come to you are in terrible shape with no chance of success.

Equity Research
Building an Excel model in 2 hours with super simplistic growth and margin assumptions, using house template of course. Coming up with a story line to accompany your calculations. Checking with other research houses regularly, to make sure you're not saying something completely insane.  Adjust the numbers upwards if the stock goes up, and vice versa. Goal seek everything.

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