Bad Grades? Low GPA? Don’t let That Keep You From What You Want.

I usually like to go directly for what I want but sometimes it’s just not possible.It would have been great if I had been able to enter grad school through the normal channels but my grades weren’t good enough.I had good test scores but I was a screw-up as an undergrad and spent more time partying than studying. I majored in Rum and Coke.

I needed to find another way to go to grad school and get the kind of job I wanted. And thankfully, a godfather appeared in the persona of Don Streets who was teaching at UMass Amherst and arranged everything I needed to enter a master’s program. Don and that master’s degree changed my life

I had taken a course with him and he saw my potential before I did. I was able to do well in the master’s program and eventually could get another advanced degree at Boston University.

When I spoke at Boston University a few years ago, a young graduate student told me he really wanted to get a job at one of the top three strategy consulting firms but with a BU MBA he was not the kind of person they recruited. They wanted MBAs from the Top 7 MBA Schools.

I told him to try anyway but I was wrong. One of his professors suggested that the best way would be for him work for one of the super big consulting firms like Deloitte or PWC, do a great job there and then apply to one of top strategy firms. That turned out to be great advice.

That’s what he did and he eventually landed a job with McKinsey where he is now.

Kevin Farrah whom I wrote about in my recent book faced many hurdles in obtaining a job in finance. He didn’t have the best grades, he hadn’t applied for internships, and his emails to one potential employer went unanswered. Eventually, he figured out a way to get the kind of job he wanted and it took some ingenuity and a willingness to try a different path to get what he wanted.

His first emails to hiring managers did not even receive a reply.

After two months, he wrote again telling them he would work for free. It would be a risk-free proposition for them with no cost and the option to let him go if he was not measuring up.

His second email received one reply and he spent two years working at an investment firm while he finished his university education. This became the launching pad for his career in investment management.

Getting a full-time job was another challenge. Having failed to gain traction at any financial or consulting job opportunities in the aftermath of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, he decided to try his luck at one of North America’s largest career fairs.

By that time, he recalls his father telling him to just apply for a government job that would be stable, and he actually felt doomed enough to be happy to open a hamburger stand when [not if] all else failed. He was awestruck at the number of students attending the forum; it was in the tens of thousands.

He wondered how he could ever land an investment job with his grades, the world economy in shambles, and countless competitors. He knew there was a way around this hurdle—one that would get him what he wanted.

His answer was to aim for an internship as opposed to a full-time position which he deemed would be lower in competition. He told potential employers that he was a special situation fourth-year student who would spend a fifth year in university to take additional courses of interest.

Despite setting his graduation back by one year, it was a strategy that worked. He got the internship, was then offered a full-time job after he graduated, and is now in his tenth year at the company as an Analyst and was recently promoted to a higher position.

The hurdles—they are there and always will be there.

Your job: Figure out a way around them. The gatekeepers-they like to say no, You have to figure out a way to

get them to say yes.

Good luck. There's also some fun in jumping over the hurdles and the gatekeepers.

Adapted from my recent book, No Regrets: How To Kickstart Your Career and Your Life. Now available on Kindle and Amazon worldwide https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/4799382675