Edition 5: MBA Tech Recruiting

This edition will solely be dedicated to tech recruiting during your MBA. I'm on CBS' Tech Club Board as the Careers VP as well as our Aerospace & Defense Tech (ADT) Club Board in the same role, so this is very top of mind! I've been mentoring a lot of first-year students that have very similar questions, so felt it was right to share with the Next Gen community.

The "Unstructured" Path

The tech recruiting timeline looks very different than consulting or investment banking, which are very rigid and structured. It's very much a "make your own adventure" path, in the sense that you can do as little or as much as you want. These are all my own opinions and my own thoughts, and I'm just one person, so continue to do your own soul searching and research - but feel free to use this as a data point!

There are a sprinkling of company presentations that come to campus compared to the intensive IB and consulting company presentations, so it may be less on your radar. However, this is the time you should be spending refining and perfecting your resume and pitch, since a lot of resume drops are already live.

What do I mean by "resume drop"? A lot of tech companies' applications pretty much only require you to have a resume ready, in comparison to something like consulting where you'd have to have coffee chats and attended several networking events prior to applying.

The general timeline looks like this:

September-November: Resume Drops

Do not miss deadlines. Literally the easiest thing to do is throw your hat in the ring once you feel confident that your resume is good to go.

You might be wondering where to find these internships? ???? If they're not listed on your campus' career site (which they honestly probably aren't) I've listed a few resources I used last year to source roles at the end of this newsletter. My favorite ones to check were The Muse and RippleMatch. The Muse does a really great roll-up and RippleMatch has roles that aren't listed on LinkedIn since some companies exclusively use it to find candidates. You should also set LinkedIn alerts for key words such as "mba intern" or "PM intern" etc.

• Tip: I always set calendar blocks for resume deadlines so that I didn't miss an application. Do what you need to do to keep track. I also created a basic excel tracker for companies I applied to, what industry they were in, what role I applied to, if I talked to anyone/last touchpoint I had, whether I needed to follow up, whether I had a referral or not, what date I applied, whether I was rejected or got invited to interview (Y/N), and date of interview/next round.
• Tip #2: If you are recruiting multiple paths, aka you have a "parallel path," focus your energy on what requires more energy in that moment. For example, if your parallel path is consulting, you should be putting 90% of your energy into consulting recruiting in the fall. This doesn't mean you completely ignore tech deadlines. A lot of people unfortunately missed several resume deadlines last year. They were mistakenly under the impression that all tech recruiting happened in the spring and had limited options by the time they found out they didn't land a consulting internship.
• Another point: know your limits. If you're someone who feels spread thin recruiting two paths, you're probably not putting your best foot forward in either path. Really ask yourself what you want (out of your MBA, out of life). If you don't want to work 12+ hours a day, why are you recruiting for a consulting role? If reading about tech news doesn't interest you, why are you recruiting for tech?

November-December: Perfecting your "pitch" + Behavioral Prep + Interview Prep

Some MBA students heard back last year around late November/early December about interviews, but this leaned very heavily towards technical roles (think technical PM or something more analytical/data science-heavy). Otherwise, during this time you should be prepping your behaviorals and conducting mock interviews/case interviews (if you're going for strategy roles). As always, resources for this linked down at the end.

• Tip: your pitch should be less than 2 minutes. Ideally 90 seconds if you can make it even more concise while still getting your background across. Otherwise, the other person starts to lose interest. What's a pitch? This is a short introduction going over your personal, educational, and work background, why you came to business school, and how that positions you to best fit in this role/at this company.

January-February: Interviews from fall applications

You'll likely hear back in late January or early February for the resume drops that happened in September-November. The typical MBA internship had 3 rounds of interviews: a recruiter screen, a behavioral interview, and a technical interview. If you're recruiting for strategy roles, the technical interview would be either a take-home case or a live case.

March: Offers are extended, resume drops continue

From the interviews you had, you'll get an offer either late February or early March. If you didn't get an offer, don't worry. A new batch of internships will be posted in March and continue through May, even June. This is what we refer to as "just-in-time" hiring. A lot of small to mid-size tech companies utilize just-in-time because they don't have the ability to forecast headcount that far out in advance.

March-June: Continue applying to more roles, hear back about interviews, receive offers

The stats for CBS are that 50% of 1Y students typically have an offer by January, another 25-30% receive offers by March, and the remaining 20% don't get an offer until May/June (...or at all in this market, if I'm being completely honest). Either way, don't stress - there's always options. Those who didn't have formal offers by the end of May worked at a non-profit, worked at a start-up, worked on their own start-up ideas, or otherwise found some meaningful role. You're going to find something cool to do this summer either way.

• Tip: DO NOT BE SHY ABOUT USING YOUR NETWORK. You're at business school for a reason. If you haven't landed something by March, TELL YOUR FRIENDS. Tell your classmates. Use those affinity groups!!! So many of my friends got their internships through a friend or classmate just by being vulnerable/brave enough to admit that they hadn't found something. As long as you were generally a good person throughout the recruiting process (iykyk - there are some people that recruiting/perceived competition brings out the worst in) your classmates will help you. I sent so many roles I saw that were still open to people I knew that were still recruiting, cased peers, helped them with interview prep, etc.

Do I have to have coffee chats?

Coffee chats certainly never hurt. However, it's better to apply without having networked with someone at the company than waiting for a response and missing a deadline. I primarily used coffee chats for more clarity when necessary. There were several companies I interviewed with that I didn't network with prior to applying, because I was very clear on what their values were, what the job entailed, and what they were looking for.

If you're ever reading an internship description and are confused - that would be the time to reach out to someone and have a coffee chat. A lot of tech companies will use the same name (ex: BizOps) for an internship posting, but it can mean so many different things depending on the company you're looking at.

• Note: most tech internship applications are rolling; meaning first to apply is first to be reviewed. It's important to apply as soon as the application is open (if your resume is in a good spot). I've seen some applications close earlier than the stated deadline because they just have too many applicants.

Where to find internships:

1. The Muse
2. RippleMatch
3. Otta
4. LinkedIn alerts! + your career management center's website
5. If you're interested in a company, go to their careers website

Resources for Product Management, Product Design, Product Strategy, Strategy/Ops Interview Prep:

1. Exponent: interview prep for product, engineering, and more. You can also case with a coach or peers through this platform
2. Rocketblocks: Interactive, skills-based, web application that helps students prepare for case interviews in consulting, product management, product marketing and strategy + biz ops.
3. IGotAnOffer
4. Lewis Lin Amazon Interview: questions he was asked in his Amazon interview
5. Lewis Lin blog: great blog that reviews tough questions
6. Ultimate PM Interview Cheat Sheet
7. The PM Interview: this is a simulation that walks you through a typical PM interview
8. ?? USE PERPLEXITY AI ?? or any other GPT model and have it interview you!

MBA Internships that are currently live (these all have several roles, so go to their website to apply):

1. American Express
2. Adobe
3. Microsoft
4. Jane Street
5. Google
6. Amazon
7. TikTok
8. Nike
9. Blue Origin
10. Cisco
11. Disney

If you have any questions or suggestions for the next edition, my DMs are open. ??

Happy Navigating,

Eun