Business students graduate with a great set of technical and theoretical skills across a range of disciplines, such as HR, Marketing, Finance, and of course, Management. These new graduates are skilled, ambitious, and ready to hit the ground running. Unfortunately, they lack a key element needed for a management job – Experience. In fact, the typical graduate can expect to spend 3 to 5 years gaining experience post-graduation before they meet even the base requirements of a managerial position (source). Given the time, tuition, and emotional energy it took to get through the degree in the first place – this is not ideal; So, how can we speed up this process?
As a former business student myself, I was in line to face this same barrier. I had no special advantages – no connections, no family business, and no internships. Despite that, I was able to secure a life-changing management position two months post-graduation. I achieved this by finding ways to gain leadership experience while studying full-time.
The great news is that my strategy is replicable. You can do it while working a part-time job in the evenings and still keep your grades up; I know because I did it, and I’m far from exceptional. In this article, I’ll walk you through the steps I took to ensure I was a prime candidate for a management job immediately out of school.
Why I wanted a Management Job
Before I get into the steps, I want to share a bit of my story for context:
By my second year of business school – knew I wanted to lead. I loved coaching, being accountable for results, and driving team performance. In fact, I originally enrolled in university to become a teacher (but was dissuaded after I learned more about the profession). I switched to business and committed to myself that once I graduated, I would build a career out of developing high-performing teams.
The problem I had was the same that plagues most business students: I wasn’t gaining the hands-on experience I needed to get a management job. I felt doomed to be an entry-level worker for years as I tried to work my way up. Fortunately, I had a natural strategic way of thinking and felt certain I could find a way to gain the requisite experience by my graduation date. Through a combination of my own research and a few conversations with trusted adults, I came up with the plan I’m sharing with you today.
If you find you’ve already missed a milestone, don’t worry; It’s never too late to execute a time-adjusted version of the strategy. If that’s the case, you’ll need to be strategic about how to get the most with the time you have. If you’d like some help coming up with a revised approach – feel free to connect with me on Twitter, I’d be happy to talk it through with you.
1. Become President of a club (Years 1 – 3)
Your first step is to become a club president. You should do this sometime between years 1 – 2, and do this for no more than 1 – 2 years.
You have the option of joining an existing club or starting a new one. Starting a new club can ensure you are president right away, but joining an existing one can offer better structure, resources, and complexity. Whichever you do – make sure you have a clear path to senior leadership within a year. For example, the Business Student Association can be alluring, but probably has several ambitious students competing for spots. You don’t want to get caught grinding for years here, you need to move fast. You need to stand out as a great team player and leader right away, so when leadership positions become available, you are a natural choice.
I joined a small but organized club called the ‘Rights and Democracy Network’; I was president within a year. in this role, I gained experience with budgeting, marketing, project and event management, and volunteer coordination.
- Result: In exchange for a ~4-hour/week commitment, I was able to add 2 years of leadership experience to my resume. The role gave me Competency-Based Interview responses in the areas of coordination, initiative, and project management (source). As a secondary benefit, leading a club can build your personal brand on campus, making step #2 easier to achieve.
2. Join the Student Government (Years 2 – 4)
Your second step is to join the student government. You should start this in year 2 or 3, and it can overlap with step #1.
Do this for as long as you can, but advance quickly and don’t step aside for others; time is limited, and you should be in an executive position by your second term.
The student council is incredible because it offers the opportunity for young, inexperienced students to take on serious Senior Leadership duties. You’ll learn to review financial statements and manage budgets in the millions($), make high-impact strategic decisions, and conduct stakeholder engagement. You’ll likely build relationships with the University’s senior leaders, local politicians, and business leaders – many of whom cherish the opportunity to offer guidance and mentorship to ambitious students.
You typically need to be elected to these roles, so you’ll want to be strategic about this. For instance, some schools have ‘slates’ (kind of like mini political parties), in which case you’ll want to join one that has a good chance of winning. You might also choose to run for a position that is vacant (or competition is weak) over the one you really want. In any case, it will be important to build your brand around campus. Running a club helps, but you can also volunteer for events (Frosh Week, Orientation Week, fundraisers, etc).
I spent 4 years in student government: 1 year as Director at Large, two years as an executive-committee Director, and my final year as Chairperson. My advice to anyone wanting to choose this path: start as a Director at Large and ingratiate yourself with the team. Volunteer at every student’s union event, work hard, build relationships and fit in. The support of your student government peers can ensure you succeed. If people see you as a natural and reliable fit for leadership, they’ll help you (e.g. campaigning, mentoring, and even discouraging others from running against you). If not, they’ll hinder you by encouraging others to run against you, campaigning against you, and excluding you from the ‘clique’. It’s not a certainty you’ll become the Chairperson / President, but if you’re strategic and work hard, it’s likely you’ll get a highly valuable executive position.
- Result: In exchange for ~8 hrs/week, I added 3 years of leadership experience to my resume. The role gave me Competency Based Interview responses in the areas of stakeholder engagement, program and policy development, program evaluation, and leadership. In addition, I was able to add the University President as a reference – a big win!
3. Get references from professors (Years 3 – 4)
Your third step is to secure faculty allies who can offer you good references. You should do this in years 3 and 4.
You’ll now be taking upper-level courses; the material is more specialized, class sizes are smaller, and the work is more sophisticated. At this point, it will be much easier to demonstrate your competence and build relationships with professors now than it would be in years 1 and 2.
Immediately upon graduating, it’s likely you’ll lack relevant references for a management job. If you’re like most working students, the bulk of your experience will likely consist of front-line food service or retail (source). Unless your boss offers development opportunities to part-time staff, you’re unlikely to get a ‘management grade’ reference from them. If you haven’t followed my first two suggestions, then you’re going to need that reference from someone else.
University professors can help fill this gap. First, they’ll probably know how well you work with a team, how quickly you grasp concepts, and how seriously you take your work. Second, professors (usually) write excellent reference letters! Depending on the size of your institution, getting face time with a professor can be tough. My advice to you is this:
- Select two professors on whom you’ll focus your relationship efforts. I chose professors with whom I would have multiple classes with throughout my degree.
- Stand out and build your relationship. Get good grades in their classes, participate in class discussions, take leadership in group assignments, and visit during office hours with meaningful questions and comments. You want the professor to see you as highly competent, engaged, curious, and a good leader.
- Pose the question. Once you’ve demonstrated the above and started to build a relationship, pose the following question: “I really enjoy the topics you teach, and I hope to find employment in that area when I graduate. Do you have any advice for me, and what would it take for me to earn a reference letter from you?”
Few professors will say no to this, but if they do, move on to the next one. But let me reiterate: build the relationship and prove yourself before asking! Your professors likely get a lot of requests like this, and they can’t write great references for everyone. Make sure you’ve earned it, and they’ll likely come through for you.
- Result: It’s difficult to quantify the hours it took to excel in my courses, but you’ll need to do that anyways, so it’s a wash (I assume I’m talking to ‘A players’ here). In terms of building relationship with professors, that’s ~30 mins a week or less to stop by office hours to discuss assignments, write the occasional email to let them know what you liked about the course, and hang around for a brief chat after class.
4. Get an entry-level job at the RIGHT company (~6 months pre-graduation)
About 6 months before graduating, start applying for jobs.
If you have the ability to get a job with a top-tier management consultancy or investment bank, then go ahead and do that. For the other 99.5% of us, we need to be more strategic. My advice is to establish the following three parameters for potential employers (which you can usually find on the website):
1. Your ability to ‘stand out’
You need a job where exemplary work is hard to miss and highly valued by leadership. I call this ‘performance oriented’ over ‘process oriented’. I started out selling cell phones. I had no experience in sales, but I had confidence that I could learn the systems and execute them better than anyone. You can do this too. As a manager, 90% of my hires had no sales experience coming in, but many won sales awards and earned promotions. It’s all about confidence, effort, and buying into the systems.
Because sales jobs have clear performance metrics that are valued by leadership, it’s easy to prove excellent results. I’m not trying to sell you on sales (though I do think it’s an easy track), there are many entry-level professions where you can prove your value. What I want you to be wary of are jobs that seem like a natural fit for a business graduate, but will leave you grinding for years. The best example I can think of is bank tellers. I had many business school friends go this route. While my colleagues who took entry-level jobs in sales, marketing, and construction moved up quickly, my colleagues at the bank were stuck grinding at the front counter. This is because it’s almost impossible to quickly prove how great you are in a process-oriented environment. I’d classify jobs like warehouse work, retail (non-sales), and courier/delivery as the same – something to avoid if you want a management job fast.
Here’s a tip: during the management job interview, you can gain some insight and stand out to the interviewer by asking them “how do you measure performance, and what development opportunities exist for top performers?”. If they can’t immediately answer this question with enthusiasm, that may be a sign this job isn’t the right one.
2. Emphasis on leadership development
Many organizations have employee development programs, developmental placements, mentors, and frequent promotion opportunities. When they do, they typically make that information available on their website. After all, they invest in these programs to attract and retain excellent employees and create a leadership pipeline from within. This is more common in large corporations than in small and medium businesses. The reason is that they are more likely to have the internal administrative structures to manage the programs, and the budgets to pay for them.
Find an organization where employee development is a core value, become a top-performer, and I can almost guarantee you’ll be given excellent support toward promotion. However, you still need to advocate for yourself! Remember, there are many other employees who also want a management job, so you need to take an active role in your development.
3. Large workforce situated nearby (or be willing to move to a new city):
In any one unit of an organization, upward mobility is rare; bosses don’t leave often. However, if the business employs a lot of management-level positions in your area, then your opportunities multiply. For this reason, you should work for an employer with many different units or business functions nearby. If you aren’t willing to change cities, then it’s probably unwise to work for the only Verizon location in a 200-mile radius with a manager who plans to work there for the next 10 years.
The company I started with had many locations across multiple tiers within a 100-mile radius of me. Thus, I had the opportunity to move up about 4 times before I’d have to leave the city to advance further. I capped this out in a couple of years before hitting that roadblock. Fortunately, I had gained the valuable experience I needed to make a lateral move to secure a management job at an organization more centralized in my current city.
If you’re taking the ‘willing to move far away’ option, start building relationships in the area you are hoping to move to. Connect with regional / head office managers to share your goals and tell them about your performance. Follow up by asking if there are any side projects you can help with or vacations you can cover. And of course, check in frequently – relationship building is a process, not a task.
ATTN: Business Students!
— Chris (@ChrisjBergen) December 23, 2022
Here are my top 4 proactive tips to get a management job after graduation:
1. Run a club
2. Join Student Government
3. Build relationships w/ Professors
4. Get an entry level job where performance is measured & rewarded
Read more: https://t.co/6KEaNBPjDt
Final Thoughts
In this article, I’ve laid out my top 4 steps for current business students hoping to get a manager job right after graduation, and I’ve tried to do so in chronological order: Run a club > join student council > Secure faculty allies > Get an entry level job at the right company. But let me reiterate what I said above: If you’ve missed a milestone, don’t worry! Make adjustments to get the most with the time you have. If you need help, connect with me on Twitter, and I’d be happy to talk it through with you.
And one last note: Getting that entry-level job is just the first step on your career journey. Now you get to do the real (and rewarding) work of navigating your career. While this is the topic of another article, I can tell you now that your first step will be to make your career goals known to your supervisor and, with their support, build out a roadmap to get you to the next step. Some starting points for that discussion:
- What are the performance metrics you need to hit?
- What initiatives can you spearhead to help the team and develop your leadership skill?
- With whom should you make connections?
I hope you enjoyed this post! If you have any other tips or experiences you’d like to share, please add them in the comments!
