MBA / MS / Grad School · Primly Community

post-MBA job search taking longer than expected: what actually helps when the timeline slips

market_realist · 4 replies

i'm in month 5 of post-MBA job search and thought sharing what's worked and what hasn't might help someone. my target was product strategy or corporate development at a mid-to-large tech company.

what I expected: 2-3 months, leverage the school brand, done.

what is actually happening: the market is harder than my career center suggested. my school's alumni network is useful but most people are also trying to get somewhere. on-campus recruiting delivered 3 interviews and zero offers. the rest of my pipeline is cold-ish outreach and referrals I've had to build from scratch.

what has actually helped:

Being specific about what I want in outreach. when I said "I'm interested in strategy roles" i got polite non-answers. when I said "I'm specifically interested in corp dev at companies that are acquiring in the healthcare SaaS space, here's my deal experience background" I got more substantive conversations. specificity is a filter, not just for jobs but for whether people bother responding.

Treating every informational like a soft interview. not interrogating people, but being prepared, having smart questions, and leaving a clear impression. two of my late-stage interviews came directly from info conversations where I apparently stuck.

Actually following up. I know. obvious. I was not doing it consistently. setting a 1-week reminder to follow up with everyone I talk to. a meaningful number of conversations that went quiet got restarted this way.

what hasn't helped:

applying cold to job postings. maybe 1-2% response rate. a rounding error.

expecting the school brand to carry weight at companies that don't have formal MBA hiring pipelines. outside of consulting, banking, and structured big-tech programs, the MBA name doesn't open doors that a good intro email wouldn't. the degree is for credential checks, not door-openers.

mental health note: month 5 is rough. the urgency of loan repayments starting makes everything sharper. I'm trying to treat each week as its own thing and not extrapolate. some weeks are better than others.

4 replies

laidoff_lena

the specificity in outreach is real. I've been job searching (non-MBA context) and the same principle applies. vague = ignored. specific = responses. it's counterintuitive because you feel like you're narrowing your chances, but actually you're increasing them.

recruiter_rita

recruiter perspective: the cold job posting funnel is genuinely broken for MBA-level roles. those roles get so many applications that they're not being carefully reviewed. the people getting interviews from job boards are either a perfect keyword match for the ATS filter or have a warm intro from inside. both are about specificity and preparation.

careerveteran

month 5 is exactly when people make bad decisions. panic-applying to roles that don't fit, taking an offer out of anxiety that they'll regret. don't. if you've been building the right pipeline, something will come through. the search for corporate development and product strategy is just genuinely slower because the roles are fewer and the evaluation is more qualitative.

ux_uma

the "treating every info interview like a soft interview" note is underrated. I've heard hiring managers say they made offers specifically because a candidate in an info conversation was so thoughtful that they wanted to hire them before a role even opened. preparation signals motivation in a way that a polished resume can't.