To MBA or Not To MBA: A Veteran Goes Straight into Industry

To all the recent graduates….Happy Graduation!  Now is the time of year where MBAs, MDs, PhDs, and JDs receive their well earned honors and enter the workforce.  Congratulations on your success and winning the fruit of all of your hard work.  But, we should also say, some people, and veterans in particular, skip the whole degree thing and start working right after their military service is complete.  We have been lucky enough to have one such veteran walk us through his thought process on why he decided to go straight into industry:

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This is going to be a little bit of a different post than the other contributors because I did apply to MBA programs, but ultimately decided to actually work instead of accepting any offers. To provide you some perspective, I graduated from USMA in 2004 with a BS in Mechanical Engineering and from Stanford in 2006 with an MS in Mechanical Engineering. I spent the past six years in the Army as an engineer stationed at Fort Leonard Wood, MO.  Leading up to my transition from the military I really struggled with what path to take. I had three (from my perspective) paths ahead of me: graduate school for a PhD in engineering, get an MBA, or go to work. I knew that generally I wanted to work in the energy industry because of my exposure to energy systems in college and graduate school.

Get a PhD?

I had received a National Science Foundation graduate research fellowship while at West Point which provided three years of funding for engineering graduate school. I had used up two years while at Stanford, but I still had one year to kick-start a PhD program.  I conducted a bit of research via emails, phone calls, and visits. I thought it would be really interesting to be at the forefront of new engineering developments, but I ended up deciding not to pursue that path because I did not want to conduct research nor teach at university.

Go into Consulting?

After rejecting the PhD option, I dived headlong into case interview preparation. I thought that if I could crack into a management consulting company that I would be able to learn business on the job. I called and met with military veterans at the major consulting companies who tentatively told me that I could probably receive an interview with my background. I backed off after considering the impact on my family (wife and now 20 month old son). I think we could have made it work, but I did not think the business training would be worth the pain of traveling extensively for work.

Go to Business school?

If I was not going to learn on the job in consulting, I thought that I could learn the art of business at business school. I think I started the application process for business school in the summer of 2011 (albeit I had taken the GMAT and GRE in the fall of 2010). I applied to HBS, Stanford, Wharton, Kellogg, and Olin. I interviewed at Kellogg in September (applicant initiated), Wharton in November, and Olin in November.

Go straight into industry?

While waiting for other interview invitations I started making backup plans. I knew that GE and Siemens would be my target companies post-MBA, so I took a look at what I could possibly head into if I did not go to business school. I knew that GE Energy had a Junior Officer Leadership Program (JOLP) and that Siemens had opened up their Sales and Marketing Develop Program (SMDP) to junior officers. GE Energy’s JOLP had been under a hiring freeze under the summer, but in October they had a job posting open up. At the same time Siemens (working through Orion) had their hiring conference for SMDP. In November I interviewed at Orlando for SMDP and Houston for JOLP. I received both offers and decided to decline the Siemens offer because GE had an established network of former military officers and the salary was much higher for GE.

My wife and I had some long (and I mean LONG) discussions about whether or not to accept the GE offer if I received it. My wife’s inclination was that I should be patient (I would be hearing back from business schools in a month) and go to graduate school so that I could see all of my options. I struggled with this because of the below advantages of going straight to work:

1.    Energy Industry: JOLP would place me squarely in the middle of the energy industry at one of my two target companies.

2.    Rotations: I would be able to see work in three different functions over my two year program to gain a broad perspective on how business is conducted at GE.

3.    Training: GE JOLP provides a lot of on the job and classroom training.

4.    Financial: I am eligible for 100% of my education benefits which would have covered some of the tuition at the business schools I applied to, but it would not have covered all of my family’s expenses. We owned a home at Fort Leonard Wood and knew that if I wanted to sell it I would have to sell at a loss.

Some of the advantages of going to an MBA program:

1.    Networking: Two years of networking with classmates, alumni, professors, and recruiters.

2.   Career Opportunities: See a much broader gamut of opportunities.

3.   Learning in the classroom: This was important tome, but could be ameliorated through a part-time MBA program.

I thought that the advantages of going to work outweighed the advantages of going to an MBA program so I decided to take the GE offer the Sunday post-Thanksgiving. I knew that I wanted to end up in an energy company in a rotational program post-MBA, so going straight before an MBA sounded like a good deal. Later on in December I found out that I had been accepted to Olin and Kellogg (with a wait-list at Wharton). It was hard to turn down Kellogg because my wife’s family lived in Chicago, but we thought that it was the right decision.

I started terminal leave from the Army in March and started working at GE in April. So far (it has only been a month and a half) it has been a great experience. I have had the opportunity to meet a great group of fellow JOLPs and former military at GE. I also had the chance to travel to Oslo, Norway to sit in on project reviews for the European region. I still feel like I am learning about GE and business via the fire-hose method, but it has slowed down a little bit. To help me learn the language of business I thought that I could supplement the on the job learning with a part-time MBA program. I applied to and was accepted at the part-time program at McCombs business school(Houston program) and will start this summer. Due to my eligibility for 100% education benefits, I will actually be going to school for free which is nice.

Looking back on our decision to go to GE, we (my wife and I) agree that we made the right choice. If we had not received the GE offer I would have been going to business school because none of the other opportunities I looked at post-military were appealing to me. I took a look at some other energy companies (Chesapeake and Exxon come to mind), but none of them offered the rotations and training that GE did.