If you’ve been accepted into a top MBA program, congratulations! But as tough as the application can be, it’s just the first step toward unlocking the full value of the degree. You’ll have to work hard at the classes themselves, of course; but you’ll also need to balance academics with intensive recruiting activity to land the right post-MBA role and elevate your future career.
In your first year, this means recruiting for the right summer internship. That internship might convert to a job offer for a full-time post-MBA position. If not (or if you don’t want to work at the firm where you interned), you’ll need to re-recruit in second year to line up a full-time role for after graduation.
In both years, recruiting activity falls broadly into two main phases:
| When? | Which employers? | |
| Phase 1: Structured Recruiting | In the fall: Year 1: Oct–Jan Year 2: Aug–Nov | Big firms mainly in consulting, finance, and tech go through their annual MBA recruitment cycles. |
| Phase 2: Unstructured Recruiting | In the spring: largely March onward both years | Firms without a structured process begin hiring for roles closer to the start date. |
To keep up, MBA students need a good grounding in what these two phases entail and where the deadlines for their target industries fall. Deadlines, particularly in the second year, come around fast, and it’s crucial to hit the ground running so you aren’t left behind.
This article provides a comprehensive timeline of MBA recruiting for both years of the program, explaining the different peaks of recruiting activity and what you need to prioritize when, so you can put your best foot forward.
In the image below, you can see an overview of the MBA recruiting timeline across the full two years.
As the timeline shows, the two phases of structured and unstructured recruiting are common to both years, but the first phase kicks off much quicker in the second year—especially for consulting and IB.
Of course, recruiting activity won’t exclusively fall into these phases, but these are the periods in which most recruiting happens. These phases are when most MBAs will secure their internships in the first year. And they’re when most of those who don’t convert their internships to full-time roles will line up jobs in the second year.
Tech recruiting, as the timeline suggests, could be described as “semi-structured”; there are structured processes at the biggest firms, but they’re less standardized and more spread out across the year.
Many first-year MBAs, then, will go through structured recruiting processes in the fall, aiming to secure a role in, for example, investment banking, and will fall back on the later phase of unstructured recruiting in the event that they don’t succeed in the first phase.
Others with no interest in the firms doing structured recruitment will take a different strategy, sitting out the first phase and waiting to secure an internship in their desired industry in the spring. And the same dynamic plays out in the second year (for those not returning full time to their internship firm).
Which phases you participate in will depend on a number of factors. Some will secure the perfect internship through structured recruiting in first year, convert that to a full-time role, and sit out second-year recruiting entirely. Others have a harder time and end up participating in all four phases in search of the right position. It’s important to plan for all possibilities.
Structured recruiting refers to the well-established recruitment processes run by big firms in certain industries, filling roles specifically lined up for MBAs.
These firms know that they want MBA talent for these positions, and they have a clear idea of their hiring needs well in advance so that recruitment can begin in the fall (or even late summer) for internships or full-time opportunities that only start the following summer.
The three main industries running structured recruitment at MBA programs are consulting, investment banking (IB), and tech. Within these industries, the biggest firms are most likely to recruit in this way. For instance, a small tech startup won’t participate in structured recruiting, but big firms such as Google will.
Unstructured recruiting is simply the rest of the recruiting activity that isn’t part of the structured processes in the fall. Companies in this phase are hiring for jobs or internships closer to the start date, once they know their hiring needs, which is why it takes place in the spring, kicking into high gear around March.
A wide variety of industries and functions recruit in this phase, including the highly competitive fields of private equity (PE) and venture capital (VC), in addition to tech startups, smaller consulting firms, and countless others.
Bear in mind that it’s not only small firms; big firms that do structured recruiting in the fall may still advertise other, non-MBA-specific roles in the spring, and many industries simply do all their recruiting in an unstructured way.
Recruiting for a great internship is a crucial part of the first year. Let’s take a deep dive into the timeline.
You won’t have too long to get settled in on campus before you start thinking about structured recruiting. Recruiting events, company presentations, and coffee chats kick off quickly. Application deadlines for different industries are staggered across the fall, with some posting jobs as early as October and offers for many roles extended in January.
There’s some downtime before the second phase begins in earnest. If you were aiming to get an internship through structured recruiting but failed to do so, take this time to regroup and formulate a plan for phase 2.
This is a search each person needs to structure themselves. Research companies that interest you to learn when their hiring begins, network with alumni at your target firms, and develop a compelling pitch to get in.
Internships run during the summer, typically for 10–12 weeks. Use your time well—to secure a full-time return offer, or to gain strong, impressive experience for a pivot to another firm.
Second-year MBA recruiting can be a high-pressure, time-sensitive process. Let’s take a look at how the timeline plays out.
Structured recruiting is significantly accelerated in the second year. While things get moving in October of first year, in second year you can face deadlines in August or early September. If you plan to participate, be sure to proactively check campus job boards well before school begins so you don’t miss out.
Between the two phases—and there’s a longer gap than in first year—there’s a lull in recruiting activity. You should remain aware of what positions do come up in this period (it’s not that literally no recruiting is happening here!), and otherwise focus on networking and interview prep for the roles you want to target.
This is a much more freeform process, one that depends heavily on your initiative and networking skills. You need to be actively seeking connections and roles at your target firms, ensuring you’re in the picture when a position needs to be filled.
Ideally, you’ll have a job lined up by graduation—but be aware that even at top programs, a significant chunk of the graduating class have not yet accepted or even received an offer. Resist the urge to despair, and keep up the search until you land the right position.
Structured recruiting timelines also differ per industry. The timelines for consulting, IB, and big tech recruiting are compared below.
First, let’s look at internship recruiting for first-year students:
For second-year students, structured recruiting runs on a more compressed timeline and is even more competitive, since many positions, particularly in IB, are already filled by interns with return offers.
We can make some observations per industry:
Consulting has the most clearly defined but also intensive and accelerated process in both years. In the second year, many roles are already filled by interns with return offers, so competition for the remaining spots is fierce.
The investment banking timeline is very similar to consulting. IB has an even stronger focus on recruiting almost exclusively via internship return offers, so first year is a far more viable entry point. Investment banks hire interns with the expectation they will convert to full-time jobs; in second year, the few open roles result from internships that didn’t work out, and there are often none at all for some banks.
The big tech firms (Amazon, Google, and Microsoft) have a structured recruiting timeline that lags behind those for IB and consulting, especially in the second year—kicking off as those processes are winding down. Tech firms are less insistent on filling roles via internships, so more roles are available here in second year than in the consulting and IB processes.
For those not solely focused on one industry, there are a couple of takeaways from the way these processes line up in both years:
For details of exactly which companies are recruiting at your program and when, always check campus job boards or ask career services. Be certain you know the deadlines well in advance so you don’t miss them or run out of time to prep.
Whether you’re in the first or second year of your degree, it’s not unusual to run into obstacles and dilemmas in the MBA recruiting process.
You might enter the program with the assumption that your business school’s career services team can hold your hand every step of the way. They are, of course, there to help, but in our experience, their capacity is fairly limited; relying on them for help with every stage of recruiting is unrealistic.
If you’re feeling stuck or unsure, it’s worth considering career coaching for people in exactly your position. We have deep experience with the MBA itself and with post-MBA careers. Learn more about our services.
Mike Mascarenhas
Sr. MBA Admissions Consultant
Education: BS, MBA
With over 2,000 hours of experience coaching MBA prospectives and students, Mike knows everything about how to get into MBA programs—and how to land the best jobs coming out of them. Mike built the recruiting process at IESE Business School and subsequently handled MBA recruiting at BCG. He’s a passionate, energetic coach with a deep understanding of the consulting industry and substantial experience with nontraditional candidates.
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