The Road from Business School, Less Traveled

A Harvard MBA who graduated without a job in 2006 finds it more a blessing than a curse

By Philip Delves Broughton

I've been reading lately about the plight of the MBA Class of 2009. Many are coming out of school with changed expectations and having to hustle to find work, any work, to pay off those loans and get their careers moving. The supposedly easy, lucrative jobs aren't there anymore, so they are being forced to make choices. What do they really want to spend their time on? What offers the best chance of making a buck? How do they discover their true value in the marketplace?

I know this is no fun, because I found myself in a very similar position in 2006, after graduating from Harvard Business School (Harvard Full-Time MBA Profile) with no job. What I'm about to say is not advice, because I'm in no position to give it. It's just an account of my own experience that may or may not resonate.

My problems when I graduated were not linked to the job market, which was still booming. Most in my year had several job offers. My problems were with myself and my own rather self-indulgent approach to a career. I coveted the financial rewards supposedly due an MBA, but couldn't face doing the work. I went through the mill of interviews with famous firms, but I was noncommittal, and it showed.

It's About What You Produce

I remember playing soccer and rugby as a boy and coaches saying the only way not to get hurt was to fully commit. To hurl yourself at an attacking winger's churning legs in a rugby tackle, to go hard for the soccer ball. If you flinched, you would get a knee in the eye or a boot in the face.

I got banged up in the business school marketplace by not committing.

And yet when I looked back to why I had gone in the first place, it wasn't to get a big job. It was to have control over my time and my financial destiny. But somehow, in the process of getting my MBA, I had become distracted. I started to want what everyone else wanted and began to hold my own deeper desires in contempt.

I came to ignore what was most important to me: that I should be valued for what I produced, not for how many hours I spent in an office or how well I got along with a boss.

I wanted to be rewarded for my uniqueness, not for my ability to conform.

But it's hard to hold onto that vision when you're under pressure, when everyone around you says that with your background and qualifications, you should be doing a certain kind of work, when you have bills to pay and friends and family who unwittingly burden you with their own expectations.

I remember the summer after graduation talking to a friend who had graduated from Yale's architecture school. I asked her, what do I do? She told me to go back to doing something I knew I was good at.

Beginnings of a Book

When she had come out of Yale, most of her peers had taken jobs with big, famous architectural firms. She knew she didn't want to do that, and flailed for a while. To make some cash, she went back to her old job, working for an interior designer, managing multimillion-dollar renovations. It had little to do with high-concept architecture. But it was hands-on, she was great at it, and she was well paid. It felt good, she said, to be reminded of her value. And after a few months, she had the confidence to start her own small architectural practice, which now earns her a living.

So I took her advice and went back to writing. I would take the subway every morning up to the Avery Art and Architecture Library at Columbia University, which offered free Wi-Fi and air conditioning, and contacted my old journalist friends. They were happy to throw me some work, a few hundred bucks here and there, enough to cover health insurance at least. And I began writing the proposal for a book about Harvard Business School, which became Ahead of the Curve.

I wrote quickly, because I needed to make some money. I hustled in a way I had never had to with a full-time job on a newspaper, which I'd had before.

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