At a classic moment in Jerry Seinfeld’s new movie, Bee Movie (www.beemovie.com) , the head of the “Bee” Placement office delivers a graduation speech to the graduating bees and delivers a insightful line, “We know you have worked your whole lives…so that…you can work your whole lives.” Seinfeld plays Barry B. Benson, the graduating bee “who wants more out of life than the inevitable career that awaits him and every other worker in New Hive City—a job at Honex…making honey.”
So I ask: have you come to business school so that you get the inevitable job with McKinsey or Goldman Sachs and then “work your whole life?” While those jobs are fantastic (see post from 3/31/08), they are not for everyone, and they are not perhaps life’s calling for many who take them. I have heard that many students have grand visions when they apply to business school, only to see those visions blurred when the mass of students attend the “normal” company briefings and attend the endless cocktail parties and networking events. A job at some of these prestigious firms becomes a real badge of honor for students, and the visions of entrepreneurship or sustainability fade.
If you are a First Year embarking on a summer internship in investment banking or consulting, congratulations. I invite you to use this summer to add “data” to your first week’s self-assessment exercises. When you get the offer at the end of the summer, say thank you, but don’t say yes right away. Look at the data from your life themes. Look at your original career objective and perhaps the essay you wrote to get into business school about your future aspirations. Is this job what you set out for? If yes, fantastic. You can accept the job confident that you will be successful, because the job lines up with your themes. But if it is not, and if the job does not line up with your life themes, then I encourage you to embark on a job search next fall that will lead you to where your dreams started out—not where your classmates may have led you. Success for me in my job is helping you find a job you will be in for five to ten years, not one that you will only stay in for two (or less).
If you are just thinking of going to business school, I invite you to really think about your career aspirations. At Darden we believe in starting the career development process with self assessment. We use a website called www.careernextstep.com. The website helps you organize your life’s data into life themes and from there, the site helps you begin to evaluate different career paths for “fit.” Then when you get to business school, follow your passion, not your classmates. Business school is a time to re-invent yourself. Don’t let someone else re-invent you. If you follow your passions, all the work you have put in your whole life, like the bee Barry B. Benson, will not be “so that you can work your whole lives.” All the work you have put in your whole life will have prepared you for the next forty years of the “fun” you will have of living out your passions.