Changing Careers…Trust Your Gut and Let Stern Guide you

Hi Readers! I just joined the fellow Stern bloggers crew. I am a rising second-year MBA student. Like your veteran blogger Duygu, I am also originally from Turkey but I think I am slowly becoming a New Yorker considering I am going into my 7th year in the concrete jungle.
I am sure you will learn lots about me through each blog post but in this post I wanted to tell you about how I navigated through my first year at Stern in pursuit of my future career of choice (please continue reading because it’s not consulting or banking!) and how Stern has helped me in this process.
I came into Stern with a passion for the Social Impact space. I decided to combine this with my experience in finance and focused on recruiting for the recently very highly trending space of Impact Investing. The industry demands very specific skills including experience in finance, investing, and the non-profit sector (preferred), international development, sprinkled with maybe a background in VC, a good network and ability to work in very unstructured environments. Did I also mentioned it is a small industry with demand exceeding the growth of jobs and with no structured recruiting processes?
I knew my passion for the sector was only going to get me so far and persevere during the process. For the rest, Stern was the last variable to balance out the equation. Not only does Stern have many resources available to support your navigation through this journey, but Stern also listens to you and improves its services or even creates new ones based on your feedback.
Here are some of the resources I took advantage of:
  • SEA: I attended every event organized by Stern’s Social Enterprise Association (SEA), which includes career panels (also called Knowledge Management Sessions, peer group chats, networking events and industry happy hours. Through these various resources, I expanded my network in the sector, met fellow classmates going through the same struggle (and we are still a continued support and sounding board for each other), learned about new companies and programs in the sector and mapped out my self-promotion strategy.
  • New York, New York: I am sure you have heard this a million times but I am going to say it again: Being in an MBA program in New York is a blessing. I cannot count how many in-person meetings I was able to schedule that did not require advance scheduling, traveling multiple hours, or missing classes.
  • Classmates: Stern’s student demographic from a career perspective has a big range, which helps when you are trying to transition careers and soul searching. My classmates (including the second-year MBA students) have been available to help with career advice, mock interviews, resume reviews, cold calls (emails) or simply talking through ideas, doubts, concerns or opportunities. I never once felt uncomfortable or judged when I was discussing career goals with a fellow classmate.
  • You create it, Stern supports it: Remember those classmates I just told you about? One of them, a second-year MBA student, to whom I am grateful for all her help throughout my recruiting process, initiated a project, which is soon to be officially introduced as the NYU Impact Investing Fund (NIIF); and I am one of co-founders along with her! We aim to help educate the next generation of impact investors, expand the industry and its impact. The Stern administration has been an immense support since its inception and is helping us establish NIIF.
  • Adjunct Professors: Like every MBA program, we have plenty adjunct professors. Unlike many other programs, Stern’s adjuncts are incredibly accessible and they get personally vested in your future career pursuits and they are incredibly insightful advisors.

I am sure you are now interested in hearing the result of this journey of my first year recruiting process. Well, you will need to wait for my next post to hear about that!

Until next time!