Sarah Mobin attended Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business to pursue a career in brand management. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Sarah faced the significant challenges of recruiting during an unprecedented global health and economic crisis. While this process was entirely different from what she initially imagined, Sarah is now gainfully employed at a leading CPG company. In this interview, Sarah shares her story, and how she was able to land a job.
MBASchooled: What did you want to do after you graduated from business school?
am a passionate marketing professional with 7 years of experience on the agency side, executing brand experiences for a number of global clients. While I enjoyed the production and experiential process, I pursued an MBA at Georgetown University to gain a world class business education and pivot my career towards client-side brand management. This ended up being one of the best decisions I have ever made – and opened up new and exciting career opportunities.
For example, in the summer between my first and second year, I secured a brand management internship at a premier global hospitality company during which I audited the marketing funnel for a number of its most successful brands. Heading into the summer, I was aware that a full-time offer was not guaranteed because the hospitality industry is known for just-in-time recruiting. Nevertheless, I made sure to do well on my summer project and foster strong relationships with colleagues and alumni. I thoroughly enjoyed the internship and my goal was to rejoin the company post-graduation.
During the fall, I continued to network with my summer employer and took advantage of many great opportunities top MBA programs like Georgetown have to offer. One such opportunity is the Global Business Experience (GBE), an international consulting course that matches second-year MBAs with clients from around the world. Through GBE, I had the chance to work with a multinational CPG company based in Vietnam. My team and I traveled to Ho Chi Minh City in March to present our findings.
MBASchooled: How did COVID-19 change your career goals?
I would say that COVID-19 didn’t entirely change my career goals, but it completely turned my approach to reaching those goals upside down. All of a sudden, the recruiting process was an enigma.
After GBE wrapped up, I took advantage of being abroad and travelled throughout Southeast Asia. At the time, I was starting to become aware of the true severity of COVID-19 and decided to return to the United States early. On my long flight home, I felt growing anxiety about the potential impact of a global pandemic on the economy, my job search, and the marketing industry, in general. But it took a few weeks for me to fully understand the “new normal.”
I noticed that many of my former internship colleagues were put on a 90-day furlough and eventually laid off. Mandatory lockdowns were enforced in Washington, D.C. and across the United States. Offices closed and unemployment soared. In response, Georgetown University’s career center announced it was extending services to graduating MBA students until December of the year.
With these events happening concurrently, I quickly realized that full-time recruiting would look vastly different than years’ past for my classmates and I. My initial goal of finding a brand management role with my internship employer was no longer plausible, as hospitality was one of the hardest hit industries during the pandemic. A pivot was not only necessary, but crucial.
MBASchooled: How did you respond?
It was incredibly overwhelming at first, but if there’s anything that business school taught me, it’s problem-solving and resiliency. After the initial shock, I decided to spring into action.
After adjusting to online classes, around mid-April, I created a master spreadsheet of target companies. Again, I very much wanted to do brand management/marketing, and for personal reasons wanted to be in NYC. From there, I did additional research to identify what organizations, based in New York, were hiring (not many). Countless companies had enacted hiring freezes or had significantly scaled back their efforts. I also started updating my spreadsheet with contacts I had at those organizations, then took a pulse to see if it was even realistic to search for roles at this point in time.
MBASchooled: You had to reassess after a few weeks. What did you do next?
Unfortunately, my first attempt at job searching did not yield many outcomes. Around this time, I had a conversation with my career advisor, who encouraged me to ride the momentum of graduating with an MBA, to find a good opportunity for growth, and to pay close attention to the industries that were relevant and important in the face of COVID-19.
This was a pivotal conversation. I took some time to reassess my priorities, and began to focus on Brand Management/Marketing roles for large Fortune 500 companies, specifically in CPG, healthcare and tech, across the United States. Expanding industry and location options naturally opened me up to more opportunities.
While I applied to dozens of companies, one in particular stood out. It was a global leader in CPG known for its strong brand, innovative products, and indispensable role in strengthening public health in the fight against COVID-19. A recruiter responded to my application (cold, no referral) pretty quickly and asked to set up a phone screen.
The phone screen went well but only lasted 10 minutes (I stretched it out to 25 mins with follow-up questions). I was subsequently asked to interview on short notice with directors for two very different brand teams. With such a quick turnaround, I immediately went into MBA mode in my preparation – market data, competitive analysis, financial statements, investor relation decks, recent marketing campaigns, marketing podcasts, prep with classmates and case questions. Two rounds of interviews with a hiring manager and a VP followed, and within a few days I received an offer for an Associate Marketing Manager position which I was very excited to accept! I’ll be starting remotely in July, and moving to Durham, North Carolina later this year.
MBASchooled: What were your keys to success?
Tailoring My Resume – I re imagined my resume and was more strategic about what I highlighted. For example, I deemphasized my summer internship and added more detail to my GBE project in Vietnam. This worked well, as the VP I interviewed with spent 6 years working at that same company. It’s no surprise that despite only applying online, my resume got noticed!
A major takeaway is to think deeply about your past experiences in work and school – there are likely activities or achievements that you may take for granted and may not initially include, but that are actually relevant or valuable to a company or industry that you are applying for.
I have heard a dozen times from my Career Center to prepare different versions of my resume and this turned out to be excellent advice. I always personalized the first few bullets to the specific role, industry, and/or function I was applying to in order to grab the attention of a hiring manager or recruiter. Be intentional about how you present yourself.
Reassessing Priorities – There is no question that COVID-19 made me reexamine my professional priorities, including location, role/title, industry, compensation, and work/life balance, amongst others. Upon reflection, I identified new areas of flexibility while reaffirming non-negotiables. I also defined corporate characteristics that are important to me, such as diversity, social impact, and culture. Even in a very tough job market, I wasn’t going to just accept any role for the sake of having a full-time job. I didn’t feel comfortable applying to tons of companies just to increase my application count, and was very thoughtful about targeting companies that fit my most important criteria.
Leveraging Your Network – I sound like a broken record, but networking with alumni, past colleagues, and classmates on a regular basis is vital. When the time was right and folks were settled into working from home, I began setting up weekly informational calls. I also heavily leveraged my career center for bi-weekly check-ins, resume reviews, and moral support. They also did a great job of compiling short-term projects and internships available for second-year MBAs that can potentially lead to full-time employment down the road. In addition, I spoke with classmates almost every day, whether through Zoom or text, who took the time to review my resume and share hiring updates from their own job searches. It was comforting knowing that I was not alone.
In the end, the process did not go exactly how I originally envisioned, nor did I ever imagine searching for a job during an economic collapse and global health crisis. Between the hiring freezes, office closures, and Zoom calls, my recruiting process was unconventional and, sometimes, turbulent. Even now, I still have not heard back from many of the companies that I applied to over the past few months.
I feel incredibly fortunate to have secured an offer in such a volatile market and am thrilled to start working for a purpose-driven company later this month. I received a ton of help and support along the way, and I hope to pay it forward by helping my classmates and peers.
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