By Isaac Ipson T'15
Isaac is in his second year at Tuck and is loving his life in Hanover with his wife and two sons (one and 3 years old). As an undergrad, Isaac studied economics and took a two year break to serve a two-year mission for his church in Poland. Immediately before Tuck, he worked in Chicago for Sears Holdings. He intends to head to Dallas after graduation to work for the company with which he interned, DaVita Healthcare Partners.
As a current Tuck admissions interviewer, I ask prospective students often about what they hope to do after Tuck. I remember thinking this through and being asked the same question myself two years ago. Nonetheless, I came to campus last fall with much less of an idea of where I wanted to go than most of the prospectives I talk with each week. My career exploration and internship search at Tuck helped me figure this out exactly the way I hoped they would.
While I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do, I knew there were a few things I didn’t want to do: consulting or investment banking—two very popular career paths that also happen to require a lot of dedicated, structured preparation early on campus. Making that decision early enabled me to really look at every company or industry of interest that came to campus, as well as reach out to other companies that I was excited about. I found early in the process that there wasn’t one industry alone that interested me. I compared certain aspects between industries such as culture, specific post-MBA program/roles, how MBAs were utilized within the organization, and location. In a way, this made the search harder because I could never narrow my search down to something simple like tech, health care, or brand management. Instead, I interviewed with companies in each of these industries and others and got a better sense of which opportunities I was most excited about at each step of the process (company briefings, preparing my cover letters, chatting with alumni there, first and second round interviews, etc.).
Fairly early in the process, two of the companies that I was most excited about had company briefings on campus, but otherwise had an off-campus recruiting process. I did all I could to stay connected with these companies through the winter and into the interview season, mostly through Tuck alumni that worked there. Unfortunately for me, they were both slower than I would have liked in their process and I went through other interviews with the hope that they would offer me an interview before I had to accept or decline other internships. When I reached out to one of these companies, DaVita Healthcare Partners, to inquire on their timeline once again, I was actually informed that they were likely done recruiting for interns for the year. At that point, I decided to hold out for my other top choice (we'll call it "Company A") as long as I could and accept one of my on-campus opportunities if it didn't work out.
This is where things worked out very serendipitously for me. It turned out that the company I determined would be the best option for me did not require a decision to be made by a certain date. In other words, I could decline my other offers and still hold out for as long as needed for "Company A," even if they took an extra month . . . which of course they did. I was happy to wait though. And as luck would have it, DaVita reached back out to me for an interview the same week as my interview with Company A. So in the end, holding out for an offer from Company A allowed me to not only interview with them, but with both of my top choices all along.
I’ll spare you more of the details, but I hope this demonstrates that things don’t always work out exactly like you expect them to, but they definitely work out—and almost always very well. In my case, they worked better than I ever expected in the fall. I accepted an offer from DaVita and had a fantastic summer. It was exactly what I wanted.
While the process included some stress, some disappointment, and more interviews I would ever like to have had in a single month again, I learned a ton about what I really wanted through the process. From my own recruiting experience alone, I can attest to the strength of the on-campus opportunities here, the strength of Tuck alumni, the support of the Career Development Office, and the value in really exploring a lot of different career paths.
(Photo above: View from my desk this summer in downtown Denver.)