Outta Here! And on to the Second Job

What is it about new MBAs and the Two-Year Itch? Maybe it's a bad first job choice.

By Todd Barrett, MBA '95

It's been a little more than two years since my graduation from the GSB and my address book looks like a Rorschach test run amok. It's strewn with erasure marks and cross-outs, scribbles, and question marks. What happened? If you're more than a year out of business school, you don't have to ask.
       Yes, it's the Two-Year Itch--that strange affliction that drives MBAs to dash pell-mell from their first jobs on to the next. First year out everyone's calm, learning voice mail, deciding which corner office will be theirs in a few months. Word of the first classmate to leave a job comes as a shock, and the class network lights up with the news. Second year out and it's off to the races. Reports of job changes are so commonplace that the grapevine barely twitters, but my eraser practically smokes as I try to keep up with all the moves. I had always wondered: If medical students labor for four years and law students for three, why do MBAs go to school for only two? Because if business school required more than two years, everyone would transfer.
       Nearly half the GSBers who responded to last year's career survey had changed jobs within two years of graduation--and the other half was probably looking. What makes MBAs so professionally peripatetic? Do we have the attention span of a goldfish? The ambition of Napoleon? Can't we just take a moment to stop and smell the toner fumes? Two years out is not that distant from the Sturm und Drang of business school's second year, when that first job out of school seemed so end-all-be-all important. Two years later the job has all the appeal of road kill. Behold the power of The Itch.
       The Itch hits almost everybody but perhaps no group as hard as consultants. Maybe all that travel wears down the immune system. Maybe it's the de rigueur late-night grinds. Or maybe it's the striking contrast with the life sketched in the recruiting process. After all, no industry in the on-campus recruiting whirl is more bedazzling than consulting ("Here, have another canapé. Is the champagne cold enough for you?"). The firms' presentations brim with talk of whip-smart colleagues, earth-shattering projects, and oh, isn't this shrimp fantastic? A few months later you're in a motel room in Omaha slaving over the ninth draft of Slide 27. Dave Kennedy of MBA Central, an online job-search service, says his biggest pool of candidates comes from "people who hadn't done consulting before who now realize what 80 percent travel really means."
       Of course, there are others in consulting who knew they'd be out of the job in short order. Call them the "Faustians," well aware they were kissing personal lives goodbye in return for the wherewithal to pay off those pesky student loans. Two years later, having seen everything that Spectravision has to offer and made peace with Sallie Mae, they're outta there, just as planned.
       Consultants aren't alone. The Itch can overcome anyone who's been through on-campus recruiting. Never again will most of us see such a parade of corporate muckety-mucks kowtowing in our direction. A few weeks of recruiting's heady hubbub can convince you that any choice is, in fact, your life's calling. One week you're certain that shilling shampoo in Cincinnati is the job for you. The next week you should definitely trade bonds in Singapore. Never mind that Corporate Finance ate you alive or that just flying over Ohio gives you the heebie-jeebies. They want you!
       Some, of course, take a pass on the recruiting process in favor of finding the perfect job on their own. But that's no protection from The Itch either. As classmates start taking jobs--and word of six-digit salaries and five-digit bonuses leaks out--the pressure mounts to land a job. Somewhere in the back of your mind you know that Business Week, U.S. News, and the cabal of "ranking" organizations report that 99 percent of GSB grads have jobs within a few months of graduation. Woe unto the leper who can't boast of a gleaming offer by June. Besides, who wants to be working on yet another resume revision while classmates are out burnishing their short games? Perfect job? As graduation nears, a job job can become the goal--and The Itch begins.
       Or perhaps the origins of The Itch go all the way back to the first few days at the GSB. It's then when we start learning that even the most seemingly nettlesome business problem can be solved in a few days--requiring little more than a study group, a spreadsheet, and, if really ambitious, a matrix or two. Imagine spending two years on any one thing? As a classmate who left his first job after 22 months said, "A year to learn, a year to do, and then move on." And that's in keeping with the spirit of the GSB, where the peer pressure was all about activity and motion. Rarely did someone say, "Hey, let's watch I Dream of Jeannie reruns," or "Wanna go up to the Dish and identify cloud patterns?" Instead, it was "Let's go up to the city, let's go running, let's go mountain biking"--as if a moment of inertia would swallow us whole.
       Two years out, and that im-pulse to keep moving and to "keep up" is almost certain to bring on The Itch. Simply reading the Class Notes in this magazine can lead one to scratching. It's hard not to be dazzled by the classmate who last month founded her own island republic. As cooperative as the Business School generally was, its graduates are still preternaturally competitive, and the quarterly yardstick that is this magazine can make even the more humble chafe.
       As if keeping up with classmates isn't hard enough, it seems The Itch is spreading to the general population. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says that from 1987 to 1996, the median years of tenure with the current employer fell 8 percent for men ages 25 to 34 and 16 percent for men 35 to 44. And the current robust economy is a job-hunter's paradise, with unem- ployment seemingly squashed. The Wall Street Journal reported the revenge of the Dilberts, saying that even among the Cubicled, "job-hopping prevails amid a cornucopia of vacancies." The paper quoted a hiring manager for Fidelity who said, "Ten years ago, someone with three jobs was a 'job hopper.' Today, someone who is 30 and has had 10 years with one company, you ask if they are too conservative."
       There has never been any stigma about job-hopping among MBAs. Rather than fighting it, we seem to embrace The Itch as an indication that we're on the benign side of the supply and demand relationship. Maybe that's why The Itch doesn't end at two years out but crops up again regularly throughout an MBA's professional life. Which is why I've picked up this one habit of a highly effective MBA: I keep my ad-dress book in pencil--very light pencil.

Illustration By Gary Baseman

As a classmate said, "A year to learn, a year to do, and then move on."