Why Striking Out in MBA Recruiting Wasn't the End for This UNC Kenan-Flagler MBA Grad

Akash went to Rutgers University in New Jersey for his undergrad degree in economics and statistics. Then, he started working at JPMorgan Chase in NYC, working in cybersecurity. But he worked with and met mainstream finance professionals every day, and realized that he wanted to move from tech to finance. That’s why he enrolled in the UNC Kenan-Flagler MBA, which he graduated from in 2025.

Now, he’s working at Novartis New Jersey, doing data and operations analytics. It’s not quite the finance role he was envisioning, but for Akash, that dream is still on. We sat down with him to discuss his MBA application journey, how he managed to get his Novartis internship and convert it into a full-time role, and what happens when you don’t get your dream role right after your MBA.

Watch the full interview below.

Q: Can you tell us about your MBA application journey?

Akash: The main thing that stuck out was that I had an extremely low GPA. I wasn’t sure where my application was going to go with that low GPA, so we did a whole bunch of applications, about 9-10, categorizing schools between Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 buckets.My work experience was good, my extracurriculars were solid, it was just that GPA. So we had to offset that. And we crafted a really strong story about why I needed an MBA and why now. And, then we modified that, based on each school, because each school wants to know “why our school and not the others”. So, we looked at the strengths and weaknesses of each of my target schools, and then figured out my fit there. I remember it being a long process. We worked on my Round 2 applications for 6 months, and around 3 months for 1-2 Round 3 applications. There was also the time it took to prepare for the GMAT and GRE. I’d taken the GMAT once, and the GRE 3 times before meeting you!

Sam: Did you have more success on the GRE?

Akash: It’s not exactly comparable, because I took the GMAT in undergrad, 10-11 years ago. But the GRE worked a lot better for me. 

Sam: Yeah, we see that a lot. The GRE adapts in different ways, so it can be a bit more forgiving in terms of the stress it puts applicants under. 

Q: How did you get your internship at Novartis?

Akash: I was part of the Class of 2025, we started the MBA in September 2023.

The summer internship process was extremely difficult because the US job market wasn’t  doing well. It's still not as good as it was once for MBA students. But I think our class had it especially hard, because the presidential election was coming up and there were a lot of talks about immigration and visas. The big companies who were traditional employers in our MBA program said they wouldn’t be sponsoring visas this year. So it was a very difficult period. 

But the MBA program teaches us to network and talk to as many people as you can. So that's what I leaned into. I actually reached out to my network prior to the MBA, when I was working at JP Morgan. In the MBA, they also help us go through a script for coffee chats and teach us how to talk to people. I leveraged all of those skills and experience and reached out to every single person I knew. I was fortunate that this opportunity at Novartis came through. It wasn’t a published opportunity, so this is not a traditional internship. They weren't specifically looking for MBA folks, but grad students in general. And I happened to just reach out and apply at the right time.

Sam: So it wasn't a typical MBA pipeline internship, but one that you sourced for yourself using your network. Did you do this in the summer between your first and second year of your MBA?

Akash: Correct. Traditionally, Novartis doesn't hire post-MBA people for many roles. They do have something for marketing and research, but it's not huge. It's not as big as, say, Amazon or Microsoft or Goldman Sachs. Being a small program, they publish and hire for those opportunities way in advance. At the time, I didn't even know of this company called Novartis! The only pharma company I knew was Eli Lilly because many of our UNC MBA grads go there.  

I got this opportunity in February, which is very late. By that time, people are almost looking for apartments in the new cities where they'll be going. Because of that, the whole process was quite atypical for me and my goals.

Q: What advice would you give MBA students who miss out on traditional pipelines?

Sam: In one of our recent Reddit Roasts, there was a case where somebody was panicking because they’d struck out of the usual investment banking internship cycle. But what you’re saying is that the hope isn’t over. If you’re out of investment banking or consulting, there are plenty of other industries that are recruiting. They may not be pipeline MBA roles, but there are internships going. You just need to approach different companies individually, and use your own network. 

Akash: Yeah, I think that’s the key during the whole MBA process. Not just for internships; I would say that applies to full-time job hunting too: to be positive and know that something or the other will come up.

In my case, it was exactly what you just said. I was focused 100% on investment banking, and I had traction in a couple of places. And then when those did not convert, I was left in January and February still looking for internships. It's very common. One piece of advice I’ll give to prospective students is to never place all your eggs in one basket like I did. So if you’re looking for investment banking roles, always have something in the back of your head that you know might work out.  like data analytics. That was my background prior to MBA, so I knew something in the data analytics field would work out because of my connections and my experience and all that. So that was my backup.

Then again, some people in our MBA program were doing investment banking and consulting full-time. That doesn’t work, because that combination is extremely hard to do. 

Sam: You first recruited for IB, and then your next plan was consulting. But consulting and IB, you're saying, happen at the same time, and it's not realistic.

Akash: They happen exactly at the same time, and you won't be able to make it to all the events and interviews. So, have a primary goal and then also have a secondary goal which isn’t as intense as the primary one. In my bank's case, it was investment banking as the primary goal, and then data analytics and cybersecurity, and tech in general, as a backup.

Q: Is this “Plan A / Plan B” approach becoming more common?

Sam: Interesting. I think that's going to be an increasingly common approach for MBA applicants over the next few years, given that the job market is really tough right now. And I think business schools' careers services are probably saying the same thing, right? Have a Plan A, have a plan B, and make sure they fit together sequentially.

Akash: Absolutely. That’s also what our career services team advised us about. They said: reach out to all your prior contacts and prime them, and keep the connection warm. So when the need eventually arises, come January or February if you're still looking, then leverage those connections. It shouldn't be just out of the blue.

Q: How did you convert your Novartis internship into a full-time role?

Akash: As I was saying, this is not a traditional internship. It’s actually a funny journey for me. Novartis does not convert MBA interns for all roles. The marketing and research departments, where they do hire MBA cohorts, are still pressed for conversions. Novartis will give you the internship, and then it's basically the end of the program.

My role especially was a one-off thing, so there was no hope of conversion, because there was no full-time role that feeds from this internship program. I knew this from day one. So I used this to my advantage. I reached out to every single senior person at Novartis. One of them even told me to use my intern card, reach out to everybody, and ask dumb questions. Nobody would judge me, because at the end of the day, I was just an intern.  

So, even if you make people upset, you're going to be gone in 2-3 months. The key was to reach out, talk to as many people as I could, so that’s what I did. I reached out to all the heads of various departments. People like VPs and MDs. 

They like talking about their work and their journeys. So, if you make a connection with somebody, keep it warm. Don't forget those folks for 2-3 years. Just keep reaching out every once in a while. It needn’t be a video/audio conversation; it could just be an email, or a LinkedIn message.

I connected really well with one person. Post-MBA, when I knew that I wanted to apply to Novartis for a full-time role, I reached out to that person. He responded, saying they had a job opening right at that moment. He forwarded my application to the hiring manager, and then within a week, I had this role.

It was all because of that connection that I made. My advice to people who are starting their internships and looking to come back full-time is to reach out to as many people as you can and just talk.

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Q: How did your MBA help you in the recruitment process?

Akash: Within the MBA program, specifically the Investment Banking Club, I was initially trying for investment banking internships. They have this template, which I have on my iPad even today. They go through the steps of a coffee chat, especially practicing your introduction over and over again to refine it to 25 seconds, or 23 seconds. That’s the precision we’re talking about. We practiced every single word, and after you get the script down, you have to then practice to say it naturally. It shouldn't come across as a rehearsed conversation. In my MBA, the Investment Banking Club was by far the most important in terms of how to network, whom to network with, and how to keep the connections warm.

Besides this, in terms of hard skills, I’m biased toward investment banking. I took one three-credit course on investment banking – the technical skills – because I enjoy doing work in Excel. That course was incredibly helpful, because it's taught by an ex-investment banker from a third-party company they hire to run that course every semester. They bring in past deals, for example, LVMH’s acquisition of Tiffany. That was our project, where we went through modelling and presentations to actual investment bankers at Wells Fargo and Bank of America every week. These are MDs and EDs doing this kind of work every day, and they gave us real feedback. So, in terms of hard skills, I would say that class was a definite value add, to whatever I know in Excel and PowerPoint about valuation.

Q: Can you tell us about your current role and where you see it evolving?

Akash: The traditional concept of a post-MBA role doesn't apply to my role right now. I want to be in the healthcare domain, but I would still want to use my finance skills and background plus my MBA training and the investment banking skills that I was very passionate about building, and still am. I want to combine that with the healthcare space. So now, there are some roles in the M&A finance team that I'm looking at. I don't qualify to jump ship internally right now, because it's been under a year, but I'm hoping that within the next 1-2 years, I’m in a role where I'm doing finance work within healthcare.That's the direction I want to take.

Sam: If I understand right, what you're saying is that the post-MBA career journey that you envisaged is still there, but there's a stepping stone role after the MBA that is taking you one step closer to that. 

Akash: Exactly. And that's a common thing I've seen with my classmates as well. Not everybody gets the investment banking or consulting job right after. And even if they do, those are normally only 2-3 year roles. Then, they move on to different careers altogether. Very rarely, people will stick to their investment banking or consulting careers.

So, your first job right out of your MBA is usually not the end. It's a stepping stone to something longer term. For me, I would love to continue at Novartis for a long time, but not in this particular role. I’m using this role to talk to a variety of senior people working in finance, better understand how finance is done at Novartis, and hopefully then leverage those connections in the future to move on to a different role.

Q: What trends are you seeing in healthcare finance, especially around AI?

Akash: AI is definitely everywhere. We have a huge AI enablement team in our department. I’m not a research guy so please take this with a grain of salt, but they use AI all the way from drug discovery to production to marketing. 

In my role, we haven’t been negatively impacted. Our job has been made a lot easier with Copilot and asking ChatGPT for internal tasks like small presentations, coming up with formulas, acronyms etc. Being new to pharma, this has really helped me understand the industry better. 

Q: How does the culture at Novartis compare to JP Morgan?

Sam: You worked in banking at JP Morgan, studied statistics at Rutgers, and have been in healthcare at Novartis. You’ve had this breadth of experience. How would you compare these different domains that you've been in, in terms of culture? 

Akash: I’ll give you an example. Over the course of the past 3-4 weeks, I have referred over 6 or 7 people to Novartis. These are all of my ex-JP Morgan colleagues. There’s a lot more work-life balance, teamwork, and collaboration here. It does impact your job satisfaction quite deeply. This is a transitional role for me, but I thoroughly enjoy my job right now. At JP Morgan Chase, especially towards the end of my time there, it became quite intense.

Another piece of observation that I had was that the average age of my previous team at JP Morgan was much lower compared that to Novartis, where everybody has children and needs to manage daycare and extracurricular activities, etc. So, the managers and superiors are quite understanding, as long as you deliver well and are responsive. I was in India, then Indonesia, and soon I’ll be in Mexico, travelling. I’m working remotely, but Novartis is flexible with that as long as I get my work done and stay communicative.

Q: What advice would you give your younger self?

Akash: Start networking early. Prior to my MBA, I had some very high-level conversations with people but it wouldn’t go anywhere. I wouldn’t kept the connection warm. Later, I would real realize how beneficial that connection was. You could talk to anybody, but if they don’t remember your name 2 years later, it was worthless. There’s an art to keeping your connections live and warm. 

So my advice to my younger self would be to reach out to folks and keep having conversations, but also to have a strategy in mind for how you’ll approach this relationship over a long term. It shouldn’t just be reaching out each month to keep it going. It should be constructive, where the other person also feels like they’re gaining something, a mutually beneficial conversation. And that on its own will stretch it and keep it alive for a long time.

Being a fan of Excel, I have an Excel sheet with all of my contacts categorized. For example, my previous colleagues, current colleagues at Novartis, senior people here, other people I want to talk to, and then my personal contacts. In all those buckets, I put details of my last touchpoint with them. Every 2-3 months, I make sure to revisit and have a conversation again with them.

Sam: I love that. People talk about networking in vague terms, but I think that's the most concrete advice I've ever heard on the topic. Thank you, Akash.

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