Wharton MBA, Jobless For A Year, Says Many Like Him Are ‘Suffering In Silence’

John Costa’s struggles to find work as a Wharton MBA struck a chord with Poets&Quants readers. Not only is our story on Costa’s journey since graduating from Wharton in 2016 among the most-read of 2024, but since its publication more than a month ago, Costa has received a huge outpouring of support.

“About 50 people have reached out to offer support since the article went live on P&Q” in July, Costa tells P&Q in a late-August followup interview. “I’ve connected with many of them one-to-one to share my story further. Others were suffering in silence and relieved to learn they weren’t the only ones struggling in the job market.

“Two people have connected me with leadership at their companies to explore whether they might have a job opportunity for me!”

EXPERIENCE AS A ‘FGLI’: FIRST-GENERATION, LOW-INCOME STUDENT

Costa’s background is in law enforcement and crime and intelligence analysis. He says a little over a decade ago, he decided to get an MBA because he saw little opportunity for career advancement in the public sector. His goal: to find work in management consulting.

Costa earned admission to the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, one of the world’s elite business schools and a member of the vaunted M7 group of top U.S. schools. But he soon found that for someone like him — an FGLI, or first-generation, low-income student — switching careers to break into an elite field “is rarely done.”

When Costa graduated in 2016, the employment rate for Wharton MBAs three months after graduation was 95.5%. Costa was one of the 98.3% who received a job offer after 90 days, and one of the 26.6% to go to work in consulting, having been hired as director of customer insights at Sears.

But the retailing giant went out of business two years later, sending Costa on a career rollercoaster that continues to this day. Though he has had stints at some top consulting firms, in August he reached a tough milestone: one year since he was last employed full-time. And he still carries more than $200K in debt.

‘EVERYBODY ELSE IS DOING FINE BUT ME’

Poets&Quants‘ story about Costa’s job search and his advice for other MBAs looking to “pivot,” or change their careers, led to a flood of messages of support that he says vindicated his decision to speak out. It also led to a robust discussion in P&Q‘s comments as well as message boards at Reddit and elsewhere.

Why does he think so many felt the need to discuss his story, and to offer help or advice? Because, Costa says, it’s not easy for an elite MBA to speak out and admit they’re vulnerable — and his doing so resonated with a lot of people facing similar circumstances.

“My experience going through business school is, it seems like a lot of people have been successful in their careers, and they’ve been successful academically, and there seems to be this pressure to continue to put on the ‘successful’ front,” he says. “And it’s rare when you have really deep and vulnerable conversations with other people about, ‘Hey, I’m struggling with impostor syndrome,’ or, ‘I’ve never been surrounded by so many successful people before, and I just feel really average.’

“And that’s what I mean by a lot of people suffering in silence. There’s a lot of other people who are struggling in the job market, but they hear about their friends who are landing internships or landing their dream full-time jobs, and they’re like, ‘Wow, it must just be me. Everybody else is doing fine but me.’ But then when they hear my story, it’s like, ‘Oh, hey, I’m not alone.’ I’m glad readers are getting benefit from it.”

‘ALL STUDENTS NEED TO HAVE A PLAN B’

Costa, who lives in Los Angeles, also senses that the U.S. job market as a whole “is a lot weaker than the official 4.3% unemployment rate would lead us to believe.” He points to hundreds of companies announcing layoffs in the first quarter of 2024, the rise of consumer debt to an all-time high, and a general increase in market volatility. “Anecdotally,” he adds, “there’s a ton of bright and capable people struggling to find work on Glassdoor/Fishbowl, whether they identify as FGLI or not. I hope I’m wrong, but we may be in for a bumpy ride ahead!”

Costa’s advice for current B-school students and other job seekers who may be mulling a return to school: Have a backup plan.

“It looks like we’re headed into a tough economy in general right now, and so it’s not just the students from a non-traditional background or first-gen or low-income background who need to be wary,” he says. “I think all students need to either have a Plan B or at least think about their career in terms of what skills they’re trying to develop. What experiences are they trying to gain?

“Because I think the value of that is, if you think about a target company and you don’t get that job, a lot of disappointment sets in. But if you think about your career in terms of skills that you want to gain or experiences you want to have, there are lots of different avenues to that, and all of a sudden, that opens up opportunities, which creates a bit more optimism.”

SILVER LININGS

Sharing his story led to a flood of messages of support from P&Q readers — an “outpouring,” Costa says, that has touched him. It might even have helped him find a job.

“I’m still having one-on-one conversations with many of these folks,” he says. “Matter of fact, I’ve got a conversation immediately after this from somebody who wanted to follow up on the article.

“Some people, they’re curious to learn more, and they want to hear: How did I make the leap into consulting in the first place? I think there’s a lot of other people who are just struggling in the job market, and they’re grateful that they’re not alone.

“And then there have been a couple of people who are like, ‘Hey, I’d love to share my network. Maybe we can find something in my company that might help you out.’ One of those is in the referral process, and I’m waiting to hear next steps. Another one, I’ve gotten great feedback on the resume, and this is for a government consulting-type role. Leadership just said, ‘You know what? We just don’t have the budget to take on new hiring right now,’ indicating to the state of the broader economy, or at least the uncertainty therein.”

The latter experience is familiar to someone who has been looking for full-time work for a full calendar year.

“One of them didn’t work out, but it’s not because I wasn’t a great fit or I just didn’t look good on paper,” Costa says. “They’re like, ‘Hey, this resume is really impressive. I think the skill set could be super valuable. We’re just not hiring at the moment.’ And it sounds like it’s because of economic uncertainty.

“I think the silver lining there is, again, this was for a consulting firm. It’s a well-known consulting firm that has a public-sector practice, and one thing I know about the federal government is that their fiscal year resets every October, which means right about now, they’re empty on cash. But in October, whatever budget that Congress has passed, they will become flush with cash again, so that means the economic cycle gets rolling again.”

POETS&QUANTS’ Q&A WITH WHARTON MBA JOHN COSTA 

P&Q: Last time we spoke, you were thinking of doing another big pivot because of where you were. Where are you at with your plans?

John Costa: I still am. I’m pursuing a number of networking conversations with people, mainly in consulting, other consulting firms. And GovTech is the passion for where I really want to go, but I did have one interview where they were testing coding skills. And so I’m not sure if that seems to be the direction the tech industry is going in general, or even the strategy and operations folks are required to consult.

But even if they’re not, just stepping back, just because I’ve been pursuing the general management/consulting route for the last 15 years, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you should pursue it for the 16th year. In school, we talk about this thing called the sunk-cost fallacy. Just because you’ve invested 15 years into something doesn’t mean you should continue to throw good money after bad.

And so if the market outlook is such that you’re going to be laid off every four to five years, it’s going to take you 12 months-plus to find a new job, and you’re going to exhaust your savings doing so — is that really the path that I want to continue down?

Well, I’m not sure that’s really what the outlook looks like, but that’s just been the experience so far.

With the benefit of retrospection, would you maybe have done a different kind of graduate business degree? You could have done part-time or an online program. Have you thought about that?

I have. I don’t think that would have been the right course for me, necessarily, because I was looking to make a very hard career pivot. I do wish I had asked better questions, and I think what I had alluded to, and it’s very hard to do that when you don’t know what you don’t know. But I think I had mentioned this in our first conversation, that I wish I had found or thought to reach out to other people who had a similar background and were trying to make the same career pivot as me.

And maybe they would have given me the advice that, “Well, maybe going from public service to MBB is a bit of a stretch. You might need to think about your career in terms of incremental changes. Therefore, maybe you should look at government contracting first.” And then that would have caused me to work backwards and say, “Well, OK, is an MBA the right course to go? Or should I try a Master’s of Public Administration? Or do I even need graduate education in that case?”

It used to be the MBA was required to get into top-tier consulting, or at least to continue your career path there. But if that’s not the goal in the first place, if the first step that I was going to take is to say, “Well, let’s try and get into some sort of government consulting outfit,” is an MBA even necessary to do that?

All the feedback you’ve gotten since our story ran, has it changed how you would advise someone in your circumstances? 

I think the biggest thing I might change is that it looks like we’re headed into a tough economy in general right now, and so it’s not just the students from a non-traditional background or first-gen or low-income background who need to be wary. I think all students need to either have a Plan B or at least think about their career in terms of what skills they’re trying to develop. What experiences are they trying to gain?

Because I think the value of that is, if you think about a target company and you don’t get that job, a lot of disappointment sets in. But if you think about your career in terms of skills that you want to gain or experiences you want to have, there are lots of different avenues to that, and all of a sudden, that opens up opportunities, which creates a bit more optimism.

Have you heard from Wharton at all, or any further help or communication from the school?

I’ve been in touch with Career Services, and they’re actively helping me reach out to alumni and trying to find new opportunities in the L.A. area. But I still feel like there’s an opportunity to do some more cross-pollination across Penn. Penn, like most universities, there’re big campuses. There’s a school of public policy there. There’s a great engineering program there.

So if coding skills are needed, what resources are there to help me with that, or trying to position me into government or a government contracting-type role? How can we cross-pollinate with the public policy school that’s there?

DON’T MISS WHARTON MBA, JOBLESS FOR A YEAR AND $200K IN DEBT, OFFERS ‘URGENT WARNING’ FOR CAREER CHANGERS and THE TECH BLOODBATH IS FAR FROM OVER: INDUSTRY LIMPS TO MIDPOINT OF 2024