4 Proactive Strategies for Landing a Management Job After Graduation: A Guide for Business Students

Land a management job after graduation with these 4 proactive strategies. A guide for business students to secure their dream job. 🏆

Photo by Pang Yuhao on Unsplash

Business students graduate with a great set of technical and theoretical skills across a range of disciplines, such as HR, Marketing, Finance, and of course, Management. These new graduates are skilled, ambitious, and ready to hit the ground running. Unfortunately, they lack a key element needed for a management job — Experience. In fact, the typical graduate can expect to spend 3 to 5 years gaining experience post-graduation before they meet even the base requirements of a managerial position. Given the time, tuition, and emotional energy it took to get through the degree in the first place — this is not ideal; So, how can we speed up this process?

As a former business student myself, I was in line to face this same barrier. I had no special advantages — no connections, no family business, and no internships. Despite that, I was able to secure a life-changing management position two months post-graduation. I achieved this by finding ways to gain leadership experience while studying full-time.

The great news is that my strategy is replicable. You can do it while working a part-time job in the evenings and still keep your grades up; I know because I did it, and I’m far from exceptional. In this article, I’ll walk you through the steps I took to ensure I was a prime candidate for a management job immediately out of school.

Why I wanted a Management Job

Before I get into the steps, I want to share a bit of my story for context:

By my second year of business school — knew I wanted to lead. I loved coaching, being accountable for results, and driving team performance. In fact, I originally enrolled in university to become a teacher (but was dissuaded after I learned more about the profession). I switched to business and committed to myself that once I graduated, I would build a career out of developing high-performing teams.

The problem I had was the same that plagues most business students: I wasn’t gaining the hands-on experience I needed to get a management…