Breaking into tech after business school could mean working on cutting-edge virtual reality such as the Apple Vision Pro or helping OpenAI enhance its large learning models—the possibilities in tech are endless.
From enviable company benefits in tech, such as unlimited annual leave at Netflix or Workday, to landing salaries as high as $150k, if you get into tech after business school you’re onto a promising start in your career.
This is why high paying tech jobs, including product manager, operations manager, or finance business partner, are highly competitive—everyone wants a piece of the tech pie.
So, here are three actionable tips for how to get into tech after business school:
How To Get Into Tech | 3 Top Tips
1. Network your way to a top tech job
You might be tired of hearing the age-old advice that 'it’s not what you know, it’s who you know'. However, the sentiment remains truer than ever in the fast-paced tech sphere.
Garrett Nelson is a senior sourcing specialist at SpaceX and believes that his business school network helped him get his foot in the door at the company. The professor of one of his classes at UC San Diego Rady School of Management informed students that the purchasing director at SpaceX was hiring new talent and wondered if they knew anyone who would be a good fit.
Since tech companies often think outside the box, there’s even more reason to research people who work at certain companies on LinkedIn and ask them for an informal chat or coffee. While this type of outreach may not guarantee you a job in tech, you’re likely to glean valuable insights that would be hard to find from passively searching the web.
One of the best things about business school, however, is that you have a ready-made network. So, speak to career advisors at your business school and see if they can set you up with an alum working at a tech company that you’re interested in.
You never know just where these kinds of interactions could lead.
2. A mix of skills can help you get into tech after business school
When you think of the skills needed for technology jobs, areas such as data analysis, data visualization, and statistical modelling are likely to come to mind.
Henry Sher is an enterprise digital specialist at Microsoft and an MBA graduate from Peking University Guanghua School of Management. He believes that being armed with both soft skills and hard skills will help you break into tech.
“Soft skills can include your cultural aspirations or cultural attributions,” he says. Within Microsoft, this is about nurturing a growth mindset and becoming customer obsessed, he adds.
“Are you able to be diverse and inclusive, knowing Microsoft as a team, and deliver or make a difference that will make an impact?
“These are the core areas that Microsoft is usually looking for in business school grads looking to get a tech job.”
3. Internships can help you break into tech
There’s only so much that can come from learning technical theory at business school. You need to practice your technical skills and develop your mindset in a real-world business environment.
MBA internships or master’s internships are a great way to get to know a certain tech company, maximizing your chances of breaking into tech.
This is exactly what Giulia Poletti de Chaurand—now a tech investor at Hg Capital—did during her master’s degree at Bocconi University.
“I did more than one internship [at business school], which helped me understand what I wanted to do, as well as provided a full-time job offer,” she says.
This is a trend seen among business schools. At MIT Sloan, for instance, around 43% of MBA grads accept full-time job offers after a school-facilitated summer internship.
Remember that breaking into tech will mean standing out from the crowd. Tech firms are usually looking for agile, innovative, and hardworking talent that can stay up to speed with rapid changes in the tech industry. Business school is a great place to lay the groundwork for a career in tech, so don’t let opportunities pass you by.
