My career disaster : please suggest what to do!

My career disaster Can someone please help me?

About me:

29.5 yrs Indian Male

BTech(2004-India): Information Technology and then worked for 3 years as database developers

MBA(2007/8-UK) and now working as Oracle ERP developer.

After finishing my Full time MBA in 2008,I wanted to change career into Banking or Strategy Or anything for that matter (I wanted to move away from IT at any cost)

But after finishing MBA in 2008, I had a debt of £29K and jobs were difficult to get so I choose the easy way…I went back to programming (to payback my debt). Debt is now clear but I am seating with an unhappy Oracle programming job at £45K near London.

Job is nice, easy going, colleagues are nice BUT I didn’t do my MBA to go into Programing again.

And In the meanwhile I also learned Online Marketing/Social Media Marketing/SEO/Google Adwords on my own and tried to change career but didn’t succeed (because of lack of previous experience? I don’t know either).

At this stage I am standing with a broken relationship and marriage and unhappy career. Don’t know how can I improve and encash the year I spent working like a DOG during MBA.

I don’t know what equities, fixed assets, derivatives, bond etc are but I am willing to do anything to learn the skills which would take me out of IT…….I don’t want to do programming anymore..please help..please suggest what should I start studying to change a career into Marketing or in Finance/Equities/hege funds.

It's not really clear to me what is stopping you from moving, or where you want to move to as marketing/finance/equities/hedge funds are totally different world altogether. Have you already tried applying to something you like at all? Have you consulted your MBA school or MBA network? Sad to hear the MBA didn't work out as expected.

What is it with Indian IT folks hating their job anyway!

http://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forums/life-of-an-it-consultant

That's a sad story mate. Where did you do your MBA? If you didn't do it at a top school, I'd think your chances of moving to marketing or non-IT finance are limited. Btw, how come you got through an MBA without a good grounding in basic financial instruments?

What I can suggest is to go into IT consulting at e.g. Accenture, Deloitte. This will not take you away from IT per se, or even programming immediately. What it could give you though is this: you come in as a consultant, you probably do a couple of projects relying on your oracle skills. Then you move to a more managerial position soon, still leveraging your background, but probably acting as an architect. You'll be paid more, will stop programming pretty damn soon, and with some clever choices can move to a position that suits you - there are a lot of directions to go at a large IT consulting firm.

My point is this: I doubt you can avoid your IT background at this point, so your best bet is to leverage it to a more interesting career. And improve your exit options significantly into the bargain. But of course you can kiss your easy going lifestyle goodbye!

P.S. It's not acceptable to state age in 0.5 year increments past primary school.

I agree with Baykus. If you're looking to leverage more of your MBA skills, then a natural progression from the IT world is in consulting. Combination of your IT heritage together with your MBA would seem like a good fit at the likes of Accenture, CapGem, Deloitte, BearingPoint etc. At least there's the career progression, opportunity to use your MBA, and associated pay increases.

If you're looking to get into investment banking and the city, then I think that's a larger shift and a lot more difficult (especially if you don't know what equities are derivatives are - very surprising given you claim to have done an MBA ???)

But it also sounds like you've been exploring the marketing arena (social media, SEO, etc). In which case why not explore digital agencies/consultancies such as Sapient, Accenture Interactive, LBi, EMC Conchango?

Some good advice here.

I will add the #1 recommendation I give to every candidate I interact with who is wanting to pursue a change in career direction via consulting:

The surest way to get into consulting is to play to your strengths - that's to say to find roles looking for your experience profile and then make your application based on the strength of your experience in that area. Once you are working within a large consulting organisation, there will be ample opportunities to get staffed onto projects in new areas - and over time to build your specialism in a totally different area. But don't try to get into a consulting firm to work in a practice area where you have no expertise; this is a sure-fire way to be overlooked as the firms will target candidates who are already specialists in that area and your "enthusiasm for pursuing a change of career direction" will count for nothing.

You need to be billable from day one of joining - and the only way of looking credible as a billable consulting resource is to be being hired for the skills that you already have, rather than those that you'd aspire to develop.

Hope this helps and good luck

Tony Restell

Top-Consultant.com

Sorry to hear it, but this seems like another case of an MBA attained for nothing, which proves how useless that qualification might be.

I doubt Deloitte, CapGemini and the likes will consider your MBA as a massive plus, although your experience is definitely good enough for a role with them.

Fight for your case, or they will try to get you in at consultant level (40.0k tops) because you never had consulting experience. Firms like the Big4 might appreciate having a senior consultant that actually knows IT, a bit of a change over their endless ranks of people with hippie degrees, who applied to pretty much any graduate scheme after graduation and got into IT consulting because it's where the most bodies are needed.

Leverage the MBA as you apply for the position, because nobody will care about it after, doesn't matter if it was from HBS or the crappiest UK university.

The task regarding the career which is in disaster is the thought of broken career should not be always with us. Not a broken career but you had to make a tough decision back then. I too am a career switcher with MBA, and I can't stress the importance of having an internship in finance during the MBA study. Did you do any internship related to finance that you can leverage? That experience will beef up you resume. Afterward everything was in autopilot.

The solution to your problem is in your hands. Don't let a few minor set backs stop you from pursuing the career that you like. If you are really passionate about something then I'm sure you will find a way to solve any problem that you will encounter along the way.

How did things turn out?