I was a participant of Johnson & Johnson MBA Leadership Development program IRDP for around three years and can give a very objective advice to anyone interested. As listed in Pros, J&J IRDP is great in many ways but has lots of issues in the long term. IRDP is a global initiative where they encourage local subsidiaries to hire MBAs. J&J has few MBAs internally so they need to hire MBAs to make J&J look good in annual reports. However, J&J is a sales driven company and almost all senior managers in local subsidiaries started as medical sales reps and then made their way up. Some of them don't even have college degrees but have decades of J&J experience. These old timers don't believe in this whole IRDP practice and IRDPs are always seen as outsiders within their organizations. When MBAs are hired, there is almost always no mention of necessity of sales experience but in couple of years, they are asked to work as a sales rep and then make their way up like reps. It is like J&J saying that your MBA and great work experience means nothing to us and you will have to start in sales from the same level as some nurse who just moved into medical sales. Sales experience is important but it can be given in short assignments instead of expecting MBAs to spend 3-4 years in field sales. Most IRDPs leave the organization at this stage (between 2 to 3 years of joining the company) and it is very rare for an IRDP to make it to general management. In my organization, only one guy made it to a GM from over 80 IRDPs hired in 10 years time-frame.
J&J is a great company to work for if you intend to work there for life. Great benefits and good culture but certainly not for MBAs. If you want to take life easy, work for J&J and lifetime employment is guaranteed even if worked 10% of your MBA potential but expect to spend 10 years as a Product Manager and then a few years in sales before you move into senior roles.
