Last week, Clear Admit was pleased to partner with Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business to offer an informative webinar about how best to develop a career plan prior to getting your MBA. More than 100 participants signed up for the online event, which was led by Kelley Executive Director of Graduate Career Services Eric Johnson. An interactive Q&A session followed, featuring thoughtful queries from many participants.
Johnson, himself a Kelley MBA graduate, shared several best practices for defining your career path—including a useful self-discovery matrix that can help you really understand your motivations, interests and passions, as well as your weaknesses and areas in need of development.
This process of self-discovery, Johnson argues, is critical for a number of reasons. First, it helps identify the things that you know that you know, which include some of your values and your transferable skills. Second, it helps you understand what you know you don’t know—such as which “hard” business skills you need to develop and how your experience will be viewed by recruiters.
Third, the process of self-discovery, when done thoroughly using Johnson’s matrix, can reveal things that you don’t know that you know, such as other values that you may not have realized are important to you. Here, too, you may learn you have transferable skills that you weren’t aware of. There may also be aspects of your personality and character traits that surprise you, Johnson notes.
The fourth and final quadrant of the self-discovery matrix is devoted to understanding things that you don’t know you don’t know—truly the great unknown. Included here are how your transferable skills are valued by different companies, what your points of parity and difference are with regard to your future peers and which companies’ values and cultures best align with your own.
Along the way, Johnson shares insights gleaned from his own rich career background—which included more than one pivot—as well as action items you can take as part of the process of coming to understand what you know and don’t know. If you missed last week’s webinar, you’ll want to check out this archived recording.
As Clear Admit Co-Founder Eliot Ingram shared while introducing Johnson last week, figuring out your career path is a very important part of your admissions process because it really helps you determine what you want to get out of your MBA experience. That knowledge can not only help you identify which school will best position you to meet your goals, but it can also help you communicate those goals clearly and effectively, enhancing your chances of admission.
Disclaimer: The webinar, “Determining and Developing a Winning Set of Career Goals,” was featured as sponsored content on Clear Admit.
