MBA Career Strategy

Last week’s column covered the topic of how to analyze whether attending business school as a means to switch careers makes sense (and how to decide whether doing so is right for you). For those who do decide to embark on a new career path as MBA candidates, the next step can often feel a bit hurried. Often, students in the first few weeks of business school make a snap judgment about what internships to pursue, and by extension what career path they are committed to. Corporate presentations, coffee chats, and other employer events loom large on the recruiting calendar, and students, doing the best they can with the information at hand, frequently switch gears directly into a combination of personal makeover, early interview prep, and professional networking required to position themselves well for the internship job search. Diving into the process of "selling oneself" for a new position too quickly can be a handicap, however, because the process of creating that dynamic shift in one’s life is less about the things that a student does to re-shape him or herself (it’s less about creating that new elevator pitch, though that will need to be done well in due time), and more about one’s ability to learn and absorb the big picture as well as the minutiae of a new career domain. Read more

The start of a new year often offers time for reflection, as well as a chance to make new resolutions, set new goals, and aspire to make changes, both great and small, in one’s life. For rising MBAs – roughly 2/3 of them, by most counts – that means setting one’s sight on switching career paths in some tangible way, rather than merely seeking to accelerate one’s promotion track or “trading up” employers within the same field or function. This New Year, whether that desire to switch careers is expressed in admissions essays, or more covertly planned for, the timing may be right. “More MBA Grads Are Switching Careers as Job Market Improves,” declared BusinessWeek last April, noting that “the fact that companies are once again willing to take on management-level hires with relevant – though not direct – industry experience is a strong indicator of an improving MBA job market.” The trend is also not lost on business schools, many of whom address the topic via FAQs such as UNC Kenan-Flagler’s Top Questions to Ask Your MBA Admissions Rep About Career Switching. So, how do you switch careers, and what criteria should you use to assess whether career-switching is right for you? The answer to the first question requires its own post – hence, look for next week’s “part 2” segment – but the second question is no less important and deserves close attention now. Read more

Last week’s column considered the relative value-add of hiring full-time MBA candidates, as opposed to high-achieving undergraduates or Executive MBAs. The goal in adopting a wider horizon regarding the recruiting playing field and a greater appreciation of the alternatives and constraints employers face when hiring MBAs, is not to draw inferences about which professional profile or type of degree program is better, but to help MBAs understand employers’ decision drivers better, and thus to be more effective in the job search process. In my experience, one area in which MBAs often have a blind-spot is the extent to which companies weigh their per-school or per-capita costs of the recruiting process as part of the expense of bringing an individual student on board. Business school students, primed by their negotiation classes, by news stories about gender wage disparities in the job marketplace, and by the ever-present feeling that another student may be getting a better deal, often take it as a given that they must negotiate their job offers … that they will be doing themselves a disservice if they don’t “drive a hard bargain.” This perspective might be tempered somewhat by an appreciation of the fact that by the time an MBA student receives a full-time offer, the company hiring him or her has already spent roughly the equivalent of a full-time MBA salary to identify, evaluate, and narrow the pipeline down to that single person. Read more

Last week’s column highlighted the extent to which having a ‘hard work’ ethos and a mindset focused on seeking out tough challenges after graduation (rather than expecting immediate gratification and a big payout from one’s business school efforts) can be a driving factor in students’ post-MBA success rates. As part of that focus on appropriate mindset, it’s worthwhile to expand MBA candidates’ awareness and field of vision to include some of the opportunity costs of recruiting MBAs that play a role in employers’ decisions and expectations with respect to hiring business school candidates. There are, of course, other 'flavors' of MBA than the traditional two-year programs that often comprise a company’s recruiting mix and serve as additional competition for full-time MBAs. (See The Best Business Schools of 2013: Part-Time and Executive MBA for BusinessWeek’s latest ranking of leading programs.) It’s noteworthy that as business schools have grown and diversified their service portfolios to reflect their own competitive landscape (e.g., by offering specialized, one-year degree programs, in addition to undergraduate business degrees as well as Executive MBA and Part-Time degrees), they’ve created attractive pools of candidates that, from an employer’s perspective, bear the same educational imprimatur and can offer distinct advantages. For example, one advantage of specialized programs is that they can provide employees with deeper technical expertise, something not always associated with the general management focus of most full-time MBA programs (see The Business of Zeroing In and The Booming Market for Specialized Master’s Degrees for additional perspectives). Read more

Welcome to the first in a series of guest columns focused on career strategy in the MBA context … a topic that should be squarely in your sights whether you’re considering applying to business school or are currently in the thick of the admissions process. A Wharton professor of mine was once asked in a public forum what he thought the key success factor was for MBAs pursuing the most highly competitive and rewarding job opportunities. He observed that the critical variable that seemed to predict long-term success was the extent to which a student understood and expected the 5-7 year time span beyond business school to (also) be one of intense work and sacrifice, every bit the equal to the process of applying to and undertaking the MBA in terms of calories burned and mental energy expended. Regardless of what jobs students pursued or how much they were compensated upon graduation, those whose careers truly took off – the ones who now lead their respective organizations – were preparing, it seems, for an additional, non-trivial phase of concerted effort and toil during the post-MBA phase of their professional lives. In contrast, he felt, those students who felt they should be rewarded more speedily – whether in terms of title, status, or pay – for their admittedly considerable investment in graduate school, or for their previous experiences, were at greater risk of disappointment and of erring in the quest to find solid footing, a good match, and the right launching pad for a career that would result in progressively greater amounts of responsibility, compensation, satisfaction, and, ultimately, the ability to ‘job sculpt’ and integrate one’s professional life with personal interests and family needs. Read more