“Do I need an MBA?”
Niravk and Mocha began their blogs by asking this question. I am often asked this question as well. As an MBA Admissions Consultant, my initial answer surprises a lot of people: “An MBA is rarely necessary“. However, it is an extremely useful tool in more situations than one might think. If you are 26 years old and on a particulr career track, you might be surprised by how many twists and turns your intended career can take. You may change your mind about what you want to do, or unfortunately, your employer may change its mind about you! The MBA will be a constant on your resume, and the knowledge and network are forever in your toolkit. The beauty of the MBA is that the exposure to new subjects, activities and companies as well as differing perspectives and diverse people truly expands your mind and you very well may graduate with different goals than you had in mind when you started.

The MBA is an incredibly flexible degree, that can pave the way for you to achieve so many goals, many of them far from the traditional picture of “business”. I found it interesting that twenty-eight NFL players representing teams from across the league, including the Philadelphia Eagles, San Francisco 49ers and Dallas Cowboys, are now at Harvard Business School taking part in an executive education program that addresses the business opportunities and challenges faced by NFL players during and following their professional football careers.

The NFL Business Management and Entrepreneurial Program is part of an ongoing initiative by the NFL and the NFL Players Association to help athletes prepare for life after football. So you see, the benefits of an MBA go far beyond that Associate banking position that you land straight out of school. Whether you are deciding if you want to apply or being asked to explain why you want to attend in an interview, go beyond the immediate and obvious benefits and realize that the benefits last a lifetime and manifest themselves in many ways.

Today, the Center for Digital Strategies at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business will run a roundtable discussion, called the Agile and Resilient Enterprise, focused on how companies can build needed flexibility, adaptability and resiliency into an enterprise. The roundtable is part of their Thought Leadership on Digital Strategies series.

The Center for Digital Strategies at Tuck focuses on digital strategies that can push business strategy to a new level. This is an example of how business schools are working to continually update curriculums and offerings in order to reflect the face of business today. Even if you believe your interests lie outside of “hi-tech”, your business will undoubtedly benefit from efficiencies created by technology. Increasingly, technology is crucial to effective management, and is a basic in business, along with accounting, marketing, finance…

Today, many schools have conferences, clubs, majors and more to help students gain expertise in this area. Kellogg offers a major called Technology Industry Management. Courses that fall under the major range from Logistics to Biotech to Marketing. Michigan’s FuturTech Conference is a business and technology conference. The theme for this year’s conference was “Technology, Business and the Empowered Individual”. This explored how individuals, not just corporations, are changing the face of technology.

Wharton’s e-Business Initiative (WeBI) is an initiative aimed at generating and disseminating knowledge about e-business. WeBI funds and conducts research projects to address issues in e-business.

As you evaluate business schools, one thing to consider is how well the schools are adapting to changes in business. How current is the research and the curriculum? Technology is something that will penetrate your career in business and should also be part of your business and management education at some level.

As we discussed last Monday, we will be sharing more interview tips in today’s entry.

As Having fun and chilling through life notes, many people are still waiting to hear about interviews. In particular, Asiangal wonders who has heard from HBS and Stanford. Remember there is still time to hear from these schools. HBS will continue to offer interviews up until the round 2 notification date of March 28. Stanford will invite applicants to interview into early April.

Of course once you receive an interview invitation, your focus should be on preparation. As AgirlsMBA writes, the HBS interviewer kept it to 30 mintues exactly and her Duke interview ran 35 minutes. She felt fine until the Duke interviewer commented that the 35 minute interview was the shortest he’d had, but he then complimented her on being articulate and prepared.

The main lesson in her experience is that you do not have a lot of time to show the interviewer why you belong at that school. Questions that get to the heart of that are “Why do you want your MBA?”, “Why this school?”, and “Where else are you applying?”

WHY MBA?
You must show the interviewer how an MBA will be the crucial bridge between your past endeavors and your future goals. To that end, you need to have a clear storyline in place that addresses your past and future without being exhaustive and repeating your entire resume or your entire response to their question on your short/long term goals. Further, there are several different components of the MBA experience to address:

1. Building your skill set — Where are there gaps in your academic understanding of business and management? Maybe you learned marketing on the job, but you have never had a formal marketing course. Maybe you have management experience, but you don’t know finance. Remember you are applying to school to emerge as a well-rounded leader, so you need to have a broad academic toolkit. Along those lines, you want to emphasize the importance of becoming a strong manager and leader and how specific courses and experiences running clubs and conferences will help you develop managerial savy and leadership instincts.

2. Developing a network — At business school you will be learning in group settings. Building connections and furthering your network should be part of your goals. Maybe you have been working exclusively in a tech environment and want to learn how people from the consulting world approach problem solving? Maybe you are looking for future business partners?

3. Clarifying and expanding your goals — Business school is an extraordinary opportunity to gain exposure to different industries and job functions. While you should have clear goals, you can express that you expect to refine those ideas after learning more about your options and how you can impact the world with an MBA.

WHY THIS SCHOOL
The response to this question should build directly off of Why MBA. You have to do your homework in advance. A good place to start is your essays. You probably already articulated “why this school” for your essays. You must be able to say not only why you want to go there but also why they need you there. Similar to the why MBA question, you need to hit a few different areas.

1. Academics — What are the specific courses, programs,and professors that will help you reach your goals? It’s even better if you can highlight your need for academic offerings unique to this school. Do they have the best health care program? Is there a professor with expertise in retail management?

2. Leadership opportunities/professional organizations — What conferences, clubs, speakers series, etc. does the school currently offer that are connected to your interests? Which do you hope to run? How would you like to build on them? Are there any you want to start? These opportunities outside of the classroom are essential to your learning experience as well.

3. Size, teaching method, community — Rather than just stating you want a smaller school with a mixture of case and lecture, cite examples from your past of how you learn best in that environment. Or maybe you went to a small college and now you want a larger business school. Provide a reason why you prefer their academic setting.

4. Geography, social life, extra-curriculars — As we noted before, fun is an important part of business school. Tell the interviewer how you hope to build on specific interests and develop new ones. Again, know what clubs they have and which you want to join or start. The interviewer wants to see that you will be a dynamic member of your class.

WHERE ELSE ARE YOU APPLYING
Many applicants dread this question. You have spent an entire interview expressing your devotion tor their school only to have to admit you cheated on them in the application process. Don’t worry, interviewers know that you applied to more than one school. Actually they are hoping that you did because that shows a realistic perspective on this competitive process. So if they ask where else you are applying, they are trying to get a sense of how well you know yourself and your needs. Go ahead and tell them that you have applied to a few schools because the process is so competitive. However, follow that up with restating why their school is the best fit for you. You can reemphasize a few of the points you made when answering “Why this school” especially any points relating to unique academic offerings that would further your career goals.

If you are looking for help with the interviewing process, we offer an interview preparation package and one of our consultants would be happy to discuss the details with you.

To continue our discussion from yesterday on rankings, as Asiangal noted, check out the methodology alongside any rankings. Make sure that the criteria that is being used is important to you! While there are many factors that go into your post-MBA success, perhaps the most important and most difficult to learn, is leadership. As such, business schools are always seeking ways to develop their students’ leadership abilities. Learning to lead requires the development of the hard and soft skills required to conceive of an idea, develop a strategic vision and inspire a group to help you realize this goal. Recognizing that leadership development is a comprehensive endeavor, schools seek to help their students in a variety of ways.

Most schools have adopted formal leadership development programs into their curriculums. Columbia started their Program on Social Intelligence this past year. Similarly, Tuck has the Cohen Leadership Development Program and Chicago has embedded Leadership Exploration and Development into their first year curriculum. These are just a few examples, but virtually every school requires first year students to study leadership. As you research target schools, this is an important aspect of the curriculum to consider.

A few schools also encourage students to explore leadership in the classroom by reflecting on their behavior and interactions with others. Fellow students can offer you great insight into yourself, helping you see the strengths and weaknesses. Harvard offers many opportunities to explore your personal leadership style. Stanford’s Interpersonal Dynamics class, known as Touchy Feely, puts students into groups for an entire quarter to reflect honestly on each other’s behavior. CNN has featured this course as many industry leaders have credited Touchy Feely with being the most influential course they took at business school.

Outside of the classroom, many schools, such as Wharton, organize speaker series and conferences to bring in leaders from business to government.  For example, last year Kellogg’s Leadership Conference featured private sector leaders as well as the CEO of the Chicago Public Schools. Haas will be hosting a Women In Leadership conference this spring.  Not only do students gain valuable insights from interacting with experienced leaders, but many students hone their own leadership skills in helping to design and run these conferences.

Everyone has their reasons for pursuing an MBA. It may be the network, the need for a change, or the desire to gain a specific skill set. An applicant may feel that an MBA can facilitate the transition to a new role or increase the likelihood of advancement in a current role. Regardless of your reason for pursuing the degree, most applicants agree that they want to go somewhere that can help them land a great job after graduation. Today Fortune published their list of the 50 Best Business Schools for Getting a Job.

The top ten schools are not terribly surprising:
Wharton
Harvard
Sloan
Stanford
Kellogg
Columbia
Chicago
Fuqua
Tuck
Stern

If you are deciding where to apply, or deciding between acceptances, the rankings are worth a look, as they summarize average starting salaries and number of job offers. Rankings are based on strength of reputation with recruiters and strength of career placement.

However, it is important to keep in mind that these are general rankings, and if you are targeting a specific company or industry you will want to do your own research. The best school overall, may not be the best one for you.

A companion article to the rankings featured me, discussing some guidelines for getting in to a top business school. Number 9 in the list of tips provided states, “Do your own research. Don’t choose a B-school just by picking it off a list (not even ours). ‘Every MBA program is different, and you want to focus on the ones that are right for you,’ Blackman says. ‘Compare the schools carefully, and visit as many of the campuses as you can.’”

Here are a few ways to research schools with regards to your job search:
1) Contact HR at target employers and see where they recruit and where most of their employees attended business school.
2) Contact Career Services at schools you are considering and discuss the resources they offer for a job search in your areas of interest. Also ask about companies that recruit on campus.
3) Network with individuals in your target industry to learn their perceptions of a given school.

The pool of MBA applicants is filled with all sorts of diverse backgrounds: doctors, lawyers, bankers, entrepreneurs, teachers, writers…and of course we cannot forget the engineers. Many bloggers, including Rock of Gibralter and Juggler, are members of the tech world, and they represent the high volume in the applicant pool. Muskblog reported that 25% of his class had an engineering background. A quick look at some other schools:

Stern: 9% of the class of ’08 worked in Technology
Haas: 13% of the class of ’08 worked in Technology, 29% majored in engineering
Tuck: 16% of the class of ’08 worked in Technology, 18% majored in Engineering
Fuqua: 28% of the class of ’08 majored in Engneering

Translating engineering experience and lingo into a language that is both understood by and relevant to the admissions committee can be a challenge. This is an important hurdle to overcome, as it will touch most aspects of your application. Here is a look at how to rethink a basic business document – your resume.

On a typical engineering resume, you might find a line such as this one: “Synthesized an 8-bit ALU chip which could perform logic operations such as AND, OR and XOR.” Although I do not doubt that this is an interesting and impressive accomplishment in the engineering world, I have no idea what this means and am guessing that many admissions committee members do not either. When I see something like this, I will ask an applicant to translate it into MBA speak – what does this mean? What did you really do when “synthesizing”?

Often, on a second draft, I see a line that I can more easily understand. “Led the design and development of X.” Now this is something that I can understand. Led, design, development…the technical jargion has been translated. However, this resume still has a long way to go. It’s interesting how difficult it can be to really break down and describe the work that you do every single day. Yet this is what you need to do.

I ask, “when you are developing X, what are the steps you take, what are the skills you use?”
Think about the smaller steps:
Who did you manage, either directly or cross functionally?
What processes did you manage?
What kind of analysis did you run?
How did you structure communications?
Did you develop or improve upon any processes?

Developing X is a big accomplishment, and it took a lot of little steps to get there. To understand what you really did, you need to think about the smaller steps, and how they can be repurposed in a business role – how did you communicate, collaborate, manage, lead and more? Also important, think about your results. If you developed X, why is X so great? What was the impact of what you did? Did it save time, cut costs, increase revenue? Quantify results to the extent possible so a reviewer can understand the impact.

To appeal to an MBA audience, an applicant must think beyond technical tasks. He or she must identify what lies behind those tasks that might reveal an effective business leader. Going through this exercise can be painful, but it is a necessary step and something that will serve an applicant well throughout the entire application process.

If you are struggling with this important document, our consultants can help you think through how to translate your accomplishments into business lingo. Contact us to learn more.