If you know that you are going to ultimately get an MBA, even if it's likely to be four or more years away, start planning now. There are several reasons to delay: to rejuvenate your bank book, to acquire more work experience, or to ensure that your work experience includes the kind of meaningful positions that will get you into a top-ranked school-at which top-ranked employers run recruiting drives.
Focus on the quality of the experience you are getting before you go back to school, not on the dollars. Quality is denoted in three ways. The first is the nature of the company. The company should be big, have a brand name, and be well-recognized for its training program. The second is the nature of the work. Make sure you are performing a job central to the company's purpose. That means being in the technology, production, or sales and marketing side. Being in customer service or an administrative support function doesn't do much. Do something memorable that shows initiative. Get assigned to an important project. Be where the action is. Third is the nature of the additional activities you take on that demonstrate managerial skills. Be a part of the recruiting team, because only people who have good judgment and can sell are allowed to recruit for the company. Be a spokesman for the organization in any kind of setting. Take on jobs where you must write. It doesn't matter whether the output is training manuals, industry analyses or strategic papers. You want to have evidence that you can use in other settings to show writing and communication skills. Start a peer activity group to show that you can network and that people will follow you. Do things outside your job that also build and demonstrate skills and initiatives. Be involved with your alma mater's alumni organization. Do some kind of competitive sports or music or hobby that takes discipline and dedication. Travel, and get some broadening experience, to illustrate that you are open to and accepting of cultural differences. Learn a language or do something that makes it clear you are comfortable in a different culture.
Then select a cluster of schools and be very strategic about applying. Start early and visit the schools, selling yourself, since personal contact makes your application stand out from the others. And, in general, go to the best school you can, but also focus on size. Some people do less well in a large impersonal school. Consider the personality of the school to ensure you'd be a standout. When companies recruit, they focus on students in the top half of the class. So being distinguished and a leader at a good school is better than being an "also ran" at one of the slightly better institutions.
The Immediate Post-MBA Job-Only Three Rules Matter
The quality of your first job is key to establishing a good foundation. It is not likely to be the place at which you'll spend your whole career. Three rules help ensure the quality of that first job.
Never Let The Dollars Drive You
You will excel at only the jobs you enjoy and that are connected to your vision and goals. Doing things only for the money won't help you in the long term. Don't become so anxious to pay off student loans or buy a new car that you take that job that pays best, regardless of the consequences.
Future Leaders Of Institutions Get Early Exposure At The Top And With Customers
Get experience at the name-brand companies and in jobs that expose you to top-level issues, whether that is senior staff to the president or senior executives, or the planning, corporate development or strategy groups. Gain broad exposure to show versatility. This can also be achieved in consulting and investment banking careers. Be a fly on the wall where people are doing the kind of work that ultimately senior executives perform, which means setting strategy and executing changes in product or marketing directions. The cliché about working your way up from the bottom is wrong. Start at the top in size, quality of company, and level of job interaction. Then drop down to get line experience and prove you can achieve results on your way back up to the top. Another key element is to work directly with customers as soon as you can. No other experience gives would-be managers the necessary sense of how competitive the world is and how people choose companies and products. Whether it is sales, customer service, relationship management or serving the distribution channel, there's no substitute for that tangible sense of the interaction between buyer and seller.
Would-Be Entrepreneurs Execute A One-Step Or Two-Step Strategy
Don't be afraid to start right away. If you are going to start your own company, there is no better time than right out of school. Either go where the action and learning is, or develop a business plan and see if you can attract money. If you really need to do it in a two-step process, study the successes and go where you can build the contacts or the expertise that is the minimum requirement. There is a lot to be said for building up contacts among prospective customers. The hardest thing to do, even if you have a great idea, is to lock in that initial book of revenue that allows you to be free of people's money. If even on a modest scale you can attract orders that reduce your day-to-day risk of the twin disasters of the entrepreneur: running out of money, or having to give away too much to investors in the start-up phase. The best two-step plans provide a running start on the revenue side.
When to Hold them; When to Fold them
There will come a time when you have received what you need from job number one. At three to four years out, if you're not continuing to build your skills, it's time for the next step. There's always a price to pay and a risk to take in considering a job move. A successful progression to successively better jobs is difficult enough to achieve, and is particularly difficult to envision at the beginning. In hindsight, what seems to be progression at the time may appear to be an erratic pattern of job hopping? Even if you believe it is time to look around after your first few years, keep several perspectives in mind.
Be Patient
A stall or plateau for a person in her late 20s is, in fact, significantly preferable to a flaming crash landing at this career stage. No one expects you to be promoted every 18 to 36 months. But you are expected to exercise good judgment and show maturity and patience in how you balance your need to build a career with your employer's need for you to get things done.
Always Go To Something, Not Away From Something
I encourage people to use the "two-to-one rule." That is, make sure there are at least two good reasons to seek a new job for every one reason you want to get out of your existing job. If you are running away, you probably have blinders on. That's when you start overlooking risks and obstacles. A bad boss, an unfair review, or a disappointment that a colleague seems to receive better treatment doesn't show up on a resume. What does show up is a stupid or impetuous move that you then have to undo or explain many times over the next few years.
Focus On The Positive And The Long-Term
Be motivated by long-term gain, not short-term gain. Competitive athletes understand that a bad sprain or a jammed finger heals by itself. They don't ask to be traded or tear up their contract if they're benched temporarily by one of these short-term afflictions. They recognize that it makes no sense to go down to the minor leagues to stay a "starter" during these kinds of temporary interruptions. Similarly, putting yourself in a position where you can't use your skills or demonstrate the level at which you can be competitive is much worse than being temporarily sidelined by a frustrating boss or a marginal assignment. Keep thinking of how someone will look at your resume when it's time for you to be considered for a senior executive position. No one will know or even understand that you think that you should have been promoted six or nine months earlier. If your response was to move to a problem company or into a less challenging environment, what they will see is that you couldn't compete in the top tier.
Where Should You Be by Age 30?
All senior executive jobs require the same five to six profile elements. You're better off" gaining some of each at every stage than trying to max out on some early and fill in the rest later. For example, some executives might say, "I'll concentrate on getting my line experience early and not worry about developing communication skills or strategic thinking skills until I have at least two or three assignments where I can point to clear results," but that's a strategy that can haunt you. Opportunity comes at odd times and in odd places, so you're better off being ready. In the competition with other executive candidates, being somewhat more experienced or skilled in one dimension doesn't offset having a void in one of the five or six key dimensions; it just takes you out of the running entirely.
Have A Record For Being A Competitor
This is the precursor to having a reputation for results. At this stage, being able to start building a record will depend to large degree on who selects you. It will be a reflection of schools and firms. It will be demonstrated in what you have achieved in academic, extracurricular and other activities. It will be shown in the nature of the jobs or other works you are doing, i.e., are they pre-managerial? No one expects you to be running a division at age 27. But those who will be evaluating your record in later years and considering you for a position in senior management do expect to see a pattern that demonstrates the willingness of other people to invest in you for the long term. Leaders don't emerge from nowhere at age 35.
All this is really saying the same thing. At this stage of your career, you'll be known much more by the company you keep than by your individual accomplishments because they're so hard to calibrate. For example, everyone has a clear image of what it means to be a U.S. Marine or a Green Beret. In fact, it might be much more impressive to say that you were an installation commander in the Coast Guard by the time you were 27, but that takes much more knowledge and insight to appreciate.
Secure Line Experience In The Right Industry
To be mobile as a manager you must have direct qualifying experience by the time you are 30. You need exposure to both the technology and the techniques of the industry sectors you expect to move in. You must be on the line, in the mainstream, in the right functions, handling mainstream projects such as new products, mergers, re-engineering or global expansion. Again, no one expects you to be fully in charge. But you must be doing things that demonstrate you are part of the group that is making the fundamental business decisions.
Continue To Demonstrate Executive Skills In Communications, Interpersonal Relationships And Strategic Thinking
To a large degree this is the same advice as for the pre-MBAs. The real trick is to put you in a position to allow those skills to develop. If, for example, you're not in a managerial or supervisory position, then you need to get involved in projects or task forces where it's clear that you have something to contribute beyond your personal proficiency in your own discipline. If you are in sales, you should volunteer to put together a sales training program or to write the strategic plan for a new product line or product line extension. If you are in engineering or production, offer to write a "layman's language" overview for new managerial hires of where key technology is heading. If you are in finance, prepare an analysis of the successful and unsuccessful acquisitions of your competitors or in a comparable industry. In all cases, you want to practice your executive skills. You want to demonstrate that you think like senior management, that is, you think beyond your own function or disciplines, and you want to build a reputation for being someone who provides thought leadership and initiative beyond just doing your assigned job well.
Start Getting On The Radar
Remember what we said. It's other people in the industry to whom search consultants turn when they want lists of candidates. Join the industry associations, and don't be reluctant to take the entry-level positions on these committees. No one expects someone in their twenties to be heading industry groups. Build a reputation for being a good worker, reliable, conscientious, and not afraid to roll up your sleeves. As you move up the corporate ladder in your own company, these industry colleagues and acquaintances will assume you're doing your own current work with that same degree of diligence. People who say, "I'm going to maximize my reputation within the company before I 'waste' time on outside activities," are missing a big opportunity. Think about how the wave from a stone dropped in a pond spreads long after the stone has hit the surface. The outer rings of the ripple are still spreading even if you're only making little splashes initially. If you make enough of them and give them enough time to spread, the wave you generate will have reached everywhere in your particular pond.
