Why The MBA Is The Right Choice For Career Switchers

Kelley MBA Program Chair Kyle Cattani

Kelley MBA Program Chair Kyle Cattani

MBA CAREER SWITCHERS AT KELLEY PICK AN ACADEMY AFTER THEIR FIRST MONTH 

Cattani: First-year students are required to join an Academy, and we ask them to make that first decision about a month after they get here. And this raises the issue: how much have they established what they want to do? This year we have actually tweaked our schedule, with the core curriculum, so that we had the subjects that are most related to the Academies. We had a week of them the first week. They traditionally have been in the second half of the fall semester, so we put them in the first week. Students join the Academies, and what we’re looking at is how many students want to change subsequent to their initial decision. In the past, we always had a handful. We are curious, this year, to see if they’re able to make better decisions or one that they are sticking with. If not, we are okay with them switching. It sets them back a little bit because they can’t go redo the sessions that they missed. But, we are agnostic about what the student chooses. We just want to help them choose the decision that works best for them.

Kesner: Maybe I could add an example of this. I used to run the Consulting Academy here for many years. And I had a student in the Academy who got one of those very precious and valuable internships in consulting. She came back after her summer experience,  set an appointment with me, and she was very sheepish with her head down. She said, ‘I just have to tell you, I don’t think consulting is for me'” And she thought I was going to be angry or upset.

And I said, ‘That’s great that you were able to learn this during the summer. You didn’t waste any more energy or time going down a path that’s not right for you. What do you think you enjoyed? Let me connect you to someone here who is going to help you, in the remainder of your time, to develop the skills you need.’ She ended up in supply chain, which she loved, and it was a great path for her. But being able to test that out, and getting that knowledge early on, and then basically knowing that, ‘I had this opportunity and now I feel comfortable with my decision’ is incredibly valuable, and really produces greater job satisfaction ultimately.

Byrne: A two-year, in-residence MBA, is a serious, life-changing investment. I think that people who make this investment are stepping up to a very big and challenging, experience. Talk a little bit about the ROI. Oftentimes, I think we make a mistake by looking at the numbers and rankings that show, “Okay, the latest graduating class made X amount in starting salary, and X amount in sign-on bonus.” And everyone is intrigued by the so-called MBA bump. But in truth, that’s a small reflection of your ROI on the degree. And it’s just a snapshot, at one moment, because the rewards are going to come much later on. Speak a little bit about that.

Cattani: Sure. Last week, we were ranked 19th by Forbes, which essentially measures ROI. They looked at the Class of 2014 that graduated five years ago, and calculate salary over the last four or five years. Then,  they subtract from that the cost of the MBA as well as, what their salary would have been without the degree to measure the gain. I was intrigued that they did not also subtract living expenses, depending on where you get your MBA, because if they did, they would find that Bloomington might have been even a little bit more attractive because it’s a lot less expensive.

But to your point about how the payoff from an MBA is more than just pure financial benefit, as shown in The Forbes, there is also a component of your career. I’ve tracked the progress of one of our alums from 2010. He was a chemist from Washington, D.C. who came here as a career switcher. After he left, he went to Amazon. He was in their web services as a solutions architect, and he was with Amazon for four years. But then he left, with a partner, to do a retail startup, which they did for two years. They sold the startup in a successful sale that he said was in “eight digits,” which is I guess a lot of digits. He had what we call a liquidity event. In this case, that’s a good thing. He had a lot of options after that, and so he took a six-month sabbatical to travel around the world with his family, and now he’s a manager at a nonprofit in Colorado.

This is an example of someone who came here to switch careers. But afterward, it was clear that he had the tools, and the capability to navigate multiple segues into different types of positions. And I think that that’s one of the things that the MBA will help you to do: to gain these skills and this ability to pivot and take advantage of opportunities that might arise.

Kesner: That’s exactly right. It’s not just the next career, but it’s the ability to move from one to the next because you learned how to intake information, how to make critical decisions, how to set future paths, how to manage your own career through this process. Even if you choose to stay in corporate life, even if that’s your choice, I would argue that the pace of change, within the corporation that you join, might be faster than if you don’t have an MBA. You might be able to move up faster from one position to the next. Whether we’re talking about job satisfaction, whether we’re talking about career progression and the speed of that, whether we’re talking about the multiple career avenues that might be open to you as you move from one to the other, I think that the return on the MBA is more than just the salary you exit with.

Byrne: There’s also personal growth people experience.

Kesner: The amazing thing is that our MBAs recognize it, even at the end of their internship. What happens is they go onto these internships, and they’re comparing their skills and capabilities, and what they’ve learned, to their peers coming from other schools. And they often come back with these amazing tales that, ‘I was teaching my peers, at other schools, how to do things that I have learned at Kelley.’

And again, I take this back to the fact that, at Kelley, you have this integrated core that happens in the first semester, so you’re learning about all the functional areas. Your skills are getting deep very quickly. But on top of that, you have this amazing opportunity with an Academy experience, so you are developing skills specific to a path. It’s not surprising to me, at all, that students go into their internships, and they have these epiphanies right away that their skills are really strong, and that they have these career opportunities in front of them. They come back here and set up their second year with electives to really build depth at that point. The experience really changes their life, changes the course of their lives.

Cattani: This has been one of the fun parts of my job, as the Program Chair. In the three years, we’ve invited students to join us for exit interviews as they’re graduating. And this past year, for example, I interviewed about two dozen students. It was so striking student after student would talk about the transformational experience that they had in the program. At this moment of reflection, they thought about how much growth they had experienced.

Kesner: If I might add, we are a member of the MBA Consortium. In fact, a founding member of the MBA Consortium. Each year, the week of graduation, we gather the graduating MBA Consortium students. And each one stands up and tells his or her story, and these are so incredible. You sit there and you listen to these stories and tears start flowing because there are so many people who have come from a background where they never dreamed that this would be possible. This opens a door for them, and they’re set on a new path. And just to hear their stories is absolutely inspiring.

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