Why The MBA Is The Right Choice For Career Switchers

The Kelley School of Business. Photo courtesy of Kelley School of Business at Indiana University

Byrne: This is what a simple ROI calculation can’t measure and yet, it’s every bit as important if not more so than those salary and bonus numbers that people obsess over.

Kesner: Absolutely.

Byrne: And the other part of this is, frankly, the difference between a job, and a truly fulfilling career that you can throw yourself into to achieve even greater personal growth, greater self-confidence. MBAs who do a career switch allows them to choose something that’s going to be far more fulfilling and meaningful than just getting a different job. That’s another intangible part of the ROI equation.

Kesner: When you were asking the question, it occurred to me that, oftentimes, we have women who enter the program, and sometimes women face a very unique position as they are approaching not just an MBA program, but their careers afterward. There have been ample studies that show women may be holding themselves back, not putting themselves up for that next level position until they feel they’re 90% to 100% of the way there. Men tend not to do that, even if they’re just 50% of the way there. They’re on it to that next level.

Byrne: This is Sheryl Sandberg’s core message in her book, Lean In.

Kesner: Exactly. It’s particularly relevant for women students who need to gain that level of confidence in the program, test their skills, have someone confirm that they are ready for this next position and that they can do this, and we’re going to prep you in a way that allows you to feel confident when you walk in that room, whether for an internship interview, or a full-time job interview, and then subsequently for your job.

Cattani: This all starts before the first class when we have this two-week orientation of Me, Inc. A lot of that is introspective, ‘What do I value? What is my life story? Where am I wanting to go with this?’ And putting it in the bigger context of life, rather than just, ‘What job do I want?’

Byrne: Right. And then when you graduate, you’re joining a network of people who, like you, went through the same experience. That’s a network that you can tap into any time during your professional career.

Kesner: For the Kelley school, it’s a very big network. We are about 117,000 living alums all over the world, not just all over the United States. And they won’t hesitate to pick up the phone and help you, whether it’s guidance or advice or really helping navigate a new organization or a new industry. As we mentioned, there is an alumni mentor that you have a relationship with, but that’s only one piece of it. It’s really a great swath of alums all over the world, not just coast to coast. And I think that’s a very valuable piece.

The students bond together very quickly here, which is a nice feature of our location in a quintessential college town. If you’re only going to be in a full-time MBA program for two years, bonding quickly is very important because that’s going to be your first network as you go forward. You’ll leverage the other network of alumni, but your first network is going to be your cohort, perhaps the one group that’s just before you, the one group that’s after you.

Byrne: And student-run clubs and organizations form an important part of the career switching toolkit because if you want to become a consultant, there’s a consulting club, and the consulting club will help you prepare for those grueling case study interviews that are common in the consulting industry. And if you want to be an investment banker and maybe work on Wall Street, you’ll want to be involved in the finance club.

Cattani: While we talk about our alumni base as a huge network, the network of students within your class becomes your tightest network. All of the activities and the clubs and the classroom and the teams and all of these things form a really tight-knit group. And this is a network that is available to you throughout your career.

Byrne: And Kyle, you mentioned earlier the importance of an internship in a two-year MBA program. What we didn’t say, which is important for people to know, is that there are some industries that use the internship as the only entry ramp into a career. That’s certainly true in investment banking where i-banks really want to get to know you before they offer you a job. That’s true to a certain extent even in consulting.

Kesner: Especially where you enter a company following a two-year MBA program. Unlike an undergraduate program, you’re not entering at the base level. You’re entering at a higher level. You have to understand a little bit about the industry even to have a productive interview, let alone to join that organization because you’re joining at a higher level. Adding this to your experience where you can learn the language, have experiential exercises, and work on projects is vital to really make that next step. So full-time MBA programs can do exactly that. It can build the base for you, so you’re ready for that next level.

Byrne: Now you also have things that help people make career transitions. One is a new certificate in product management which is often an ideal job for MBAs entering the tech field.

Cattani: Sure. We’re very excited about this. It was just approved last month as a matter of fact. The product management certificate that we’ve designed is for those students who want to work as product managers at the intersection of technology, business, and design. And it was clear to us through our students, alumni, and employers that there’s demand for this at all levels. We spoke with a number of our alumni who are product managers of such firms like Google, Apple, and Facebook. And we spoke to our faculty who are experts in this, and we talked to some of our employers, and we’ve designed a certificate that essentially takes 15 credits. So that’s like nine courses.

We’ve also in the last year introduced a joint degree where you get in two years a full-time MBA and a master’s of science in information systems, an MSIS degree, which is, by the way, STEM-certified, which has some potential benefits for international students. So these students are actually building a broader toolkit that we feel will make them more marketable in whatever path they’re wanting to go.

Kesner: If you take what we’ve been talking about here, we have majors like every other MBA program and many of our students choose to double major. We have these Academies that give you a career path. We have certificates. We even have these add-on MS degrees that you can pursue. By the way you mix and match these things, you can customize your degree. Because we’re a large school, with a very large faculty, we have a lot of electives and a lot of opportunities that you wouldn’t necessarily be able to get at other places.

Cattani: We have a large online program, and so there are a number of master’s degrees that are online. And we have some students now who are exploring how to get a full-time MBA, but at the same time another onine master’s degree in such areas as business analytics.

Kesner: That’s the benefit of this big portfolio that we have.

Cattani: And we’re exploring even more ways to take advantage of the fact that we do have this portfolio of programs that we can tap into.

Byrne: Idie, Kyle, thank you so much for all your insights and help.