How The Right MBA Can Help You Make A Successful Career Pivot

The last two years have seen many people re-evaluating their career paths. For some, business closures or cutbacks have meant job loss and the need to seek out new career opportunities. For others, the nature of their work has changed, from their office environments to the technologies they use to execute day-to-day tasks. 

Technical expertise and interpersonal skills are just two pieces of the puzzle in making a successful career pivot. Many may think of an MBA as a general management degree, but there are MBA programs that provide students with the ability to customize their studies. The 12-month Full-time MBA program at Smith School of Business, Queen’s University is a good example. The program offers six specializations in traditional and emerging fields, as well as five double-degree options. Its team-based structure also delivers the leadership, collaboration, problem-solving, and other power skills employers are demanding today.

If you’re considering the best program to help you reach your career goals, you’ll want to evaluate these factors as well as opportunities to build your profile, get hands-on experience and make meaningful connections. Here, three Smith MBA grads share how they leveraged Smith’s coaching team, international network, and experiential learning opportunities to help them make successful career pivots.

CAREER COACHING

Brian Ko had a clear goal when he applied to Smith. After completing his undergrad in kinesiology and spending a few years working in clinical rehabilitation, he decided to make a pivot. He knew an MBA would get him there.

“I didn’t have enough experience to get into the MBA program at the time,” Ko recalls. He decided to enroll in Smith’s Graduate Diploma in Business, a four-month summer program for recent undergraduates in any field of study, and leveraged his healthcare background to gain business experience working for a healthcare software developer. He joined Smith’s Full-time MBA program in January 2021. 

“My career goal coming into the MBA program was simple: leverage my education and the Smith network to make a transition into the consulting industry,” Ko explains. “I reached out to my career coach relatively early in the program to formulate a plan.”

Coaching is a key component of the Smith MBA program. Each student has access to a personal support team that includes an executive, career, team, and lifestyle coaches, who are there to help them reach their full academic, professional and personal potential. Career coaches in Smith’s Career Advancement Centre work one-on-one with students to help them in their job search.

“Not only did we put a comprehensive plan together, but we also met on a regular basis to work on different aspects of my recruitment journey,” says Ko.

Smith’s career services work. In fact, the MBA program was the top-ranked Canadian school in this category in the Financial Times’ annual ranking of global MBA programs.

“My career pivot would not have been successful without the help of the wonderful career coaches,” notes 2022 graduate Zoe Zhen. 

Zhen entered the Smith MBA program with an education background in linguistics, employment relations, human resources, and professional experience in the banking industry. She had seen first-hand how the program aided in the career transition and professional growth among her colleagues and friends. 

Zhen was looking for an opportunity that would marry her skills and knowledge in academia and the workplace post MBA. She found it in CIBC’s Graduate Leadership Development Program in Toronto, where she is an associate doing her first rotation in workforce transformation and leadership.

”I have been encouraged and empowered, from the Smith MBA to CIBC GLDP, to get out of my comfort zone and rediscover my own potential,” she says. “Currently, at my first rotation, our team’s focus is to strategically redesign the future workforce of CIBC through external research, data analysis, and stakeholder collaboration, which nurtures me to have a future-centric view and mindset.”

NETWORKING

In addition to career coaching, the Smith Career Advancement Centre hosts alumni networking events, on-campus recruiting activities each fall, and corporate relations trips to Toronto to connect with recruiters and businesses.

For Olugbenga Olatunji, the career centre’s Discover Careers Day helped broaden his view on his future career path. A risk and data analyst working in the financial services hub of Lagos, Nigeria, he came to Smith’s MBA looking to transition into a strategy role in the same industry. 

“Discover Careers Day gave me the opportunity to interact with Smith alumni in various industries and ask them questions in order to understand their roles at a high level,” he says. “Ultimately, I was drawn to a career path in consulting because it presented an opportunity for me to work with different clients in financial services as opposed to working on strategy for just one firm.”

Smith MBA students also have access to an online network of more than 10,000 school alumni, faculty, staff, and students – a network which Olatunji took full advantage of to secure a mentor. “This program was huge for me because it gave me access to a senior professional in the industry who was easily accessible and willing to provide guidance on how to build my network as an international student and take the next step in my career post MBA,” he says.

Like 89 percent of the Class of 2022, Olatunji landed a job within three months of completing the program. He’s working in Toronto as an associate with the global management consulting firm Kearney. 

“The Toronto office is incredible, full of diverse, exciting, and passionate people dedicated to working together towards creating value for our clients in different industries. I see a lot of similarities here which remind me of my time at Smith and I could not be any happier with my decision to join the firm,” he says.

EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING

There is no better way to learn than by actually “doing” what you are learning. From hands-on experience managing Canada’s first student-advised venture capital fund and running North America’s only student-run hedge fund to serving on the Student Executive Council (SEC) or sector and industry-specific clubs, Smith’s MBA has a variety of opportunities for students to extend their learning beyond the classroom.

For Zhen, that was overseeing budget planning, event spending, allocation, and payments as the SEC’s director of finance and operations.

“It was quite an unprecedented task to take on during the pandemic since I wasn’t able to leverage the previous experiences and traditions on finance and operations matters. The team and I ventured and curated creatively and resiliently to better serve our class,” she says.

Meanwhile, Olatunji and Ko honed their consulting skills as members of the consulting club. 

“I believe the leadership responsibility I assumed in this role helped to strengthen my professional profile with employers,” says Olatunji, who served as the club’s vice-president.

Ko agrees, noting that his experience as chair of the Smith Scale-Up Summit, a two-day event that connects entrepreneurs and innovators of today with the future leaders of tomorrow, also aided in the job interview process.

“I was able to strengthen my leadership, communication, and problem-solving skills. Highlighting some of the specific examples from this experience during my interviews allowed me to demonstrate my work ethic and perseverance effectively,” he explains.

Today, Ko is using the skills he’s amassed working in Toronto as a manager with the global strategy consulting firm Simon-Kucher & Partners.  

“I was very fortunate to have a former GDB classmate and Smith MBA alum who already worked at Simon-Kucher & Partners. This made it easier to get detailed insights about the firm and how to prepare for the interviews,” he says. “Now I’m relying on the lessons I learned from the individual consulting project and the strategic problem-solving course to develop strategies for clients.”

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Smith School of Business at Queen’s University is renowned for its excellence, innovation, and leadership in business education. From establishing the first undergraduate business degree a century ago to creating ground-breaking programs and courses in emerging areas including artificial intelligence, fintech, analytics, cultural diversity, entrepreneurship, team dynamics, social impact, and more, Smith is at the forefront of preparing students for the business marketplace. In addition to its strong tradition of academic and teaching excellence, Smith is known for delivering an outstanding learning and development experience. Personal attention, individual and team coaching, opportunities for specialization, and a deep commitment to student success characterize the Smith experience.