Welcome to MBA Podcaster, the only broadcast source for cutting edge information and advice on the MBA application process. I’m Janet Nakano. Want to use a MBA to change careers? In business school they’ll call you a career switcher and you’ll find that you aren’t alone. “We do a survey of all of our incoming students every year and we found out that about 90 percent of our students are career switchers, one way or another.” Within just one or two years you can learn the skills and gain the context you need to launch into a new direction. This time we’ll take you through the process that you’d experience through the career management center at business school. You’ll learn how to make your past experiences relevant to future employers, how to update your resume and network your way into new opportunities. You’ll hear from the heads of career management from four top MBA programs.

UCLA Anderson School of Business

Those in business school may already be aware of the benefits to getting a MBA in changing careers. At UCLA Anderson School of Management, nearly all in the full-time program are career switchers. Phil Han is Associate Director of the Parker Career Management Center, “We do a survey of all of our incoming students every year about are you a career switcher, regardless of what they may have said in their admissions interviews and we found out that about 90 percent of our students are career switchers in one way or another. It might just be switching an industry, or switching functions or making a whole switch of everything.”

Julie Morton is Associate Dean of Career Services at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, she says about 75 to 80 percent of their students are career changers.

With so many using a MBA to switch into a new direction, the career management center at your business school will understand what kind of support you’ll need in the process. So the very first step, Morton says choose what you want to do, “One of the things that we ask them to do is really think about what it is that they’re interested in, what their skills are, what their experiences have been to make sure that they’re career destination is something that’s rooted in their passions, not kind of the next hottest job that’s out there or the next kind of band wagon that people are jumping on. You know the student who comes in and says, ‘I really want to be a consultant but I’m not sure this whole travel thing is right for me’ that requires some real thinking of what is the subset of firms that might be appealing to the student and why is it that student is interesting in consulting you know where does the skills that consulting is driven by that that student possesses or can acquire by being here for sure as well.”

To help you discover what you want to do, most business schools offer a variety of activities like hosting panel discussions with representatives from various industries. There are student groups you can join like the investment banking group, new venture or real estate and there are also networking opportunities with alumni who may be in a position you’re interested in. Anderson’s Phil Han says once you’ve made your decision the next step is to understand your transferable skills, “We discuss with them what are the core skills and attributes their target industry or function might be looking for. We work with the students really hard on how do we translate their past experience into and there are also the skills that they have the basic talents that they have, into what their target company, target industry or function is looking for. And when we do that it can range anywhere from breaking down step by step what are some of the duties and responsibilities that you had in their past positions and thinking about well how does that apply to what the company is looking for, how does that apply to the skills that are necessary to be successful in their role that they’re looking into.”

Regina Resnick is Assistant Dean of MBA Career Services at Columbia Business School, she says demonstrating transferable skills also depends on whether you’re changing industry or function or both, “If you’re changing industry but not function, presumably you have a lot of the skill set that you can demonstrate. If you’re changing function but not industry you may want to focus more on the attributes of the work you did with the industry that relate. And if you’re changing both that’s kind of the hardest career switch, your work experience should reflect everything that you’ve done and be complete and accurate but you may want to put more emphasis on those things that relate most closely to your new job opportunity and if that means enhancing more within your educational area to demonstrate the relevance of the work you’ve done and that’s important to do that and anything extracurricular as well.”

Columbia University

Your resume should reflect skills your target company or industry is looking for. Resnick says don’t make your future employer work hard to figure out your transferable skills, “So that you have to take your resume that you’ve had before and make sure that you really almost match it one for one with those skill sets that are outlined in the job description. So it obviously has to be consistent with the experience that you’ve had before but you have to take that experience and cast another light on it if you will to show how it would relate to the new job that you’re looking for.”

Chicago GSB’s Julie Morton says make sure your resume is in the language of the industry you seek. “So you know making sure that their bullets on their resume don’t sound engineering but sound actually analytical and critical thinking and problem solving oriented so that those can be read by a consultant or a banker or a trader depending on what it is that they want to do and they can be in the language of that future career rather than where they came from.”

Another way to demonstrate new skills is through MBA course work. Again Regina Resnick, “It’s also I think really crucial in order to enhance your resume is that with the MBA itself through classroom experience you can show you know your interest, and your passion, you can get fundamental skill set that will relate to whatever the new job is. Also I would that say extracurricular projects are really critical and it’s also possible that you could do project work within your classes that would demonstrate the ability to move into a new career.”

At Chicago GSB Julie Morton says classes and involvement in student groups will not only teach you necessary skills but they’ll also give you hands on training for your future career. “For example, the student groups orchestrate a couple of modeling seminars where they actually bring in an outside organization to help students learn very tactical modeling skills that help them certainly in class as well, but really help them when they get to their jobs. Many consulting firms, a lot of marketing firms now do cases when they interview students and a lot of the student groups will help students prepare for those case interviews as well.”

Kenan-Flagler Business School of the UNC, Chapel Hill

The number of career switchers is growing in executive MBA programs. John Worth is Director of Career Management for MBA Alumni and Executives at the Kenan-Flagler Business School of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, he says when looking for a new opportunity executive MBAs as well as full-time MBAs shouldn’t underestimate the power of networking. “What we try to do is encourage them to really actively network, build their contacts, develop in house ambassadors at companies that are of interest to them and uncover hidden jobs, jobs that may not be advertised and really network their way into opportunities that may or may not be advertised in different kind of hosting and job search sites.”

For those who aren’t yet comfortable with networking or for many who come from different cultures outside the US, networking may be uncomfortable and awkward. Worth says; view it as a way of learning and helping yourself, “I think the most important way to become comfortable with networking and to look at it as a beneficial opportunity is to think of it as networking to learn. What I often suggest to people is as they network with people that may have degrees from the business school that are in the career advisor network that are in essence warmed contacts that they should understand that these people are willing to be responsible and willing to help, that they should approach is as ‘I’ve noticed that you’re in a position I’m targeting’ or ‘You work for a company that I’m interested in. I’d love to spend a few minutes with you and just learn your perspectives. I’d like to learn more about what you do. I’d like to know more about this company.’ Generally people are very willing to talk about themselves, what they have to offer, what they’ve done, how their career has gone, so when you’re networking with somebody you don’t know, you’re not asking for a favor, you’re not asking them to do something for you, you’re looking to learn, you’re looking for their insights and perspectives and more often than not people are quite willing to help and provide that kind of information.”

Investment banking is a popular career choice for many MBA students. If you’ve never had quantitative experience Columbia’s Regina Resnick says it could be a difficult move but it can be done. Interested in this career? Resnick says start with a realistic self assessment, “Are they somebody that would be really good in relationship management and are they somebody who would be good in deals, do they want to work 100 hours week, are they really prepared for what they is to sit down and try to map out what is their week going to look like if they’re doing 100 hours a week and to really first take a very deep look inside of themselves to make sure that this is a job that they would enjoy and a career ultimately that they would enjoy and could flourish in. And so they should do that by working along with the student club group, the investment banking group on their campus but they should also work very closely with professionals in career services. Then I think if you are really interested in banking you should of course just naturally be reading the Wall street Journal every day and probably the Financial Times. You should be taking requisite courses in finance and doing more than that also I mean Deon comes just the requisite course. You should make sure that when you’re in those courses that you’re really feeling that you’re enjoying it, that you’re grasping the concepts and that you end up doing well in the course because I think that if you don’t have previous experience because it’s much easier for a firm to say oh I can look at this person and say they’ve done this before so there may be a higher degree of confidence in hiring that person so what would make a recruiter potentially more confident then would be to be able to demonstrate that you’ve done well in your coursework so the academics are absolutely essential. And then hopefully your campus has investment banks coming up to campus, speakers either in the classroom or at club events and hopefully also doing recruiting on campus and doing pre-recruiting and then it’s important to start networking, getting to know professionals in the industry and I would also very much encourage people to then reach out to the firms and specifically to reach out to any alumni that you might have who are in the firms and start doing informationals just to ask a little bit more deeply questions about the organization. But before doing so you should go really being prepared of understanding the fundamentals of the company and the nature of the deals they’ve done. And then I would also say not to neglect the soft skills building your soft skills, being effective in banking not only requires strong quantitative analytical skills but you really have to build your relationship management skills because you need to be able to encourage companies to do business with you and to want to do business with you and to sustain those relationships. Making a switch like this isn’t like for the faint of heart but it takes a lot of your know rolling up your sleeves and just getting to it.”

At UCLA Anderson a good number of students use their MBA to go into the entertainment industry. Wonder what the number one trait that recruiters from this field are looking for? Phil Han says, passion, “They really want somebody that wants to get into entertainment and it’s not just about being a fan. I think all of us are fans of movies and film and the glamour of entertainment but much more about also the business of it. Do they also follow what the box office numbers were for the movie that was released last week? Do they follow what the trends are in the businesses? Are they looking at new distribution channels because that’s one of the hotter topics these days in entertainment is digital distribution of film and entertainment and content. Are they thinking about that? And so forth. So that’s one of the key thing that recruiters from entertainment companies often talk about is that they really look for somebody who can sit there and not just talk about how fun a movie was or a film or television is but really talk about what’s behind is, what’s the industry like, what’s the business of entertainment. And from that I think students also have to of course have the requisite skills to do the job. So if they’re going into entertainment finance they need to be quantitatively and analytically strong. If they want to do marketing they should have the mix of quantitative and analytical skills as well as the creative skills that they might also look into.”

Looking at the sheer number of people getting a MBA to switch careers, it’s probably safe to say that earning a MBA can be a good way to do just that. However, it’s also a hefty investment of time and money. Regina Resnick says it’s not going to be easy either, “I think that the MBA does give you some leverage but I think that it is important to recognize that it’s not going to be a cake walk that you do have to make a really cogent argument for why you want to go into this new field. So you have to make a rationale or a case for it if you will and that’s in terms of your passion for your job, the knowledge that you have of the industry and the function that you’re going into, how you can relate your previous experiences in some way to show that it is either relevant to or has given you a grounding and a basis for this switch. And with the MBA the reason why I think that a career switch is easier than in the absence of it is that you have an additional story to tell about coursework that you’ve taken that substantiates your interest or and that perhaps gives you that platform to go into something new, whether it’s an analytical skill set or an ability to you know better understand markets, things like that.”

For more information, advice and to register for your weekly MBA podcast, visit mbapodcaster.com. I’m Janet Nakano and this is MBA Podcaster. Listen next time for another topic of interest to help you succeed in your MBA application process and life beyond.

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