Owning your mba career goals in 5 easy steps

http://www.amerasiaconsulting.com/
Owning Your MBA Career Goals in
5 Easy Steps

By the Amerasia Consulting Group,
Boutique MBA Admissions Consulting
Owning Your MBA Career Goals in
5 Easy Steps
MBA Admissions Consultant | http://www.amerasiaconsulting.com

Let's talk about Career Goals for a minute. This is always a
good topic, honestly, because whatever time of year it is and
whatever stage of the application process we are all
encountering, the narrative of a candidate's career goals will
always be paramount. Therefore, in order to create something
we can one day send to our own clients with a simple link, as
well as something that will help those of you who do not
become our clients, we want to present a crystal clear five-
step process for how to handle the Career Goals aspect of your
MBA pursuit.

STEP 1 - HAVE GOALS. Who knew?
Call us naive, but we assumed that everyone applying to a top
10 business school would actually have, you know, goals for
the process. Apparently not. The sheer number of people
who have come to us this year with no idea what they want to
do post-MBA has been staggering. Remember, this is not a
degree designed for 22-year old applicants, nor does it punt
away the responsibility of asking the question (yes, Law
School, we are talking to you).
The MBA is a career-focused degree and in almost every
instance, the schools ask you what your goals are.

To embark on such a life-altering process (to say nothing of
expensive and time-consuming) without possessing goals is
bizarre. Now, maybe your goals need some refining -
particularly in presentation - but if you can't at least decide for
yourself what you want to do with your life and why you want
to spend $150,000 and two years to get there, you should not
be applying to top 10 MBA programs.
STEP 2 - REFINE YOUR SHORT-TERM GOAL TO MAKE SURE IT
CAN BE ACHIEVED. Okay, now we are talking to the 95% of
you who at least know you need to have goals to start the
process. We know that just as important as setting goals is the
idea of setting realistic goals.

If you want to get in shape and you set a goal of running a
marathon, great, you are on your way.
However, if you set the goal of winning Olympic gold in the
marathon, you are probably setting yourself up for failure.
Therefore, it's not a good goal.
This is especially true when someone else shares in the
responsibility for whether you achieve it. Schools share the
responsibility for helping you achieve your short-term goal.
Nobody bears any responsibility for the achievement of a long-
term goal.

Nobody is tracking, measuring, or even checking.
Too much life is going to happen between now and 10-20
years from now.
So when you hear about making goals realistic or having them
"make sense," it's almost always about the short-term goal,
because that is what shows up on an employment report,
what impacts career services, and generally has enough
immediacy that everyone feels responsible for outcomes.

Some ways to check your short-termgoal:
Look at the employment reports of the school to see if they place
people into the role and firm of your choice
Consider whether your previous experiences put you in position - with
an added MBA - to impress recruiters for this job
Contact someone in career services (usually at your alma mater) to
quickly check your path
Ask your admissions consulting to give you a reality check
on your goals (important point: don't try to "brainstorm"
your goals and certainly never ask your consultant to "give you" goals -
you should have goals in place that this person can look at and either
approve or poke holes in)

The main thing is you want to be sure that the following
equation checks out:
YOU (and what you have done so far) + MBA (at this school) =
ST GOAL.
If it does not, you will get dinged basically every time.
STEP 3 - SELL YOUR ABILITY TO ACHIEVE THE SHORT-
TERM GOAL. Normally we talk next about long-term goals, but
we are going to stick with short-term goals for a minute. Just
because you figure out a short-term goal that can work does
not mean your job is done.

Here is a quick case study of a client who received an interview
at a top 10 school despite aiming for a difficult transition.
He was a task-oriented professional with little outside
experience and little by way of management responsibilities
(this describes a lot of people, so we are not worried about
"outing" this person).
This presents a limited platform from which to work, but that
doesn't mean his only short-term goal had to be something
connected to his trade. Indeed, if he were to pick a short-
term goal in that area, he might fail the "why do you even
need an MBA?" part of this whole test.

Remember, it's not just whether the MBA is enough to get you
to your goal, it's also whether the goal is enough to warrant
investing in an MBA (rather than just walking down the street
for an interview).
For this individual, his long-term goals were entrepreneurial,
so in the short term, he needed more exposure to business
practices and frameworks.
He needed to take his upcoming MBA experience and expand
on it, in order to continue broadening out and to see what
works and what does not in new situations.

To gain those 360 degree skills that would enable him to be a
successful large-scale entrepreneur down the road, two paths
made the most sense: management consulting and brand
management. The former would expose him to lots and lots of
scenarios in different industries, different geographies, and on
different scales.
The latter would give him experience with all aspects of
bringing something to market. Either would allow him to
broaden out the MBA experience of expanding frameworks,
widening knowledge basis, and building up his network and
pedigree. All good things, to quote the old Martha Stewart
Saturday Night Live sketches.

So, his work was done, right? Of course not! Just because he
thought this was a good idea (or that we think it's a good idea),
does not mean a recruiter or - by proxy - an admissions officer
will see it the same way. He had to:
First, explain the connection. He had to say everything we just wrote
above, about continuing to acquire experiences and skills so that he
will be in the best position to achieve his eventual goals.
Second, highlight the transferable skills that make him a desirable
candidate. We wrote an entire blog post about this once (
http://www.amerasiaconsulting.com/blog/2012/04/16/the-art-of-transferab
), but one of the most common mistakes we see among applicants is
that they don't fill in the missing link and explain the skill set that will
allow them to 1) get the job, and

2) thrive once they get it. You can't assume the reader will know what
someone in your exact job does and see the connection between
projects within your trade and being a consultant or a brand manager.
You have to identify the skills critical to the ST job and then show that
you have them. It's very simple, yet we would wager to guess that
75% of applicants don't do this. They never say "here is what I will
need to be a good brand manager and here is how and when I
developed those skills in my current job, through examples A, B, and
C." You MUST do this, whether you are young or old, American or
International, a banker or a beekeeper. You can't assume that the
reader will do this extracting and matching for you.
STEP 4 - PUT "YOU" INTO YOUR LONG-TERM GOALS. Unlike
with short-term goals, the challenge with long-term goals is
not to map out a perfect plan that everyone can achieve
collectively.

Here, you want to dream big and put as much of you - your
passions, your inspirations, and what you care about - into the
answer as possible.
Think about goals the way Stanford GSB asks you to think
about them: "What do you REALLY want to do?" If you say
that your ST goal is consulting, you are creating the foundation
for just about any long-term goal. You might think it wise to
say "I want to then climb the ranks to become a managing
partner" and feel like that is a smart, safe play. Well, it's
boring. Worse, it is impersonal.
Literally anyone on earth could write that. What do you want
to do? Really?

If the real answer is to rise through the ranks and become a
managing partner, well, why is that?
There must be some greater good you want to serve or some
burning desire that drives that aim, right? If it is just financial
security, is there something in your past that makes that
paramount, above all else?
There is always a way to make your LT goals about you and
that is what you have to do. You do not have to make your
long-termgoals 100% achievable. You do not have to make
your long-term goals about connecting back to previous areas
of expertise.

You just have to pick goals that are personal and that require
this MBA path you are on, at least on some level. There is an
incredible amount of freedom in shaping your long-term goals,
so be yourself, be interesting, and pick a path that you can
truly own.
STEP 5 - OWN THE GOALS. This is the part where perhaps we
have come to assume too much over the years and where our
case study client seemed to run into trouble. Once he had a
path that made sense, ensured that he had achievable short-
term goals (complete with highlighted transferable skill sets),
had a long-term goal that was interesting and personal, and all
of that was wrapped up with a bow in his essays, the mission
had been accomplished.

When he received an interview invite at a top 10 school, we
prepped him for the interview and showed him how to bring
that goal narrative through to the interview setting. However,
here is where it fell apart. How and why?
As best we can tell, he got unlucky with his alumni
interviewer. Instead of hosting a friendly interview, this
person demeaned the applicant and tried to poke holes in his
resume and aspirations. This is a tough break, for sure, but
something that future applicants can deal with.
First, if this happens, call the school and ask for another
interview.

The schools know that there is some risk inherent with a heavy
reliance on alumni interviewers, so they won't be surprised
nor will they likely refuse your request.
Second though, you have to ditch that experience and
approach the new opportunity with the same level of
confidence you had before. This is where our case study client
failed. He got rattled by the first interview and lost confidence
in his whole narrative.
Now, this is partly because he had bad luck but in equal part
because he never truly owned his own goals. He was too
reliant on his consultant to formulate a plan and he was never
strong in what he wanted from an MBA and his life.

When you don't own your story (the first piece of advice we
give for interview prep, by the way), you can too easily be
bowled over by the first raised eyebrow or harsh word. And if
you start scrambling to explain yourself or start getting wishy-
washy with your goals, it is game over.
After all, if you can't sit there proud and strong and say "this is
what I want" with conviction, what can you stand strong for?
So this is Step 5 and one we never realized we needed to
hammer home: own your goals. It's your story, not the
interviewer's. It's your life, not anyone else's. If you can't get
comfortable with thegoals in the essay, rethink your goals until
you do.

If you follow the above five steps, you will never fall victim to
the pitfalls that have taken down thousands before you. You
won't be rejected for asking too much (or not enough) of the
school in the short term, you won't lose the reader's interest
with impersonal long-term goals, and you won't blow your
interview by losing conviction in your own path. Remember
that if everything makes sense and follows these steps,
nobody can tell you what to think about your life and path.
Contact us today at mba@amerasiaconsulting.com.

Owning your mba career goals in 5 easy steps

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Owning your mba career goals in 5 easy steps