Chapter Eighteen
Your Pathway
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Potential
Employer Perceptions
Although most online MBA graduates are already gainfully employed, a
good number of them are also actively seeking new pathways to carry
through the knowledge and skills they have gained through their
education. It’s not unusual, for instance, for online MBA graduates to
experience high levels of frustration with unreceptive employers. These
graduates find that their enthusiasm to make a difference at their jobs,
which was generated through their online education experience, is not so
readily heeded by their bosses. Consequently, many online MBA graduates
do keep their eyes open for other opportunities. I heard of one
enterprising student, for instance, who made four upwardly mobile job
moves during his three-year online MBA experience.
Other students have found that their online education could bring them
immediate rewards, resulting in promotions before they actually
graduated. These students work for progressive companies that have a
keen sense of how technology is changing the workplace. In fact, as more
of corporate America utilizes web-based technologies in its day-to-day
business activities, executives are increasingly seeing online learning
itself as a skill-builder that teaches people how to communicate
effectively in the online environment.
No
matter what your situation, you are going to ask yourself how this new
degree will affect your career? In short, the online MBA graduate is
really no different from the traditional MBA graduate. The same rules
apply for finding work; however, the job-seeking online MBA student may
face a few hurdles that the traditional online MBA graduate does not
face.
All
this relates to your career advancement or, what many people refer to
today as career switching, career enhancement, or even lifelong
learning. This chapter contains some tips, advice, and perceptions from
some experts in the field of career development, and some general
information that can help you evolve to the next level of your
professional life and beyond.
Potential Employer Perceptions
Even though your degree will not stipulate that you earned your MBA
online, any prospective employer you talk with during a job-hunting
expedition could easily find out that you did. If, for instance, a
graduate earned his online MBA from a school in California and applied
for a position in New York, where he happens to live, his resume would
show a discrepancy between his place of residence and where he went to
school. Plus, during an interview process, when and if the conversation
turns to education history, “online” will more than likely come to the
forefront.
One
problem that can arise is a potential employer’s perception of online
degree programs. As mentioned in Chapter 12, some executives are not
fully aware of how online education can be considered a learning and
skill-enhancing experience on equal footing with a traditional MBA.
Online MBA graduates who find themselves in a circumstance where a
potential employer’s perception is misinformed have to become educators
themselves. For instance, if you’re in a potential employer’s office
that has an Internet connection (or you bring your personal notebook
with wireless access), you can easily do an online demonstration of your
program’s features and curriculum. Or you can keep printouts handy of
your program’s curriculum that outline the courses you took as an online
student. You can also refer prospective employers to the professors and
deans of the program you graduated from, who are always more than happy
to assist graduates with career advancement.
Perhaps, most importantly, if there was something that you learned as an
online student that you immediately applied to your job, make sure you
have that recorded in some way that can be shown on a resume or report
or referenced through a colleague or letter of recommendation. For
example, online MBA student at Athabasca University Tom Kiley, who works
as a senior manager of organizational effectiveness for a financial
group in Toronto, notes that his experience as an online learner “has
broadened my understanding of key business concepts and sharpened my
analytical skills. I have been able to directly apply this learning to
workplace initiatives, heightening my personal contribution to key
department projects - early payback on the investment in the MBA
program.” So the basic message to all online MBA students is, if you’ve
already experienced what Kiley refers to as “early payback,” be sure you
have that as proof of how online learning is really no different from
on-campus.
Nonetheless, if you are an experienced business professional, you will
more than likely not have to deal with a scenario in which you will have
to explain your formal education to a prospective employer. If you only
have a few years of professional work experience under your belt, the
formal education part of your resume may be a more important factor.
“Not only have I used elements from each class thus far in my day-to-day
work life, but I have also been promoted from director and general
manager to VP of economic development,” said Jodie Filardo, online MBA
student, Arizona State University. “I believe that the concepts learned
in my coursework have enabled me to be prepared for my new position.”
In
typical business fashion, MBA students frequently talk about their
return on investment (ROI), or, in other words, what is their degree
really worth? They look at the cost of their education as a profit or
loss statement that is ultimately figured out by the salary increase
they hope to obtain after graduation. What MBAs can expect to earn
depends on many factors, including the program they graduated from, the
geographic region where they are seeking a new position, and, obviously,
the type of new position they are pursuing.
Start with the
Occupational Outlook Handbook
To
get a sense for what your MBA degree might be worth in relation to where
you want to live and what kind of position you’re hoping to land, you
can start with the Occupational Outlook Handbook, updated every two
years by the U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics. The
Occupational Outlook Handbook is a nationally recognized source of
career information designed to provide valuable assistance to
individuals making decisions about their future work lives. Revised
every two years, the handbook describes what workers do on the job,
working conditions, the training and education needed, earnings, and
expected job prospects in a wide range of occupations. The handbook has
a seemingly endless amount of data on occupational and employment trends
on a national level. If you are someone who has grown into a kind of
information technologist from your online MBA schooldays, which you
should be by the time you graduate, you can sift through and decipher
the valuable information provided in the handbook entirely over the
Internet at
www.bls.gov/oco/home.htm.
According to Margaret Dikel, an Internet consultant for employment,
career counseling, and career-transition services, MBA graduates can
start with the handbook to get a sense for national trends on various
jobs that are listed under the federal government’s Standard Occupation
Classification (SOC) System, which is a hierarchical structure of both
broad and detailed occupational definitions. The Standard Occupation
Classification System is used by federal, state, and local government
agencies to classify workers into occupational categories. There are 820
occupation classifications in the system listed within 23 major groups,
96 minor groups, and 451 broad occupations.
For example, a search on the 2008-2009 handbook website showed that the 2006 medium salary on a national scale for marketing managers was $98,720, and that the industry employing the largest number of marketing managers was in the computer systems design sector. You can then compare that national data to what’s happening at a state level by going to any state government website and reviewing all the data it typically provides under what’s referred to as Labor Market Information, or LMI, which includes wage and salary statistics, what professions are growing, what local companies are hiring, and much more. “Nationwide trends are one thing, but what is happening in your state or even in your region can be completely off kilter from what you see across the nation,” says Dikel, who also is the creator of a terrific web directory of employment and career information called “The Riley Guide.”
The
Riley Guide, which has links upon links to all the top resources for
jobseekers, also has a special section, titled
“Employment and Industry Trends."
Here, among many other links to resources, are links to the government
agency websites of all 50 states. Each state website has different
levels of LMI data, and to sift through and interpret all this data can
be daunting at times, because each state presents their LMI data
differently. Nonetheless, these sites provide more localized
information, often down to the county and city levels, that can help you
make a decision that reflects upon your MBA ROI goals.
In
addition to digging up LMI data to see what you may be worth in a
specific field or sector and geographic region that you have
historically worked in, Dikel suggests that graduates take a look at how
they could transfer into new industry sectors where their worth might be
higher than what they realize. “How many ways can you take your MBA,
plus your previous qualifications and skills, and apply them across
industries?” she asks. “A lot of times we tend to focus on only our
industry or field. Now that you have these added qualifications, you
should think of what we call transferable skills. How can I take my
knowledge of, let’s say, mechanical engineering, for instance, and
recombine it and move it into a different industry sector or a different
career path that might be growing?” In this particular example, the
mechanical engineer could seek out a new career path as a financial
analyst, senior research associate, or an international sales and
marketing agent for a major manufacturing company.
One
way of putting in motion more opportunities to move into a new career
path is to start networking. Dikel has a special section on her web
directory titled “Network, Interview, and Negotiate” in which she
provides plenty of advice and links to outside resources that can help
MBAs fine-tune their networking skills. In an article titled “Networking
and Your Job Search,” which, Dikel composed based on “everything good”
that she has read or heard, she explains that networking is frequently
referred to as the best method to obtain a new and rewarding position.
“Networking does not have to be a carefully choreographed process of
meeting and greeting people,” Dikel said. “It’s much better done on a
more informal basis, but remember that networking is always a two-way
street. It must benefit both persons to be most effective, so as you ask
your network for help, be prepared to return the favor when asked.”
In
particular, Dikel has some very sound advice for how to network over the
Internet. One thing she stresses is to make sure your online persona
does not work against you. She writes that “a lot of Internet oldie-moldies
need a reminder that there are real people behind the electrons, and
real people make real decisions based on your electronic communication
blunders.” As an online MBA student, one thing you should have in your
favor is that you have learned how to present yourself quite well
online, so online networking should be an ideal way for you to get
things started in the right direction.
The
following is a list of advantages of online networking (by Dikel):
• There are
thousands of discussion groups and community forums covering hundreds of
subjects.
• You can “break
the ice” before meeting someone in person.
• You can
listen, engage, or be engaged as you wish. No one can see you sweat, and
you don’t have to feel like a wallflower since no one can see you
standing off by yourself.
• Many
recruiters are lurking the lists to find potential candidates.
The following is a list of disadvantages of online networking (by Dikel):
• Networking online
is just as difficult as networking in person! In fact, it may be harder
because you can’t really establish a true personal relationship online.
• First impressions
count even more. Be careful with your first public posting.
• Your online
behavior matters more than you think. Don’t be a jerk!
Dikel also provides links to mailing lists, chat rooms, websites, and
business-related forums where working professionals can network. To read
her full article about networking online, go to
www.rileyguide.com/network.html.
Finally, for links to websites with job listings and more, see Dikels’s “Job Listings: Places to Start Looking for Opportunities.”
To
get a sense for what human-resources departments and recruiting
divisions at large companies might think about online MBAs, I talked
with Debra Besemer, president and CEO of BrassRing, an award-winning
international company that provides recruitment software, talent
consulting, and recruitment process management services to companies
throughout the world. Major corporations, such as Baxter Medical, RR
Donnelley and Unisys, that have access to large databases of job
candidates, use BrassRing’s software to help them find the right
professionals to fill their executive job openings.
According to Besemer, employers often search for MBAs based on the
quality of the institution they graduated from. “Most employers have
their favorite institutions,” she said. “They go to their executives in
management and do a profile of where those people earned their degrees,
and those tend to be the schools that they recruit from over and over.”
So in short, at some large corporations, where you graduate from does,
indeed, make a difference.
Besemer’s advice to prospective MBA students, be they online or
on-campus, is “don’t try to take a quick path from a less-than-stellar
institution.” She added that job recruiters today frequently use
software, such as what BrassRing provides, that allows them to segment
by school all the resume searching they do electronically through large
databases, such as Monster.com and CareerBuilder.com, as well as through
their own internal databases. If a recruiter has a negative or positive
bias toward any given MBA program, he or she can automatically eliminate
or add to their database of job candidates based on the institution they
graduated from.
Besemer also noted that “so much of business today is done online, that
learning those sills through an online degree program should be valued
in the marketplace. Where we used to have face-to-face meetings, we now
use instant messaging and e-mail, as well as web conferencing.”
No
matter what your circumstances may be, if you are seeking a move up
within your company or a new position someplace else, you have to market
yourself. For the online MBA students, you can reveal that you have the
right stuff to be a valuable asset to any organization. In particular,
your experience working on virtual teams as an online MBA student could
be perceived as a valuable skill with a modern mid-size to large
corporation where virtual teaming is commonplace.
John DePolo, director of global staffing with RTI International, said
that although many management-level employees do need to be good in
front of people in terms of making presentations and having a
professional appearance, they may also need to have a good “virtual
presence.” Online MBA graduates can obviously bring their virtual skills
out into the forefront of their interviews and on their resumes. The
ability to get things done in a virtual team through the power of one’s
ideas, presentation skills, and logic should be stressed as part of an
online MBA graduate’s self-marketing strategy, says DePolo, who also
previously owned a private practice that provided strategic recruitment
consulting services to Fortune 100 companies.
Basically you need to sell yourself, and adult, working professionals
are frequently the kind of people who need to be reminded of this.
According to Andrea Davis, vice president and co-founder of FlashPoint,
a human-resource consulting firm in Indianapolis, “Most people don’t
like selling themselves. They may think that their experience should
speak for itself, that ‘you should know I’m successful because otherwise
I would not have been promoted to the next job.’ Well, they should also
be able to explain how, why, and what they actually did. Don’t just let
the MBA listing on your resume speak for itself. Be able to talk about
it.”
Davis further explained that at your current job, this notion of selling
yourself in order to move up the career ladder, can be even more
difficult because “your employer may have a hard time seeing beyond
where you have been,” with the company. So “you have to do a better job
of always coming back to saying ‘Here is what I am learning, or let me
work on this project while I’m in the online program so I can strengthen
my skills.’ You need to be doing that the whole time. I do think many
people have the false expectation that they are going to get this MBA
and be promoted immediately. That’s not going to happen if your employer
does not see how your education is bettering your performance or
improving your skills.”
So what’s the job market look like these days for MBAs? A quick content analysis of the literature on job prospects for MBAs, in general, reveals a mixed bag of opportunities. Most recruiters will tell you how the market for MBAs fluctuates. Not long ago there were all kinds of articles about how MBAs were in high demand; one year ago the tone of many of the articles stressed a very poor marketplace for MBAs; and currently there seems to be a movement that says the demand for MBAs is coming back. You’ll find that the pundits on this topic to be both positive and negative.
To perhaps oversimplify regarding the demand for MBAs, in general, it really depends on the economy. As the economy fluctuates, so do executive- and management-level job prospects. My personal feeling is that it’s no use getting caught up in the job outlook and economy picture. Instead, look at your degree as a long-term investment that will sooner or later get you ahead, but also know how to connect the dots, so to speak. “Figure out a way to connect your experiences throughout your career,” advised Davis.“The work you have accomplished, the results you have achieved - somehow connect that to the learning you have gained in an MBA program. Putting MBA on paper is not going to show how that has made you a better candidate. It may get someone to take a second glance, but what is that connection?”
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