MBS MBA FAQs: Career Prospects
Filed Under careers, mba, melbourne business school
Every couple of weeks I get an e-mail from someone looking to do an MBA from Melbourne Business School. I get asked lots of different questions in these e-mails but the ones I get most often cover admissions advice, post-MBA career prospects and the MBS careers office, and what my impression of MBS is now that I’m in the job market.
I’ve been meaning to blog about my replies to those e-mails for a while now but have only just gotten around to doing so. Here then is the first of those blog posts, this one covering career prospects and questions about MBS’ Career Services Centre.
Q. What is the Career Services Centre at MBS like?
A. It’s pretty good and it’s getting better. To give you an example: Back in 2006, when I started my MBA, the concept of an “MBA internship” was relatively new in Melbourne (and maybe even in Australia where internships and apprenticeships are generally 6-12 months long and are often something you do after your undergraduate degree). My MBA intake was the first to have an internship built into its program and, of the 30 or so people who wanted to do an internship, only 12 managed to get one. Things have improved drastically since then: of the 50 or so people who wanted to do an internship this year, over 45 got one. Most of that is thanks to the Career Services Centre’s efforts of the last couple of years.
The Career Services team is pretty impressive, too: they have a general careers consultant who can help you figure out what you want to do with your life and a bunch of industry specialists who really know what they’re talking about. The industry specialists also have great relationships with all the big companies in their designated industries. They also have a coordinator and general manager, both of whom know pretty much everything that’s going on and are a valuable resource in themselves.
The Centre also runs weekly career-related workshops (which are invaluable), holds a two-day residential careers/leadership training session (which is awesome), and manages the relationships with all of the companies that recruit from MBS (see next question).
Q. What kinds of companies recruit from MBS?
A. All kinds, including some of the biggest, most successful, and most well-known companies in Australia and the world. There are on-campus recruitment sessions/presentations held throughout the year and here is a list of some of the companies that held one during my last term there:
- Almost all the first- and second-tie consulting firms in Australia: BCG, McKinsey, Bain, Booz Allen, AT Kearney, E&Y, PwC, KPMG, Deloitte, and LEK. And a couple of boutique consulting firms as well.
- Lots of large multinational corporations from different industries: GE, BHP Billiton, Boral, AMCOR, J&J, and Eli Lilly.
- Numerous finance companies: Babcock & Brown, Lehman Brothers, Barclays Capital, JF Capital, Goldman Sachs, ANZ, and National Australia Bank.
- A number of marketing-oriented companies: Pacific Brands, FutureBrand, and a couple of others.
- A number of technology-oriented companies: SMS, Fujitsu Consulting, InfoSys, and a few more.
- (And many more whose e-mails I deleted because I wasn’t interested in those jobs.)
Q. How do MBS students get/find their jobs? What kinds of jobs do they get, how much do they get paid, and which countries do they get these jobs in?
A. For details on all of this, read MBS’ graduating class survey for 2007. The data for the 2008 survey hasn’t been collected year (that should happen next month) and I’ll blog about that once the results are in.
Keep in mind, though, that 2007’s “average” starting salary of AU$105,211 doesn’t actually tell you much because it doesn’t capture the massive difference between graduates starting in, for example, C-suite positions and earning over 150k per year and graduates working in non-profits and earning under 70k per year. This is problem with averages.
What you can do to supplement this data is to look at industry-specific salary ranges as reported via salary surveys conducted by these four recruitment firms:
Notice how salary averages change across cities and industries and how they vary among the surveys themselves.
Q. What are the chances of using the MBA to switch industries?
A. It’s never easy to switch industries but the MBA is a great degree to switch with. That said, unless you work really hard, are incredibly persistent, and get a little lucky, you are unlikely to get your dream job in your target industry right after you graduate (particularly if you want to get into something like investment banking!). Instead, you’ll probably start at a lower-than-expected position in your new industry and will then work your way up to your dream job. This, by the way, is compared to the position someone from that industry would start at if they went and did an MBA and then came back. However, once you do make the switch, you’re likely to move up the corporate ladder (i.e. to your dream job) quicker than someone who doesn’t have an MBA.
The best part: you have tonnes of resources to help you make the switch. This includes not only books, elective courses, and industry clubs, but also your classmates, faculty members, Career Services staff, and alumni.
The most powerful industry-switching tool available to you, however, is your MBA internship. Assuming you manage to get one in your target industry, you’ll not only get some industry experience on your resume, you’ll also get networking contacts, lots of news and information about that industry, and maybe even direct contacts in companies that you might want to apply to for a job.
Q. What does it take to get a job in management consulting?
A. Lots of hard work, a love of numbers, the ability to see the big picture and the interconnections between elements, and the right (i.e. management consulting) attitude. The advantages you’ll have in being an MBS student include:
- You’ll get taught how to do all of this
- If you like it, there are numerous electives you can take that will teach you how to do it even better
- MBS has great relations with all of the top management consulting firms in Australia. Indeed, many of its lecturers have worked in those firms in the past.
That said, there are two things you have to be ready for.
- Consulting firms will only hire you if your grades are really high (i.e. top 20% of your graduating class high) and, even then, only if you do really well on their case interviews (which are never easy).
- Only one or two people get into any of those firms in a given year and there are lots of smart people at MBS who want to get into management consulting so there’s plenty of competition.
In other words: the prospects are great if you work really hard, do lots of preparation, and get really good grades. If not, your prospects are still good but it might take longer and may be harder to get in.
Finally, the Career Services Centre and the student-run MBS Consulting Interest Group will guide you in all of this.
On to other topics…
Those are the most popular career-prospect questions I tend to get. I’ll move on to other topics next time but if there are any other specific questions you want me to answer on this topic, please let me know and I’ll cover them in a subsequent blog post.
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MBA Skills at Work: Part 1
Filed Under courses, life, mba, melbourne business school, my career
I’ve been working at Linfox for almost two months now and I’ve hardly even noticed. Time really does fly when you’re having fun and working your butt off, doesn’t it?
Now that my major project at Linfox is complete — we re-launched Linfox.com last week — I thought it would be a good time to do a quick recap of how things have been at work and how the Melbourne Business School MBA is helping me do my job really well.
But before I get to that…
Actually, funnily enough, the thing I found most immediately useful at my new job was not something I learnt during the MBA but is something related to the work I did in MBS’ Information Technology Solutions department earlier this year. That is: I knew how to use SharePoint really well.
In May, MBS launched its new intranet (called ‘MBS Direct’) based on Microsoft’s SharePoint technology. Just a month before that Linfox launched its own intranet (called the ‘Lintranet’) also based on that technology. Having learnt a great deal about SharePoint at MBS — and many SharePoint tips and best practices from our vendor, Bullseye — taking over from the previous Online Coordinator was incredibly straightforward and hassle-free.
E-Commerce and Information Management
As you would imagine, stuff learnt in Pat Auger’s E-Commerce and Information Management courses is coming in really handy in my new job. Here are two lessons I’m finding most useful at this time.
1. Making a business case: My boss understands how important both the intranet and public website are to the business; she is, after all, Linfox’s Group Communications Manager. People in top management, however, are more focused (as they should be) on running a logistics company, a couple of airports, and a few other Linfox Group businesses. My boss and I therefore need to demonstrate — in almost everything that we do — the business benefits of maintaining these two sites (which I am in charge of and she is the champion for).
This is where something like Google Analytics comes in. My boss can now tell her boss that, just last week, over 1,000 unique visitors got to Linfox.com via a search engine (we also know the keywords they used to get there) and that, by far, the most popular section on the site is the ‘Working at Linfox‘ one. Now the site’s only been up for ten days so there’s more data to collect before we take things to the next level (like further developing the recruitment section) but already it’s clear what one of the major benefits of having a good website is: you can communicate directly with potential employees in order to get the best and most suitable candidates to apply for jobs that you advertise.
2. Internal communications: Having spent years in IT — which in many companies is the one of the least communicative, least understood, and possibly least-liked departments — I know how important it is to communicate internally the benefits of the work you’re doing. Things are a little different in the Communications department but internal communications is still an important task for me.
For example, two phrases that I’ve found to be really useful are “it’s on the Lintranet” and “search for it”. These are important because the last iteration of Linfox’s intranet took the usual route to uselessness: it had too much stuff on it (it had become a bloated file archival dump) most of which was irrelevant (no versioning, lots of replication) and hard to find (limited search functionality). This new iteration is lean, well-organized, and has versioning, no duplication, and excellent search functionality. However, not everyone knows this.
My job, then, is to (a) keep the intranet in great shape and (b) to tell everyone how great the intranet is. My aim is to make this a virtuous cycle: if people expect it to be great, they’ll make sure it stays great — with a little poking, prodding, and policing from me, of course! So when someone asks me for something, I usually say “it’s on the Lintranet” (since it usually is) and, most of the time, they’re able to find what they’re looking for quickly and easily. If not, a simple search does the trick.
One thing that really helps me here is the direct support I get from my team. This mostly comes in the form of a line in every bit of internal communication that we do that goes something like “you can find (more information about this) on the Lintranet”.
More in Part 2
There’s much more I want to write so I’m going to split this into two, or maybe three, posts. I have yet to talk about:
- Applying people skills learnt in the Managing People for High Performance, Negotiations, and Leadership courses.
- Applying marketing skills learnt in the Brand Management and Consumer Behaviour courses.
- General skills learnt while doing the MBA; such as how to handle multiple projects, deadlines, and priorities without breaking a sweat.
- Observing how things are working at a more strategic level within the company; such how business and corporate strategy are playing-out, what leadership is being exhibited by senior management, what the company’s environmental strategy is, and how intellectual property is being managed.
But more about all this next time.
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An Exchange Student’s MBS Story
Filed Under b-schools, mba, melbourne business school
R. Suraj, an exchange student from NUS Business School, wrote a very complimentary blog post about his exchange term at Melbourne Business School:
MBS was a great learning experience for me. I interacted with people from across the world and across age groups. Latin Americans to Europeans to Australians to Asians…
Glad you had a great time, Suraj. All the best with your MBA.
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I Graduated!
Filed Under mba, melbourne business school
That’s it. I’m done. I have graduated!
As of this morning, I am an MBA from the University of Melbourne’s Melbourne Business School…and I can prove it:
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I’m even wearing the University of Melbourne lapel pin! And in case you’re wondering why that’s so important, that pin is given only to UniMelb graduates (exclusivity works, eh?).
This is what I looked like in full graduation regalia (fun to wear, a hassle to sit in):
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Graduating Ceremony
The ceremony was good — despite the fact that today was the rainiest and coldest day Melbourne has had this winter (non-stop rain, temperatures dropping to three degrees overnight).
We heard from the University’s Vice-Chancellor, Glyn Davis, who started the ceremony with the traditional welcome address in which he talked about the privileges and responsibilities that come with the degrees we were being awarded. We also heard from MBS’ Dean, John Seybolt, who introduced our occasional speaker, REA Group’s Simon Baker (an MBS alumnus who I’ve mentioned before on this blog). Baker talked about his top ten business tips that he didn’t learn in his MBA (good speech).
Associate Dean Mark Crosby (from MBS) read out the names of the postgraduate diploma and masters students while we walked on to the stage and got our degrees from the VC (with much hat doffing). Crosby did an excellent job with name pronunciations. Associate Dean Ron Slocombe (from the Graduate School of Research) then read out the name and citation of our single PhD graduate for 2008 who, appropriately enough, got the longest round of applause from us mere MBAs when he went to get his degree.
We then had an excellent celebratory lunch at MBS during which we ate, caught up, and met friends’ families. All in all, it was an awesome day.
Valedictory Dinner
Oh, and since I haven’t blogged about this before let me quickly mention that three nights ago we had our valedictory dinner. This was held at Ormond College, one of the University’s oldest (founded in 1879) residential colleges. It also has the most castle-like building on campus, complete with Hogwarts-style dining hall (yes, that’s an actual photo from our dinner!):
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You can read about that, including details of the awards and prized conferred, in a news article on the MBS website (which is also where I got the photograph from).
All I can say now is: All’s well that ends well and thus endeth my MBA.
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One More MBS Blogger
Filed Under blogging, mba, melbourne business school
Add another MBS blogger to the list:
Alanna’s been blogging about her Melbourne Business School MBA since October last year but I came across her blog only recently. (Hmmm…maybe I should write a SEO primer for MBS bloggers).
Her blog is both informative and really fun to read so, for all those interested in what the MBS experience is like, hop on down and take a look.
Update: I’ve started to maintain a list of all MBS or MBS-related bloggers that I know of on a static page on this site. That way, people looking for MBS bloggers won’t have to hunt through my old blog posts, they can just look at that one page. (Though I will continue to publish a blog post every time I find a new relevant blogger.)
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John Armstrong is MBS’ Philosopher-in-Residence
Filed Under b-schools, mba, melbourne business school
Melbourne Business School recently appointed John Armstrong as our first ever Philosopher-in-Residence.
Though this news was covered in the press, I didn’t write about it here because I was really busy at the time and figured I’d mention it later. That later came about yesterday when The Guardian published an article about it. So let me do a quick recap of the news coverage that Armstrong and his appointment at MBS have received so far:
- Luke Slattery wrote an article called Thinker on the ‘Dark’ Side in The Australian’s Higher Education supplement.
- Ruth Williams, in The Age’s Business Day section, wrote an article called Where Philosophy Meets Business.
- The Financial Times’ Ruth Bradshaw wrote about it in an article called MBA Students Take Philosophy Lessons.
- Finally, The Gruardian’s David Cohen wrote an article called Wittgenstein and Market Forces.
Though Armstrong hasn’t started teaching his own courses yet he did guest lecture in our Business & Sustainable Development course which was both fun, as guest lectures always are, and eye-opening, if you hadn’t yet looked at consumption from that point of view before.
Now that I’ve graduated, however, I won’t be able to attend any of Armstrong’s courses. Fortunately, he has given talks to MBS alumni in the past and I hope he will do so in the future as well. Regardless, I wish him all the best and hope he makes the students graduating from MBS better thinkers, philosophers, and, ultimately, leaders.
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Keeping Things in Perspective
I don’t know who wrote this but a friend sent it to me some years ago. I figured it was worth posting here :)
Keeping Things in Perspective
An American businessman was at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellowfin tuna.
The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them. The Mexican replied that it only took a little while. The American then asked why didn’t he stay out longer and catch more fish. The Mexican said he had enough to support his family’s immediate needs.
The American then asked, “But what do you do with the rest of your time?” The Mexican fisherman said, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siesta with my wife, Maria, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos, I have a full and busy life, senor.”
The American scoffed, “I am a Stanford MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat with the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several boats, eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then LA and eventually NYC where you will run your expanding enterprise.”
The Mexican fisherman asked, “But senor, how long will this all take?” To which the American replied, “15-20 years.”
“But what then, senor?” said the Mexican.
The American laughed and said: “That’s the best part. When the time is right you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions.”
“Millions, senor? Then what?”
The American said, “Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siesta with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos.”
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And I’m Done!
Filed Under life, mba, melbourne business school, my career
And I’m done with my MBA. Actually, I was done on Friday but I took it easy over the weekend :)
This now concludes 20 months of hard work, late nights, early mornings, essays, individual assignments, syndicate assignments, case studies, class discussions, research, and exams. During this period I met a lot of great people who taught me a lot of different things. I also formally learnt a heck of a lot about many different subjects. Specifically, I took these courses during my four study terms:
- World of Management
- Data & Decisions
- Managing Processes
- Accounting for Managers
- Financial Management
- Corporate Finance
- Managerial Economics
- Economics and Public Policy
- Business Strategy
- Corporate Strategy
- Implementation of Strategy
- Managing People for High Performance
- Leadership & Change
- Negotiations
- Marketing
- Brand Management
- Consumer Behaviour
- E-Commerce
- Information Strategy
- Business & Sustainable Development (half subject)
- Strategic Management of Intellectual Property (half subject)
Sounds like fun, doesn’t it? Actually, it was.
And now it winds to a close. All that’s left is my graduation on the 17th and then I can officially say that, yes, I am an MBA from Melbourne Business School, thank you very much :)
Now to find a job so I can start my next adventure…
Speaking of jobs, by the way, I received the nicest job application rejection phone call today. It was from the job I mentioned a few weeks earlier (the one I was most excited about) and, though I’m terribly disappointed that I didn’t get it, I understand that the company needed to choose the best person for the role who, in this case, was unfortunately not me. Still, out of the 200 applications they received I was one of the four people they interviewed and that’s a really good feeling. Oh well. Next time, then.
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All Done with MBA Classes!
Filed Under mba, melbourne business school
Today I attended my last MBA class and participated in my last syndicate meeting. I now have two assignments (one individual and one syndicate-based) and two exams to do before I’m completely done with the MBA.
11:15am on Friday, 2 May, 2008…here I come!
Meanwhile, I went and signed up for my graduation regalia. Since The University of Melbourne follows the Oxford style of gowns and hoods for its formal academic dress, I get to wear a black gown (the Melbourne Business School MBA’s colours are a sky blue stripe with a gold band), a hood, and a black trencher cap (with black tassel).
We have two other functions before that, though — the end-of-term party and the valedictory dinner — both of which should be lots of fun. I’m getting all excited about this now :)
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MBA, Job Application & Work Update
Filed Under life, mba, my career
Yesterday was a tough day:
- My Brand Management final exam (on Wal-Mart) was due.
- My Corporate Strategy syndicate had to make a presentation (on Bertelsmann).
- I had tonnes of reading to do for Corporate Strategy (a case on the Foster Group) and Business and Sustainable Development (on social sustainability and the Bottom-of-Pyramid concept).
The next couple of weeks (yes, I have just two weeks to go!) are going to be tough too. I have:
- One case analysis (for Corporate Strategy) and one critical analysis (for BSD) to write and hand in.
- Two big assignments (for BSD and Strategic Management of Intellectual Property) to write up and hand in.
- One big syndicate assignment (for Corporate Strategy) to work on, write up, and hand in.
- Two exams to prepare for and then sit (for SMIP and BSD).
On the job front:
- I’ve applied to three jobs — two in internal communications (with an intranet focus) and one in external communications (with a social media focus).
- I’ve received one rejection — one of the internal communications ones — and hope to hear from the other two either this week or next week.
- I have two more jobs to apply to — both in online strategy (one of which is really exciting) — and I should get those done by tomorrow evening.
Meanwhile, my work at MBS is keeping me busy too:
- I have to finish writing a major section of the training materials (for the new portal we’re deploying across the school) by this evening. That needs to get reviewed and approved by Friday.
- I’ll probably start conducting the actual trainings (mostly one-to-one since I’m pretty much done with the group trainings) for that next week.
- I’ve already sat with one of the departments and worked through their online communications strategy. On Friday I need to sit with them and actually start implementing that on the portal.
Yes, life is busy and exciting…and quite a lot of fun, actually (which, really, is the important part).
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