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Episode 501: Why Your Career Plan Should Shape Your MBA Journey · Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast

• 0:16
  Speaker A: Welcome to the Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast. I'm your host, Graham Richmond, and in this episode, we are going to explore something pretty fundamental to business school admissions, yet not always obvious. In short, I want to explain why your career plan should shape your MBA journey and not the other way around. And I think every applicant knows that they need to articulate their goals as part of the application and, you know, maybe admissions interviews. But too often, these goals become something written for the admissions committee rather than kind of a roadmap for choosing the programs and opportunities that truly fit. So because I'm not exactly an expert in all areas of this, I'm really excited to be joined Today by Camilla DeWitt. Her experiences leading both admissions and career services, along with her work advising business schools around the world through gmac, gives her a rare perspective on how thoughtful career planning can help applicants make smarter decisions long before they ever set foot on a campus. So, Camilla, welcome to the ClearAdmit podcast.
• 1:15
  Speaker B: Hi, Graham. Thank you for having me. I'm an avid listener of you and Alex, and I'm really excited to be here.
• 1:22
  Speaker A: Yeah, I'm so excited to have you on the show because I know we've talked about this for several months, and, you know, we both have pretty busy schedules with all the various things we do. But before we dive into the topic, I'm just wondering if you could give kind of an overview of your background. I know you really well, but I know our listeners may not, so give us a little bit of a background. I mean, you have such an impressive background. I can't wait to hear a little bit and let our listeners in on it.
• 1:43
  Speaker B: Well, my last formal position was Director of Admissions and career services at Esade Business School. But I left Esade back in 2010, and since then I've had what they call a portfolio career. And. And as it relates to our conversation today, I guess there are three areas that would be of most interest. The first is consulting. I do a lot of reputation consulting for business schools. Organizational effectiveness, sales, and marketing. Well, for business schools and other types of organizations. So I know a little bit about what makes business schools tick or the business of business schools. The second area is I work for gmac. GMAC is best known as the owner and operator of the GMAT exam. But what people may not realize is that it is also a nonprofit association of the world's business schools. And GMAC organizes all kinds of conferences and events to bring together business school professionals and talk about what's keeping them up at night. I also run a three Day program for for people who are new in the admissions function. It's called the Admissions Institute for New Professionals. And I've been running this program since 2014. I think since then I've probably graduated more than 1,000 admissions professionals both in Europe and in the United States. I'm jumping on a plane in two weeks to run this program at Booth and already have people that work at mit. Ross, I mean you name it, all kinds of business schools. And the third area is I am a career coach. I still do some of that in my day to day. I sit on the career coaching staff for a couple of business schools. So I coach MBA students on how to sell themselves and how to strategize finding a job by graduation. So these are the three roles that I think are most interesting for our audience today.
• 3:49
  Speaker A: Yeah, they're incredibly interesting and I feel like it's amazing to have someone on the show who actually trains the very admissions readers that are assessing files at top business schools. So this is a real kind of peek behind the curtain potentially. But also I love the career piece and it's something that I know you and I have talked about how we don't talk as much about it on this show. We talk a lot about admissions and the career piece is so important, both as part of the admissions process, but also obviously once you get to business school. So I wanted to start with a question for you. You've worked, as we said, in admissions, career services, obviously now as a consultant and a career coach. But what's the biggest misconception that you think MBA applicants have about the role that career planning plays in admissions?
• 4:32
  Speaker B: At the core, business schools are businesses. As such, they are reputation driven institutions. One of the things that people don't think about is that business schools need to survive and what gives them reputation is the rankings also for example, accreditation bodies and the employers or the employer perceptions of the the final stakeholder that business schools need to serve. But if we look at the rankings in general, they are measuring different things including yes, admissions quality, but also the learning experience, career outcomes and placement and alumni success. And the biggest reputation driven element of these is placement is career outcome. In fact, more than 50% of rankings are measuring three things. When you get a job, so whether you get a job by graduation or within three months of graduation, your salary, base salary and bonus and then the sectors in which you're going to be working within that graduation. So placement and career outcomes is extremely important. The then we can talk about academics, gmat, GRE scores. The higher the Better gpa, perhaps undergraduate degree. And at lower is diversity. Some rankings are measuring gender, nationality, et cetera. So if you think about it, business schools are really trying to manage risk. They are, yes, an academic gatekeeper for the institution, but they are trying to hedge their bets and they're trying to select candidates most likely to perform well academically, contribute positively to the outcome, but really secure strong post graduation roles. And that is key.
• 6:41
  Speaker A: Yeah, and I remember when I was working at admissions, we would get the lecture from the dean of admissions about, you've got to admit, people who can survive and thrive academically, like you were saying, who will contribute to the community while they're on campus and then, yeah, ideally, who will go out and get a great job and do good things even in the long term and be great alums for the school to have. So that's, yeah, that's so critical. And I think sometimes you're right. Candidates may not think about all these parts as they're putting together their application. You've spent a lot of time teaching admissions professionals how to evaluate applicants. And so if you could pull back that curtain, what do you think are some of the key qualities that business schools are really looking for? And maybe that links up with what we've just been discussing. But yeah, how are they assessing these areas?
• 7:23
  Speaker B: One of the frameworks that I teach at the Admissions Institute for New Professionals is what I call the three as model. You're looking for the first day, which is aptitude. Can you succeed academically in a very ambitious or very quant driven program? That's the first A. The second is do you have the attitude to contribute to the community and thrive as a leader? The third is do you have the aspiration, a credible, well reasoned career plan that makes sense. Now let's break these apart a little bit. In your podcast you talk a lot about gmat. And so all that goes into the aptitude A or the first A. If you break this apart a little bit more, the first thing that candidates need to have is an undergraduate degree. If you think also on how business schools are measuring all these things, one of the things that listeners probably want is a scholarship where you did your undergraduate degree and the reputation of your undergraduate institution is extremely important. But also what did you study? Did you study architecture versus engineering or are you a poet? Did you study English or literature like yourself or something else? So not only where did you study, but what you studied is extremely important. Second is gpa. The higher the gpa, the more quality from an admissions perspective. You're Getting GMAT and GRE again, the higher the better. And all these things are trying to measure can you survive the academic rigor of the program. But they're also going to be looking at your English score if you're not from the US or English is not your first language, whether you took math in your undergraduate degree, for example calculus or what have you. Do you have an additional accreditation in your name like a cpa, a CFA or additional certifications? Have you taken a certification in AI or something to that effect? All these things give you a very robust first day in aptitude. The second a attitude is all about your point of view, Graham and what they're looking at here is your learning impact, your engagement impact, your passion and your potential to be a good ambassador for the program. Learning impact is that point of view that I'm alluding to. Here comes your diversity. Where have you lived? Where are you from? What does that geographic or worldly perspective give you? Diversity can also be measured in where you've worked. Another quality thing that they're going to look at is have you worked for a well known company, working for PepsiCo or Unilever or working for Amazon and McKinsey or Goldman Sachs or fill in the blanks company that everybody knows gives you a lot of good reputation coming in from for that point of view conversation in the classroom. That learning impact that you're going to provide, your ability in learning impact as well comes from your ability to work well in a team environment. The MBA is a petri dish to leadership to future potential in learning to work well with other people. So working well with other people from different backgrounds, points of view, et cetera. Now your engagement impact is where you and Al let's talk about what has this person done outside of their work, their volunteer. So these are ingredients that admissions teams are looking for because they want you to contribute outside of the classroom any co curricular activities that the school has like clubs or fill in the blank. How are you going to engage with the outside community to make the whole overall experience of the mba? One plus one equals five engagement. And engagement impact is is the second part of this attitude conversation. Then your passion. Are you going to show up? Do you show up? What is driving your motivation to do an mba then finally, ambassadorship can be measured by how you engage with the admissions team within your application process, which provides evidence of how you may engage with them as a student, how you're going to help them bring new candidates into the program. But what they're also looking at is are you going to be a good alum? And good alums give back to the institution. They give back in time, talent and treasure.
• 13:04
  Speaker A: Yeah, time.
• 13:06
  Speaker B: Are they going to be good ambassadors and come back to do presentations in the classroom? Talent, Are they going to be coming to provide job opportunities? Again, it's all about that reputation engine that I talked about in the beginning. So are they going to provide those job opportunities to potential graduates? And treasure, if you are a very successful alum, are you going to be naming a building or a classroom or a bench back at your institution? So that's all the attitude part of the conversation. And then finally, aspiration. When I used to be the director of admissions and I met a new candidate, in my head, I was asking three questions. Why you? Why mba? Why institution? These are the three questions that we are going to get into a little bit more. But when we talk about why unymba, these two things are connected. You're doing an MBA because you want to grow as a leader. That may mean different things. You need to think about where are you now, Are you working, for example, in the front office or the back office? And you want to go from the back to the front or the front to the back? For example, are you in operations and you want to be in business development, or are you in marketing, but you want to go into supply chain? Front office, Back office is one of the things that you need to be thinking of. But also the other element is to think of your experience already, for example, in project management, understanding the relationship between time, people and money. Your team leadership, have you been the boss or have you mentored other people? And finally client leadership, have you been able to sell things? All these things are connected to why you, but they're connected to why do you want to do an mba? Because I want to develop these things. But at the same time, this conversation is, what do you want to do? And can I place you within graduation and within three months of graduation? There's a lot of information there, but those are the ingredients that admissions professionals are looking for to evaluate incoming candidates.
• 15:45
  Speaker A: Yeah. And I think, I mean, so you just gave us a crash course in admission strategy. Really. And what's amazing about it is that this is the course that you're using to teach the actual admissions officers who come to the institution Institute for New Professionals. So this is really gold. I'm so glad that we are talking about all this. I want to talk about something very specific within kind of the admissions. And I think, you know, a lot of candidates think about where they Want to go to school. And then they look at the applications and the applications say what are your career goals? And they, so they frame their goals kind of after they've, they've kind of already identified schools to apply to. And I wondered, you know, how should one's goals influence the schools that they're selecting in the first place? Like, should you as a candidate be thinking first about your goals before you even build that list of target schools? And are there any examples that you can think of of like career goals that naturally lead applicants towards different types of MBA programs or maybe even different methodologies or learning environments?
• 16:44
  Speaker B: Absolutely. You hit the nail on the head. The first thing the candidates need to be thinking of is what is your career goal? The next is what is the recruiting market that is going to provide opportunities to that recruiting goal? And what is the learning ecosystem or the school ecosystem that is going to support the recruiting market that is going to support your career goal? At the end of the day, you want to ensure that you are maximizing that roi, that return on investment of taking two years out of the workforce to become that future leader. Career goal is first. There's different ways of thinking about this. The first and perhaps more general way to think about this is are you a career launcher? Are you starting your career? For example, you are less than two years out of your undergraduate degree and you need Master in Business to help you get that career launch or launch your first career. You're maybe looking at a Master in Management or a Master in Marketing or a Master in Finance because you know that you really like finance and you want to develop your career that way. So an MSC or a piece specialized Master in a specific area is perhaps what you need to do to round your undergraduate degree and get that quick acceleration. You may be what they call either a career enhancer or a career accelerator. You want to stay with your employer or your employer ecosystem, but you want that additional, additional boost to get that enhancement or that promotion within your job. So you want to improve your effectiveness. You're maybe looking at a part time, a flex or even an executive MBA program at that point. Those are the best types of models or the best type of formats to stay within your employer. Maybe your hedging your own bets and you don't want to lose that salary. The third, I would say are the entrepreneurs. You want to start your own business. You have an idea, or maybe you don't have an idea, but you're looking to an MBA to help you launch that business that you want to run. You May be looking then at an MBA that provides you those good ingredients to make you be successful quicker, which could be things like an incubator, accelerator programs, venture capital competitions, mentorship programs. Good examples of these are for example Babson in the US or even ESMT in Berlin as a booming tech scene. So looking at these types of programs to help you launch your own company. If you search startup visas, you will get a lot of list of countries that give you visa options to be an entrepreneur. So thinking that way maybe really important. And then the final one, which is what we talk about mostly or what you talk about mostly in your podcast, are those career switchers. You want to switch where you work, your function, your sector and your geography, what they call the career trifecta. And you really need to step outside of your day to day to get into that full time MBA program that provides you not only with the right environment to maybe do that internship between the first and the second year, but also that on campus career networking opportunities, global consulting treks to help you build your professional network. They also have a structure within the MBA that helps you get access to careers such as consulting or investment banking, where you need to think in a very specific way to be successful. So at that point, location is important and the type of again the career goal is the most important, followed by the recruiting market, followed by the school.
• 21:46
  Speaker A: Okay, so getting things in line, I guess one thing I think candidates do a lot of is they just look at rankings and then they make a list. Whereas you're describing something much more nuanced, which is figure out the MBA is like a means to an end. Right, so figure out what it is or specialized masters. Right, but figure out what it is you want to do. And that should determine first the degree type, whether it's like you said, part time or a full time MBA or a specialized master's. But then also you can look at, well, what's the market? Like, how's this school doing at placing people in these different fields or the field that you're particularly focused on? So I guess what advice do you have in that domain? Because I think applicants do have this tendency to just look at rankings, so they'll look at the FT or US News or whichever ranking they want. And sometimes, you know, I always think about like, well, gosh, if I wanted to work in, I don't know, gaming and like video game, you know, kind of design or something or you know, kind of video game business development, et cetera. Gosh, USC Marshall has a real like stranglehold on that space, it's in la, there's a lot happening there. They tend to place a lot of people. Right. So whereas there could be a school that's ranked above Marshall in some ranking that someone would say oh no, I need to go to this high ranked school. But if you know what you want to do and that school's really good at it, then you probably would have a different point of view. So yeah, any advice from you in that regard? Because I think the rankings sometimes make it too easy almost and they're not nuanced enough.
• 23:10
  Speaker B: Rankings answer, how good is this school? What rankings don't answer is how good is this school for me? And that's what we really need to be looking at. Location is one of the things that you need to be looking at to your point. Gaming, Marshall, luxury, Milan, healthcare, maybe Wharton or Kellogg finance, booth marketing. So there's the location and what the recruiting ecosystem is or the industry ecosystem around that school can be extremely important. Also, where do you want to live? Maybe you have family in certain places, maybe you always wanted to live in China or et cetera. So the location I think is something that sometimes is overlooked or the reputation of the school in placing graduates in certain industries. For example, Carnegie Mellon is a great school for tech or we talk about Darden is a great school for consulting. Insad, Insead has many current consultants that are employed by BCG, Bain McKinsey. That takes a year out of their full time roles to get an MBA because that's what the consulting company is requiring of them. What a great place to go to school to learn from the best, get experience in doing these case based interviews to get you better prepared to go into consulting. So looking at where they place graduates, looking at where they're based relative to their ecosystems, looking at the services that they provide to help you be more employable by graduation because it's in their best interest, but it should be in yours. Again, what is the best school for me relative to what is the best school?
• 25:28
  Speaker A: Yeah, I think that's really well said and I think sometimes candidates get carried away and don't realize. I mean you've probably heard Alex and I talk a lot on the show about how we don't really believe in an ordinal ranking anyway. We think they're kind of buckets of schools or sort of a tearing and so you need to. For any given candidate the right answer might be a totally different school within a group that are similarly ranked. I did want to ask you though, since you've been on the career side, how early should students begin engaging with career services and preparing for recruiting? And I guess a broader question is just what separates a student who gets a lot out of the school's career resources from those who maybe just sort of struggle to gain traction.
• 26:08
  Speaker B: My recommendation is to engage as soon as you possibly can, especially if you want to go into those career exits such as MBB or investment banking. I've already heard through my career coaching clients that McKinsey's deadline is in late October or November. So imagine that, Graham, you're starting your MBA in August, September, and already in October you have to apply to McKinsey. You are going to be interviewed in November, December, January for that internship. Same goes for investment banking. And guess what? You really need to be on top of that financial acumen to pass those interviews. So engaging as soon as possible, especially if you want to go into these two very competitive industries. But then when on campus, the most successful students engage. Alumni, your clubs, your classmates, faculty, second year students, career services becomes one node within a much larger network that you need to be engaging. And if you think of this more strategically before arriving on campus and being prepared for that engagement, the MBA goes quick. As soon as you start, you feel like, oh gosh, I need to look for a job, I need to be a student, I need to be in my social activities, meeting new people. Everything goes by very quickly. The more that you can be prepared before you get on campus, the better.
• 27:48
  Speaker A: It does seem like some of the schools we've talked to on the podcast, they have these onboarding programs to get people thinking even before they show up on campus, different things to complete online, et cetera, to hit the ground running. And I just remember from my own experience that that first semester, holding the career piece aside, is already very full and kind of academically challenging. So to the extent that I think, you know, candidates can work on this stuff as they're preparing to move to business school and get settled in, if it's a full time program, the better off they're going to be. So, and you make that point that you know this, that the structured recruiting happens really fast. So being ready for that, I got to ask, I know that everyone talks about this now, but I do want to ask you a question about AI, and it's really around how does this rise of AI influence the way students might think about their long term careers and the choices they make before applying? So do you have any thoughts on how AI might sort of shape someone's thinking here? Because I know there's a lot in flux right now.
• 28:48
  Speaker B: Instead of asking what job should I choose relative to AI, I encourage applicants to ask instead, what capabilities do I need to build to be successful? The best MBA graduates won't be those who compete with AI. They're the ones that will be working alongside the AI bubble.
• 29:13
  Speaker A: I don't think it's a bubble, but
• 29:15
  Speaker B: the revolution AI is certainly changing jobs faster than career planning cycles. And you need to be directionally clear but flexible enough to evolve as things change. I would like to underscore here the value of graduate management education or the value of an mba, because those things that an MBA will teach you, such as leadership, communication, decision making, negotiation, those are the things that together with AI will make you that professional that companies want to hire. Doing an MBA with the AI component together is what is going to make you successful. An MBA will not protect you from AI, but it will help you develop the judgment, the leadership, adaptability and the strategic thinking that AI cannot easily replace.
• 30:17
  Speaker A: Yeah, I could not agree more. I mean, I think it's interesting to hear there are a lot of pundits out there talking about AI disrupting the workforce workforce. And I think obviously there's a lot of validity to that. But I can't help but think that the very skills that these MBA programs are training people in are still going to be really important. I mean, maybe even more so because AI doesn't really have judgment as we've seen so far. So I, you know, I know we're kind of running out of time here, but I did want to ask you one more question and that is if you could give every prospective MBA applicant who student in one piece of career advice before they submit their first applications to business school, what would that advice be?
• 30:58
  Speaker B: Business schools are not simply admitting students, Graham, they're really investing in future alumni. They're asking themselves, can this person succeed academically? For sure. But they also want to know whether you will be able to contribute meaningfully, secure a strong post MBA career, as we have discussed and ultimately, can this candidate strengthen our reputation? Once candidates understand that every part of the MBA journey, from the reflection of career to the selection of the school to the essays, everything becomes a little bit more strategic. So spend less time thinking about how do I get into this school? And more time answering questions around meaningful contributions, strong post MBA outcomes, that way you will strengthen how you will strengthen that school's reputation. That's what's going to get you in the door. And the last thought is authenticity. Everybody's going to use AI to finalize those essays. But the more that your own voice can come through and maybe really do that real introspection of why you, why mba, why institution, and have a very clear argument around those things that is authentic. That is what makes the best applicant.
• 32:27
  Speaker A: Yeah, and you said something earlier, too, that's really stuck with me, and that is this idea that schools are also looking at how you engage, even in the admissions process. And so I sometimes think that certain candidates go through this process in sort of a stealth mode where they're like, oh, this is just kind of a mathematical process. I put in my application. I don't have to talk to anybody, and, you know, they'll interview me if they're interested. And I love that thought that you were giving, which is that maybe, you know, engaging, going to some of their online events or visiting the campus if you happen to be able to, or when they come to your city, like, these things actually do kind of matter and show that you're showing up and engaging. And. Yeah, they kind of. I think it's a good predictive kind of value on, like, what are you going to be like when you're a student there? So I thought that was a really great piece of advice. I just wanted to underline. Yeah.
• 33:15
  Speaker B: And one of the things that business schools do, Graham, is they do lead scoring. And guess what? They give you a score based on your engagement with the school. That may include the amount of time you spend on a website, whether you answer their emails, whether you've met an admissions professional and have a conversation, have had a conversation with them that is meaningful. All those different things give you points. The more points that you have around engagement, around your application and its value, around that attitude, again, that you're going to, how you're going to show up when you are a student, everything gives you points. The more points you have, not only will you get admitted, but you will get a scholarship. The engagement piece with the admissions function is extremely important. Do not ghost them.
• 34:17
  Speaker A: Yeah, that's great advice. I'm so glad that we've had this conversation just because I feel like there are a bunch of different nuggets that we've got across the course of this conversation. Thanks in part to the fact that you're teaching admissions officers how to do this work, but also just your own experience working in admissions and in careers. Camila, thank you so much for all your time today. This has just been such a revealing episode, and I'm hoping that everyone who's tuned in is coming away with an entirely new way of thinking about their career plan and the admissions process. And I think there's a little bit of putting the cart before the horse sometimes, and people really need to think about those career plans, as you've been stressing here. So thank you so much again for all your time today.
• 34:54
  Speaker B: Thanks, Graham. Thanks for having me.
• 34:55
  Speaker A: So that's a wrap on this special episode of the show. Please stay tuned for our weekly Wiretaps episodes every Monday and many more special episodes with thought leaders and admissions directors in the weeks ahead. And as always, please remember to subscribe, rate and review the Clear Admit podcast wherever you listen.