There are a number of recent news items worth noting in today’s blog entry. We’ll kick things off with an interesting article that has appeared on the Wall Street Journal’s free College Journal site. The story covers the importance of pre-MBA work experience – not from an admissions perspective – but from the vantage point of MBA recruiters:
Both quantity and quality of experience are crucial. Recruiters are looking for students who have learned to cope with ambiguity, adversity and conflict in the workplace. Some M.B.A.s believe “simply working two or three years entitles them to a leadership position immediately following graduation,” says Jeff Rynbrandt, who does recruiting for Guidant Corp., a marketer of cardiovascular products. “To me, students need to have demonstrated success in their past job with positions of increasing responsibility and be able to articulate how their actions specifically contributed to those successes.”
The article goes on to strongly underline the fact that recruiters prefer MBA hires who have already made a few mistakes on the job (and learned from them). What is perhaps most interesting about this topic is the range of views exhibited by leading MBA admissions offices with regards to work experience. Where employers seem to universally support MBA hires with a fair amount of ‘seasoning’, leading programs like Harvard Business School have been pushing for younger applicants – often waiving off the importance of full-time work experience if an applicant has demonstrated particular leadership strengths. Other programs, such as the Tuck School at Dartmouth continue to emphasize the importance of work experience – stating that students must have substantial experiences that they can bring to the classroom and share with their peers.
Speaking of admissions criteria, the Economist is currently running an interesting piece on a new member of the HBS class of 2008. Blake Gottesman, who will be joining Harvard this fall, is a 26-year-old college dropout who has served as President Bush’s personal aide for the last four years. He has worked in some capacity for the Bush campaign and administration since 1999. His connection to the Bush family comes via his romantic involvement with Jenna Bush, who he dated in high school. A spokesperson from HBS cited “extraordinary circumstances” with regards to the school’s decision to admit a candidate with no college degree.
In other MBA news, the FT reports that INSEAD is launching a global network of entrepreneurship centers around the world. The first center, which opened in Tel-Aviv, Israel last Friday, will research and publish case studies on Israeli entrepreneurs while also serving as a site for conferences and lectures on entrepreneurship. The school is considering China, India and California’s Silicon Valley as other possible sites for centers. INSEAD professor Phil Anderson offered the following thoughts on the program’s approach:
“Traditionally, entrepreneurship has been examined from a narrow local perspective. INSEAD will bring a fresh global perspective to entrepreneurship research and teaching drawing on examples from all over the world.”
Also in the news, Wharton is getting ready for a Global Alumni Forum which will take place in Istanbul, Turkey from June 8th-9th. This elaborate conference is one of three annual forums that the school offers to bring alumni together to discuss global business trends and network (this year’s sites also include Mumbai and Rio de Janeiro). Most impressive about the event in Turkey is the list of speakers: which includes the prime ministers of both Turkey and Lebanon, along with leading executives from multiple Fortune 500 firms.
