In the MBA world, this is the most critical and challenging time of the two-year programme. This is placement time.
For many students, it will be the culmination of twenty-four months of intense hard work, accelerated learning and the start of a dream career with a company they have aspired to work for. Equally, some students will be forced to come to terms with the gaps in their preparation and will now be scrambling to cover for what they missed learning through the duration of the course. As I teach at a Business School, I get panic calls asking for advice on how to learn in two weeks what was missed in two years. To be clear you are trying to achieve the impossible. Nevertheless, here are some of my thoughts on how to bridge some of the gap.
Firstly, divide your efforts into a few broad areas. The obvious ones are technical and conceptual knowledge, self-awareness, career goals and professional aspirations, industry and company information and a general awareness of current affairs and happenings.
If you didn’t focus and learn the basic concepts, jargon, terminology, frameworks and models, then you are at a serious disadvantage. I would probably go so far as to say that you are not qualified to join industry. The best you could now do is to review chapter summaries from the main textbooks to build some basic, working understanding of the fundamentals. This has serious limitations but it’s better than appearing for the exam with no preparation at all. The odds of bluffing your way through the application-oriented evaluation done by the hiring panel are very slim. Hopefully, there will be other areas that can potentially make up for this gap.
By self-awareness I mean that you are conscious of your nature as a person, your strengths and weaknesses, the life experiences that have shaped you and your broad interests, hobbies and passions. I’ve known candidates who may not have been very bright in their conceptual skills. But they compensated with some passions and interests that gave them a fighting chance. Employers try to gauge your potential based on the way you have developed your overall personality. Out performance in sports, excellence in languages especially foreign languages, mastery of a musical instrument, relentless commitment to social and volunteer work, initiative demonstrated in starting a new business. All these are indications that something drives you and you do have the ability to focus and commit. If this describes you, then project this with passion and enthusiasm during every stage of the selection process.
All of us have some stated or unstated career goals and aspirations. Not everyone aims to be a CEO. The key is to be sure where you want to land up within a reasonable timeframe of say 10 to 12 years. Think this through in two ways. One is the organizational level that would be achievable with your abilities. The other, equally important, is what you want to be known for in your professional community. Some of us would like to be recognized as subject matter experts. If you didn’t learn the fundamentals at B-School, this may not be your preferred option. Others aim to earn respect for their people and team management skills. You may be the person whom others can rely on to deliver commitments. Still others have a reputation for being compelling presenters. Figure this out and drive the discussions in this direction.
One thing that demonstrates genuine interest is when you take the trouble to find out as much as possible about the company you want to work for and the industry in which it operates. Interview panels always ask you what you know about their business. So read as much as you can about the industry, issues and challenges confronting the company, big recent news such as a patent or a new JV, and of course basics like sales results, growth, profits and stock price trend to name a few. And when the question is asked, don’t hold back any details. Researching this may take effort but it will be worth it.
Finally, please devote at least thirty minutes everyday to reading at least one newspaper. Get conversant with current events in the political space, on the economic front and broad societal trends. Nothing is more annoying than a candidate who has no consciousness of the world surrounding him. So, this could actually be a very critical area that will partially compensate for your generally weak fundamentals.
Last point. The list of questions that will be asked is fairly standard. Take the trouble to write down the answers, refine them and then practice them to perfection. Become comfortable with hearing your own voice.
As I said at the outset, you have put yourself in a weak position by missing the meat of the MBA program. If you are serious about getting your career started, then follow these steps with the commitment that you lacked earlier. It may actually get you your first job.
Dig in. And don’t let this happen again.