Harvard Case

Leveraging Your MBA

By Jim Montembeau, MBA, Partner of Bell Oaks You have spent the past two years trudging through business case after business case, creating pro formas, and working through discounted cash flows to evaluate an organization for a pending acquisition. You’ve read enough business books to forget what it was like to read for pleasure. Welcome to post-MBA life. Is it what you thought it would be? For those of us who are now burdened by massive student loans and who sacrificed and put in countless hours that took precedence over family time, we are left wondering what that generalist three-letter acronym really offers us. What doors will open that only two years ago seemed impenetrable? What glass ceiling can we break to give us a coveted title and financial independence? Earning a Master of Business Administration (MBA) is extremely valuable for most careers and you should feel proud of your accomplishment. There is, however, a direct positive correlation (remember stats) between the value of your degree and how you leverage what you have learned, your school network and the credential itself. Despite what many entering a program may think, an MBA is not a career panacea that will cure professional mistakes, nor will it automatically allow you to leap frog your colleagues who don’t have the degree. In fact, the number of MBA degrees earned in the past 30 years has grown tremendously—less than 5,000 in 1960 to more than 100,000 in 2000 thereby potentially tempering the allure of MBA candidates.i So, what now? As a Partner in an executive search firm and an MBA myself, I pondered this question the moment I graduated. Fortunately for me, my current position has enabled me to “sample” experiences from thousands of professionals and companies to determine what aspects of an advanced degree are most marketable and how they can best be leveraged. Some of my findings are obvious; others are more ambiguous in terms of what “should” be done to maximize your...