While recruitment is never simple or trouble-free, there are ways to shortcut applicants to fast-track likely contenders for the shortlist. Certainly, people who have already successfully completed an MBA are worth consideration for top positions.
There are certain advantages to job applicants who are reasonably young, ambitious, and determined to get ahead. This typifies the MBA graduate who seeks advancement beyond their current role; if there are no open positions, they often look elsewhere for new opportunities to make use of their hard-won business knowledge.
Here are a few of the benefits that an employer receives when looking for MBA graduates in their recruitment drive.
A Shorter Recruitment Process
By looking to short-list applicants who hold an MBA, companies can highlight people who might be worth taking a more serious look at.
Let’s face it, competition for jobs is fiercer now than ever. For companies that do their own recruitment, this makes it very difficult to sift through mountains of resumes to find the few diamonds in the rough. It’s very easy for someone who’d make an ideal employee to fall through the cracks and get overlooked as a result. This hurts the company’s interests and doesn’t meet its goal of ‘hiring only the very best.’
No Seat Fillers Here
In every company, there’s a certain percentage of people that can be charitably called “seat fillers.”
They show up for work on time but proceed through their tasks with a lackadaisical attitude. Sure, they manage to get through company performance reviews because they’ve become adept at sweet-talking their way through life, but they’re not a great ambassador for the business.
Jack Welch, the former CEO of GE, used to fire the bottom 10 percent of performers to make way for new people. That’s not necessarily the right approach to take because it strikes fear in employees, but it does illustrate the problem nicely.
Enthusiastic Go-Getters
Seat fillers are not wanted by management. Instead, what they want are go-getters. People who are fired up to achieve great things in their career. To receive promotions, pay bumps, and other benefits that accrue to middle and later, upper management. They’re voracious for knowledge and love a new chance to show what they can do. But who are these people?
Frequently, they’re holding an MBA.
Maybe they saw an advert saying, “get your MBA online” and it piqued their interest. They looked into what a master’s in business administration would teach them and the doors it would open for their future career. And this started the ball rolling.
Leadership Qualities
The larger the organization, the greater need for strong leadership at every level to create a new business success story. It’s not only the CEO who must lead from the front. Their Vice Presidents must each lead their part of the company and encourage the management team under them to strive to exceed the company or departmental goals.
They have learned through studying case studies about great business leaders why good ethics, honesty, decisiveness, and fairness are all qualities of a trusted leader. That what a brand stands for really isn’t in their “Mission Statement” that hangs on the wall in a frame but shines through with how every employee behaves when representing the company.
Great results come from motivated people who know what’s expected of them and want to rise to the occasion. Most people aren’t born knowing how to inspire others. Instead, they must learn new techniques and different approaches to deal with a variety of personalities and still be able to get through to them.
Deep Knowledge in Systems and Processes
When going through an MBA course, students get into the nitty-gritty of business operations. This is necessary to breakdown how a company operates in order to deliver goods or services to their customers or clients.
Armed with this deep understanding of how businesses function – not just how to work in one job within a large company – they can improve systems and processes to resolve bottlenecks. Longstanding issues that hold back progress are resolvable when someone with a logical process-based approach applies their mind to a problem.
With a structured approach, these types of technicians see a business as a series of systems, sub-systems, and necessary processes. They can take a view of how the company operates now, strip it down to its bare essentials, devise better systems, and then reassemble everything again. This can get companies out of the fixed mindset that they won’t change something “because that’s the way it’s always been done.”
Financial Know-How at the Ready
For the owner or upper management who know that they’re lacking in financial knowledge but don’t want to look dumb in front of their accountant, employees with an MBA provide a useful sounding board.
Rather than discussing financial lending options or corporate structure with their accountant and hesitating to stop them to quiz them about a new term or concept that they’re not clear on, the CEO or upper management will feel more comfortable taking advice from someone new to the company with corporate finance know-how.
This type of employee brings with them an expertise that’s different to what the accounts team offer. Being more focused around business strategy, operational management, and financial controls, their well-rounded outlook is refreshing. Not only can it answer questions that key people have been wanting to ask for months, but it also both widens and deepens any discussion on business strategy going forward, which spans many different areas of the company.
For companies that value what is taught on MBA courses, it’s hard to argue with the idea of at least highlighting applicants who have an MBA on their resume. Whilst it won’t be suitable for every business or role that executives are looking to fill, it’s no surprise that plenty of Fortune 500 companies are stocked full of MBAs. Just like having a few in-house lawyers checking their legal position has its place, employees with a master’s in business administration bring a wealth of knowledge and usually ample experience to back it up that’s highly sought after.
