Leaving School With a New Career

Abby Scott, director of MBA career services at UC-Berkeley, explains why using B-school to switch your job focus may be a good move

• View Slide Show

As the workforce becomes more accommodating to occupational "fluidity," staying in one career seems like a thing of the past. So potential career switchers taking the MBA route shouldn't balk at veering off the steady path. Instead, experts point out that going to B-school in order to make a transition really works.

Career center professionals, such as Abby Scott, director of MBA career services at the University of California-Berkeley's Haas School of Business, regularly see career switchers in action and are more than willing to discuss suggestions for pulling off a flawless career change (see BusinessWeek.com, 7/6/07, "Real Life Career Changers").

Scott, a former product manager, recently spoke with BusinessWeek project assistant Alina Dizik and offered some quick tips and advice to potential career switchers. Here are edited excerpts of their conversation.

Are many MBA students going back to school in order to make a career switch?

Certainly. During orientation, we always ask, "Who knows exactly what job they want to be doing after graduation?" Only 20% of the hands go up. Then we say, "Raise your hand if you don't know what you want to do and know you don't want to go back to what you were doing." Almost all of the hands in the room go up—that's our informal poll.

Where can students find information about switching careers while in B-school?

The entire B-school experience is about making a career change, so it actually starts from the classroom. From day one they attend courses that they want to make into their career somehow—in addition to also taking the core classes.

What's the first step?

For someone who wants to make a career change, it's imperative to focus on related courses and choose relevant electives that have a project component. For example, a student who's interested in a nonprofit could encourage his team to focus on the organizations that do this type of work. It's also a chance to make contacts in the desired industry.

When is the earliest a student should turn to the career center for help?

These days our career advisers are even seeing students in the summer before their first year. Most know they want to get out of what they've been doing, but aren't sure what they actually want to do, so we'll talk to them in the summer to help them get started.

What kind of advice do you give students who are just starting to explore career options?

First, evaluate and see where your original career can be rewarded in the marketplace. Then we encourage exploration of those target careers and students can read more about them and talk to people that work in those industries. All of our students take the CareerLeader self-assessment—an instrument designed to help students. It's a pretty comprehensive tool and specifically tailored for MBAs. The temptation is just to interview with contacts, but that's one of the last steps.

Besides classes, how else can students get involved with making a career switch?

First-years are invited to attend sessions by former interns who have spent the summer working. One day they can learn about consulting and another day they can learn about a business development internship. Also, they can listen to industry panels and start to explore by asking questions—it's a combination of all these things. They should get the basic information from an industry perspective and then choose specific companies—to attend their corporate presentations late in the school year.