How will the Booth MBA help you achieve your immediate and long-term post-MBA career goals?, Sample 2
How will the Booth MBA help you achieve your immediate and long-term post-MBA career goals?
My immediate post-MBA goal is to join Bain, BCG, or McKinsey as an associate consultant. In this role, I will gain operational experience leading engagement teams and insights into how executive-level leadership makes decisions. Because my longer-term role is to move to an operations role in a growth equity firm, I will benefit from the well-rounded skillset and broad industry exposure that consulting offers.
Booth’s flexible curriculum and emphasis on experiential learning will allow me to prepare both for a career in consulting and eventually, for an entrepreneurship-related role. As an software team leader, I have experience solving quant-heavy problems, but in consulting I will be translating big-picture business problems into strategic actions. Current Booth student Mickey Mouse recommended the course “Consulting Strategy, ” taught by Donald Duck, to learn strategy frameworks and “Strategy Lab” with Scrooge McDuck to build firsthand, consulting-specific problem-solving experience. Mickey told me that both courses helped him build the basis of his essential consulting toolkit.
As a software team leader, I focused on developing hard skills, but for my post-MBA roles in consulting, I will need softer, client-facing skills. Booth will help me build these skills through courses such as “How to Lead Negotiation,” and “Soft-skills Decision Making.” Booth’s Public Speaking and Communications Group will also help build the soft skills necessary to transition from leading engineers to leading consulting teams. Outside the classroom, I will strengthen my case interviewing skillset through the Management Consulting Group’s Interview Family program, preparing me to recruit for top consulting firms. As Mickey Mouse told me, the program is ideal for students like me who are transitioning into consulting from a different industry.
In the consulting industry, my leadership role will be different from the software team leadership roles I’ve held in the past: I will lead a team of direct reports rather than dotted-line reports, and I will be responsible for the outcome of the engagement. Booth will help me address this gap in my leadership profile through first-hand leading engagements. After completing LEAD, I plan to further study the art of leadership through Minnie Mouse’s unique “Leadership Studio,” and as a second year, I will put my leadership studies to work as a coach for the Business Solutions Group. In this role, I will develop a consulting-style leadership toolkit while working with Chicago-based startups and non-profits.
In the long term, career plan is to leave consulting and move into an operationally-focused role in growth equity, where I will work with late-stage startups. In the role of Operating Vice President at a tech-focused growth equity firm such as Monster 1, Monster 2, or Monster 3, I will leverage my consulting experience to work alongside the portfolio company’s management team, helping to grow their business through expansion into new markets, development of new services, or marketing investments.
Booth’s New Venture Challenge was one of my first formal introductions to entrepreneurship: a friend recommended that I virtually-attend the finals in 2020. That New Venture Challenge was one of the sparks that inspired my interest in starting and growing businesses. At Booth, I plan to continue this pursuit through courses such as “New Venture Strategy” and “New Venture and Small Enterprise Lab,” to prepare me for my roles in growth equity. Consulting and growth equity are offer the perfect intersection of my problem-solving abilities and my passion for new businesses, and the Booth MBA is the perfect program to launch me towards these goals.