A little advice for techies considering B-school

Published on July 3, 2005 by Marquis in Uncategorized

This morning, I got an email from one of the readers of this blog (shout out to Forrest G.) who has a background similar to mine (software engineer trying to move into business). He asked about the potential of moving into technology consulting and post-MBA roles in Technology, so, although I am not an expert, I gave him the best information I could think of. After writing the email, I thought that this info might be of interest to others, so here it is…

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Moving from the software industry into technology consulting is a very realistic career path and probably one that many people with in-depth implementation expertise end up pursuing after business school. Unfortunately, I can’t think of any sites off the top of my head that will give you a good description of what technology consultants do, but I’m sure that a Google search would give you a lot of links to pages that will descrive what the role entails. I would recommend against using the job description of a technology consultant to determine whether or not you’re suited for the job because you have no way of knowing what your skillset will be once you finish B-school. Also, it is true that there are a gang of people who want to go into consulting, I believe that the economy is recovering and, as a result, there will be increased demand for consulting services in the near future. As such, there will be good demand for young MBAs who ave the desire to put in work for clients. So, there will be some stiff competition, but it’s likely that there will be a job out there for most of the people who are interested in a career in Consulting.

You’ve already mentioned business development, product marketing, and technology entrepreneurship as post-MBA technology-related careers and those are usually the first that come into most people’s minds. Some others that you might consider are project management, finance roles, and corporate strategy at a technology or IT services company.To find more information, you could look at general purpose job/education sites like WetFeet.com (they’ve also got some great hard-copy career guides that could help you out) and Vault.com and more technology focused sites like CIO.com and ComputerWorld.com (specifically their IT Management sub-section). A general purpose search on Google might yield some valuable online resources to find more post-MBA technology-focused careers, as well.

The MBA fits very well into a post-MBA career in Consulting and, in fact, it can be argued that the degree enables that career change. One of the problems with starting your career in the implementation side of technology is that it can be almost impossible to get away from the hardcore technology side of the industry. With an MBA, you’ll have the business acumen to get away from that and venture into other areas like business development and general management. The MBA will also give you the skills to able to perform successfully in that role. Some people may already have those skills, but I certainly didn’t before starting at Stanford and, although, I still have a ways to go in my learning, I’m MUCH better off than when I started. What I think you’d have to do to justify the need for an MBA is to state your desire to move into technology consulting and claim that you already have the technology experience and skills to understand the job but need the business and management skills to actually do the job. This way, you’d be showing that you’re not just pursuing an MBA simply to have one…you’d be showing that you’ve decided that you truly NEED one to meet your career goals, which is vital when stating your case to Admissions people.