The message below is from a prospective MBA student who has questions about whether his proposed post-MBA career path makes sense, given his background. He has a tech background (which has become a sort of niche for me in terms of advising people) and wants to pursue a career in Business Development after business school. I don’t know much about Business Development gigs, but I have a few friends who followed that path after earning an MBA, so I based my response on what I learned from them. I hope this kid is able to make it happen for himself when he gets to the end of the road.

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KK wrote:

“Hi Marquis,

I appreciate the great job you are doing through this blog. I have been an ardent follower of blog and already benifitted a lot.

I have a query about my career path and answering the post mba goals in my MBA Applications. Please do find some time to answer my query.

I have an overall 5.5 years of experience as of now in IT industry in various profiles. I started working with an service organisation as a software developer/analyst role for a banking product servicing clients in Middle east and India. After a year, I felt that I should specialize in enterise solutions and product development and hence, moved to SAP Labs. I spent 3 good years conceptualizing, developing sepciailized enterise solutions for small and mid market at SAP. After gaining significant product development experiences, I developed a desire to actually see how these IT Solutions save dollars for our customers. To fulfill that desire and to gain the implemenation expereince, I moved to an Conslting organisation.

Currently I work with SAP Consulting for more than 1.5 years now , implementing SAP for customers across the world. I worked with Customers in Germany, Canada and the US. Though I have been in consulting with significant customer facing experiences, my scope/role is always limited to the business processes and the implementation of IT.

To increase my business knowledge, I put efforts to work with presales team and the business development team in few assingments. As they were short time assignments with little scope, these efforts bought little value addition to me.

I seek an MBA ( other than personal development ) to be able to move into Business Development Roles where I can directly work and contribute to business, understand the markets, gather intelligence on potential customers, develop niche market segements etc. I have an entreprenuerial ambition to start my venture at some point of my time in my career and I feel that An MBA and a career in Biz Development will help me in realizing that.

The question I have is whether such a career path makes sense ( in general and to admissions) . I have not seen many people getting into business development but rather saw many people getting into strategy. I have a fair idea about a strategy consutling role and Biz dev role and I feel that Biz dev role will help me more rather than a strategy role to help me realize my entreprenuerial dreams.

Do you think my feeling is correct ? Is my plan of getting into a Biz dev role realizable ?

Let me know your comments.

Thanks,

KK”

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My response:

KK,

I hope you’re doing well and that your MBA applications are moving along well. I often think back to when I was in your shoes trying to figure out what my post-MBA path would be and whether it made sense and it certainly isn’t easy to manage. Plus, like you, I’ve had a Tech background before my time at Stanford, which, in my mind at the time, made it even more difficult to figure out what a legitimate next step could be. I guess I’m saying all of this to let you know that I’ve gone through the same sort of self-reflective process that you’re facing now and can understand how uncertain things may seem for you right now. Hopefully, my words will proe helpful as you think through the direction your career will take after you earn your MBA.

Your basic question was whether your plan to move into a Business Development role after business school and I’ve got a pretty straightforward answer for you on that one, followed by some additional items you might want to consider. In short, getting a Biz Dev job right out of B-school is definitely realizable and, given your professional interests, background, and goals, makes complete sense. I have a few friends who had a range of backgrounds before business school and moved into Biz Dev positions right after graduation. A few others did something else immediately after school and then transitioned into a Biz Dev role a couple of years after earning an MBA. As you can see, your proposed path is one that CAN work for you, but it’ll be up to you to make the right moves to ensure that it WILL work for you.

A few things that you should think about around this career path are as follows:

- Optimal coursework: As far as I know, there aren’t any majors or individual courses entitled “Business Development”, so you’ll likely have to pick a set of classes that will give you the background necessary to be a business development professional. You might want to reach out to some current Biz Dev folks to find out what these optimal courses could be, but, off the top of my head, I’d say that Strategy, Econ, Finance, and Sales could be big ones for you.

- Choosing an industry focus: This one is pretty basic, but, if you’re going to take on a Business Development role, it should be at a company whose business interests you. So, given your IT background, I’m guessing that you’d be interested in working for a Tech company, but you could have an interest in an another area. Wherever your interests lie, you should start doing research into the industry that you want now and continue to do this sort of research going forward to develop your expertise. This will come in handy both when you’re going through the interview process and while you’re analyzing the industry once you actually get into the role.

- Finding opportunities: Business Development isn’t an area where one would usually see job postings, so it might take a good amount of networking to find the right opportunity. Often, your business school’s career services office will have contacts and listings of available jobs, but you can’t just rely on that office to find your Biz Dev jobs. You’ll have to reach out to alums, do research online, user online job sites, and maybe even do a few cold calls to inquire about open positions. It might sound strange to have to do that if you’re a student at a top B-school, but that’s pretty much the name of the game when it comes to finding jobs that aren’t recruited for on campus.

- Big vs. small company: The big vs. small company debate is an important one in any field, but it’s probably more important in Biz Dev jobs because it will affect the scope and very nature of your work. If you were to go into a big company, there would be a structure in place and you’d likely have a chance to learn the “right way” to get things done, but it could take longer for you to move up the line. On the other hand, a smaller company would offer huge growth opportunities and you’d probably be able to “roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty” faster, but, if there isn’t much of a structure in place, you could end up stumbling your way through as you figure out how to do the job. Ultimately, you’ll have to think this decision out for yourself, but be mindful that it’s an issue for you to consider.

I don’t know if the perspective given above is the sort of insight that you were seeking, but it’s my honest read on your situation. Take care and I wish you the best of luck on your business school apps.

Marquis