MBA recommendations: What’s the best approach?

A recent post by mbaMission over at the GMAT Club, " Make sure recommendations are personal",  reinforces the concept that applicants must put time into understanding the commitment level of those who are writing them MBA recommendations. They encourage you to make sure that your recommenders are not writing a single, standard letter to send to all schools.

With this type of standard letter, they say, “your recommender is not really helping you—in fact, this kind of approach could actually hurt you!”

They go as far to say, “If you cannot convince your recommender to write a personalized letter or to respond to your target school’s individual questions using specific examples, you will need to look elsewhere. A well-written personalized letter from an interested party is always far better than a poorly written letter from your supervisor.”

Of course, the more personal and “fitted” a recommendation can be, the better.  But is all this true? Many of us don’t want to hear this. What if such nuance is not possible? How else can you ensure the best MBA recommendations are being written for you?

Accepted.com gives some pretty good additional advice: “Choose someone you know and trust. Do you know about your recommender’s family and what they like to do on the weekends? If not, get to know them well before you ask them to write you a recommendation.”

When you take the time to get to know the people who are writing your MBA recommendations, they are also getting the chance to know you.

“You want your recommender to fight for you and put in the time to write a great application. Make it easy for them by giving them a list of your reasons for wanting to go back to school and your recent accomplishments at work.”

They go on to say that a thank you gift after the fact can’t hurt, either.

If you want your MBA recommendations to MBA programs in DC to be personal, pointed, and influential, make sure you know the people writing them!

The 10 Most Under-Rated Reasons Why You Should Get An MBA

Here’s a list of the top 10 most under-rated aspects of getting your MBA.  These are things you’re probably not even thinking about if you’re in B-School today but will mean something several years from now:

1. The chance to stop and reflect on some big business issues.  Taking two years off to sit in a classroom might seem crazy in today’s deadline-driven world.  How can you possibly forgo two years worth of salary, plus pay the tuition?  Yet, on the other hand, it’s an amazing luxury to be able to get out of the day-to-day grind and actually sit and learn with a little reflection mixed in.  It might seem like a luxury to those who can’t afford to do it, so appreciate it and make the most of that reflection time.

2. The chance to make some lifelong friends who will accomplish great things over their careers in business.  This is probably the big one that most MBA grads talk about several years down the line.  You go through a tough experience like getting your MBA together and it’s hard not to make a few friends along the way.  These friends are more than just good people.  They’re likely to go on to be successful in their speciality of business that they focus in.  They’ll be sounding boards for you in the future.  Friends of their friends will probably be potentially invaluable contacts for you down the line.  Meet as many friends in your class as you can and keep up the relationships.

3. The chance to realize how little you understand about the world.  When you get into B-School, you think you’re the best-of-the-best.  And you are, to some extent.  But you’re probably only in your mid- to late-20s.  Even if you were tops in your high school, went to a great college, and had an amazing job prior to Business School where you were pulling in big bucks, the chances are extremely high that you’re still an idiot.  It’s not your fault.  You’re still the best of the best in your cohort.  It’s just you’re still very green.  You’ve got a ton to still learn about business and the world.  Well, good news. You’ll get a chance to make a dent in that ignorance while getting your MBA.  Go in with your eyes wide open.

4. The chance to learn about how to get a bunch of high-strung, Type-A personalities to work together as a team.  At any good Business School these days, you’re going to get the chance to work on a series of team projects.  This is very important.  All of you best-of-the-best students are keeners.  You all think you’re brilliant.  You all likely want to be the leader when a task presents itself.  It’s a great challenge to learn how to work together and get other Type-A types like you moving in a similar direction.  You may not figure out how to do it perfectly but you will get the chance to learn.

5. The chance to think about the global economy and not just your little world where you used to work.  At most good B-Schools these days, you’ll notice a lot of international students surrounding you.  Some schools will even try to use their international student body as a competitive advantage against other schools.  It is really important these days that you get out of your little perspective of whatever your last job was in your little corner of the USA.  You need to know that their are Chinese, Indians, Russians, Swedes, and Argentinians who are dying to go back to their homelands and eat your lunch.  Better realize there’s a big world out there and you need to figure out how to make some profits in it that will be sustainable.

6. The chance to interact with Professors who will really challenge you. To succeed in your career, you’re going to likely have to find and nurture at least a couple of good mentor relationships.  At B-School, you’ll probably get a handful of professors who really stretch your thinking.  You’ll hear about them from other students.  If you’re lucky, you’ll get into their classes.  If you’re smart, you’ll try to build relationships with the professors and make the most of learning all you can from them.  If you want good mentors later, start by learning how to build a mentor relationship with one of these dynamite profs yourself.

7. The chance to go listen to as many accomplished executives when they come to talk at your school.  I went to Columbia Business School in NYC.  I was fortunate because I could have gone to hear an amazing executive speak every other day if I wanted to.  When it becomes a daily occurrence, you start to take it for granted.  Don’t. If you want to be great, you’ve got to learn what’s made great people great.  You’ve got that chance when these people come through and talk.  And don’t just listen. Sit up at the front of the auditorium. Be the first one to ask a question afterwards.

8. The chance to refocus yourself.  Even though you’re in your mid- to late-20s, the clock is ticking and your career window is closing. You can’t reinvent yourself at 30 and then 35 and then 40.  The people who really go far in their business careers focus.  You’ve got your chance now at B-School.  If you worked in manufacturing before and now you want to focus in on finance, you can do that.  If you did accounting, but want to focus on private equity, you can do that do.  The sooner you pick the area you want to focus on, the more you can focus on the right classes, the right clubs, and the right summer job to go after between 1st and 2nd year.

9. The chance to learn about managing people.  You will get a few classes in managing people.  They might be called leadership or motivation, but they’re about how to manage a group of people working for you.  Prior to B-School, you probably will have had little opportunity to manage big teams.  Therefore, you might blow off these “human relations” classes.  However, post-B-School, you have no idea how important managing people will be to your career. Stop snickering and start opening your ears to what concepts they’re talking about it these classes. You’ll thank me a few years from now.

10. The chance to learn how to get up and string a few sentences together.  It seems silly but a big part of your success in business will depend on how you present.  A lot of people just basically can’t get up and talk.  I went to a Dale Carnegie class in my 20s and they told me that more people are afraid of giving a speech than dying.  It seems crazy that more people would rather die than give a talk.  The MBA student population is more speech-savvy than the general population, but a lot of B-School students stink at speaking too.  Nevertheless, you’re going to get lots of opportunities to improve it.  You might as well take advantage of it and actually get good.  

You’ll be amazed how far it takes you later in life.

Good luck, MBAs.  Enjoy your time in B-School and make the most of it!  You have an incredible opportunity in front of you.

MBA Students Help Find Economic Solutions for the Nation's Capital

When District of Columbia Mayor Vincent Gray enlisted a consortium of the city’s business schools to create a five-year economic development strategy for the nation’s capital, the idea seemed more novel than tactical. After all, it was an unusual assignment, especially because 16 first-year MBA students would do much of the fieldwork.

This week the mayor released The Five-Year Economic Development Strategy for the District of Columbia to praise from the business community. It’s a self-assured vision that looks to generate 100,000 new jobs and $1 billion in new tax revenue by 2017. It reflects Washington’s current economic situation and imagines an even brighter future for the District. It is a strategy that is both thoughtful and achievable.

The MBA students who served as the foot soldiers in this process hailed from The George Washington University, Georgetown University, American University and Howard University. They broke up into teams and studied the city’s seven industry sectors—federal government and federal government contracting, higher education and health care, hospitality, professional services, real estate and construction, retail, and technology.

The report is a testament to this energetic band of student fellows who weren’t afraid to test their skills, forge a new career path (albeit temporarily), and look with new eyes at deeply rooted economic challenges in Washington, D.C. If the report proves to be a success, as I know it will, it will be because of their superior work.

The mayoral fellowship attracted top-of-the-line candidates, all stars in their own right at their various schools. When they came together, the chemistry could be unpredictable but it also was high-spirited and generous. It was a regular reminder that we had recruited a smart, talented and committed group of fellows.
Our team had two Peace Corps volunteers and one Teach for America volunteer, as well as fellows who took more traditional routes to business school, working for Fortune 500 corporations or excelling in consulting companies. We also had public servants who had worked around the globe, from the U.S. Army to The Capital Markets Board in Turkey.

I was pleased to see how international our fellows were. It wasn’t unusual for the group to talk about their adventures overseas, not just because they liked to travel but because their families lived in distant places like India, the Middle East and Russia. In fact one of the fellows, Georgetown’s Sandeep Pillai, who hailed from India, invited everyone to his wedding in India in January.

Pulling a group of ambitious MBA students together could easily turn into a festival of egos, but what was most encouraging was their ability to work in teams and bring the best out in each other. We were especially pleased by the friendships that grew out of the fellowship, as students like Erica Clarke from Howard and Erin Monahan from American explored the city’s arts and culture scene to pull together their chapter on DC’s hospitality sector.

Working all summer long, the fellows interviewed more than 180 key leaders in Washington’s private, public and academic communities, analyzed sector economic data and proposed some 50 initiatives to enhance DC’s current job creation and economic development efforts. When they weren’t fanning out across the city, you could find them haunting the hallways at GWSB and lunching every summer Friday, thanks to the smart catering work of Georgetown fellow Michael Greenwald.

American’s Andrew Olson took on extra duty to guide our efforts on a sophisticated economic impact model we used to evaluate the various initiatives in the report. Other gifted fellows, Eric Igwe from Howard and Chaitanya V. Gopineedi, Julia Robbins and Dmitry Terekhov of Georgetown, matched his work and determination.

I was especially proud of the contributions of GWSB students Kevin Curley, Shruti Garhwal, Omar Hamwi, Stephan Kallus, John McKiel, Dan Roth, Fatih Saglik and Daniel Stoops. I was impressed with their professionalism and dedication to the project. GWSB has worked hard to bring skilled students to our campus, and this group of individuals represents the best in academia.

I welcomed the news that the fellowship has helped at least one of our fellows find a permanent job. Daniel Stoops, who was on the Strategy’s federal government team, has accepted an offer from Deloitte to start as a senior consultant in its Federal Strategy & Operations practice after graduation. When we first envisioned this fellowship, one of our chief goals was to give students the valuable consulting experience that would lead to a career and meaningful work. I am heartened to hear that we have succeeded

The future of The Five-Year Economic Development Strategy for the District of Columbia hasn’t been written yet. It will be discovered over the next five years as the mayor and his staff implement the dozens of initiatives included in the report. As for our 16 student fellows, I have no doubt they will not only excel in their careers but will become the leaders the business community so richly deserves and needs.

INSTANT MBA : Stop Being a Perfectionist And Pay Attention To Customers

Today’s advice comes from our interview with Rob Weber, co-Founder of W3i:

“Owners of new products or new businesses really need to guard themselves against over investing themselves in a certain concept. Otherwise they run the risk of really burning too much energy on something that has no real opportunity to succeed.”

When entrepreneurs focus solely on their idea and get too attached, they lose sight of what customers want. If you’re constantly working on perfecting your idea or product, you become disconnected from customers because there’s no time to check in with them for validation that you’re actually meeting their needs.

Instead of being a perfectionist, Weber suggests you accept something that’s minimally viable so you can get it out there. Weber experienced this at W3i  when he worked on a project for over a year only to realize it wouldn’t work.

“We were so worried about getting it perfect that by the time we finally got it released, it might have been perfect for what our vision was, but I don't think our vision was right. That’s the problem with perfectionist thinking."

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