I sat down today to take the Career Leader test. INSEAD career services recommends that all incoming students take this online assessment because...
"Most MBA students (typically 70-80%) don't know what their career goal is when they enroll - you come here to discover options! Don't be afraid to admit that you don't know...."
That's funny, is it just me or does this message differ significantly from what we were told when going through the application process. Essays were supposed to show a well thought out and quite specific plan for what we were going to do with our MBA degree. Anything less than that showed a "lack of focus". In retrospect, I think that whole exercise was just to show the admissions committee that we at least were realistic about what the MBA could do for us even though most of us weren't really sure what we wanted to do post-MBA.
My Career Leader Results
Most promising career paths:
General Mgmt, Private Equity, Entrepreneurship, Strategic Planning & Business Development
Here's how the test works. It matches both your ability & interest in various business activities to those required in various fields. For example, I showed a high level of interest in Enterprise Control (enjoy setting strategy and seeing it carried out, want to have ultimate decision-making authority for complete operations, etc) which is exactly why I am really keen on the first 3 career paths above. Contrarily, I did not score high on Investment banking because I place value on having a life outside of work. OK, so a lot of it is common sense, but I'm sure it can be very useful to those with less an idea of what is involved in the various business fields.
On the improvement side, the test thinks I may be too honest, sensitive, and modest. I do agree to an extent, luckily I have picked up a step or 2 in the great corporate politics dance. However, it does point out real improvement areas.... negotiation, influence, self-marketing.
In the end, I think it was a well spent 1.5 hrs. Sure, a lot of it one should already have a feel on, but I think there can never be enough introspection over the next year and this test definitely helps add a little structure.
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2 comments:
Good to see a nice, level-headed response and a decent test output.
At least it worked for somebody.
I completely agree with you on the apparent discrepancy between admissions phase and now, re: when is it ok not to have a plan?!
Like many things, admissions seems to be largely about working the system; I would assume many of us are nowhere near as sure of our futures as our essays make us out to be.
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