The Google Resume (22 page)

Academic Graduate Degrees

Career graduate programs offer you the ability to either switch into a new field, or to obtain a specialty in your existing field. They are often intensely academic programs, where students are often expected to juggle multiple graduate courses while doing additional research.

As rigorous as these programs can be, they can offer you a leg up on your (future) coworkers. You’re no longer just any other entry-level employee; you have a specialty. You have unique knowledge that you can offer that relatively few people can compete with. That knowledge can offer the ability to contribute in a way that other people cannot, and to therefore get ahead faster.

The flip side of this is that you may not
want
this specialty anymore once you’ve invested two or more years studying in it. In fact, this is exactly what many PhDs find; after five to eight years researching a tiny aspect of their field, the last thing they want to do is work in that one, narrow aspect.

Before enrolling in your master’s or PhD program, ask yourself:

• Do you want to work in this field afterward?
  If you don’t plan on directly using the knowledge from your graduate studies, it may not be worth it.
  
• Is the pay worth it?
  Look up your desired postschool jobs. How much do they pay? Is the cost of graduate studies compensated for by your expected salary?
  
• Are there other ways you can get this experience?
  If all you want is some additional knowledge in a field, there may be more affordable and efficient ways to get it. You could, for example, just enter at a lower level and hope to move up.
  

Preparing Now

The exact ways to position yourself for acceptance will differ based on which graduate program you are enrolling in. If you’re applying to a computer science program with only an electrical engineering degree, you may need to refocus your professional work on coding or enroll in additional courses. Other people may already have the “right” background and can get accepted whenever they apply. Regardless, analyze the four areas below:

The MBA

Though the cost of a Master of Business Administration (MBA) is quite similar to other graduate programs, the benefits and goals are radically different. For starters, the MBA is a
professional
degree program. You don’t enroll in an MBA because you really want to study a specific dialect of marketing; that’s what PhDs in marketing are for. You’re not studying for an MBA because you love school; if you tell the admissions officers that, it’s a pretty good way to ensure your rejection. An MBA is a career move.

For almost as long as MBAs have been around, people have debated whether it’s worth it. Not surprisingly, people with MBAs say that it definitely pays off; those without say you don’t need it. The truth is that it depends. It depends on you, your goals, your background, your MBA program, and, well, dumb luck.

However, what you will potentially get out of an MBA is the following:

• Education.
  You will learn a bit about every aspect of business, including marketing, management, finance, and accounting. Understanding each of these areas even at a cursory level can make you more ready to lead a business or business unit. Additionally, during the course of an MBA, you study a broad spectrum of companies, and you begin to develop patterns of analyzing business issues.
  
• Experiences.
  MBAs are filled with opportunities to lead clubs, conferences, or trips. After all, MBAs are about training the future leaders; it’s no wonder they have lots of leadership opportunities. You will also have the chance to attend talks from business leaders around the world.
  
• Credibility.
  There are certainly those who don’t believe in the value of an MBA, but for most people, an MBA from Harvard, Stanford, Wharton (University of Pennsylvania), Sloan (MIT), or Kellogg (Northwestern University) means something. If you previously have an engineering background (as many MBAs do), an MBA will show that you’re more than just the typical engineer.
  
• Network.
  Your classmates will have similar career goals as you (to be really successful in business), but will spread out across fields, industries, and countries. That gives you a broad network of experienced professionals. Need to talk to someone in a senior position in consumer products? Done. Your network is more than just the people you meet; you can also reach out to the full alumni network. When you share this alumni connection, people are much more willing to pick up the phone.
  

What’s in a Name?

Of course, not all MBAs are created equal. You may be able to get a great education anywhere (including for free from books), but the strength of the experiences, credibility, and network will vary based on the school. If you have a Harvard undergraduate degree, go to work for Microsoft and move up to a program manager lead, and then attend Peabody University for your MBA, you probably won’t get as much out of your MBA. Your classmates are likely to be much less impressive than you, the alumni network will be weaker, and you’ll get much less credibility from this MBA.

That’s not to say that Peabody University’s MBA is worthless—not at all. It’s just probably not valuable enough to compensate for your time and money. Your MBA program needs to be on roughly the same “prestige” level as your prior experience.

Preparing Now

MBA programs want people who will be leaders and will make an impact on the world. You need to have shown that you already
are
a leader, whether it’s through starting your own company or through leading projects at work. They want people who have shown success in the following areas:

• Academics.
  Your undergraduate grades are a predictor of your graduate grades, as well as your work ethic and intelligence. You don’t have to get straight As, but it’ll certainly help if you do. Extremely poor grades can be a deal breaker without something major to compensate for this. If your grades are low, you will need to take extra care that you perform well on the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT).
  
• Professional.
  Find ways to demonstrate leadership in your professional work. If you’re a software engineer, MBA programs won’t care about the fancy algorithm you wrote; they will, however, care about the projects you led and the challenges you faced. Working for a big name company also goes a long way.
  
• Extracurriculars.
  Unless you have an extremely demanding job, top MBA programs will expect that you have gotten involved outside of work, and preferably at a leadership level. Handing out soup in the soup kitchen won’t count for much, but being the president of a major help-the-homeless group will.
  
• GMAT.
  Business school’s standardized test, called the GMAT, is a test of your grammatical, analytical, and mathematical ability. You don’t need to get a perfect 800 on the test, even for admission to Harvard, but a score below 650 may hurt you. Schools publish their 25 percent to 75 percent range, so make sure you don’t fall below that.
  

The earlier you can plan for this, the better. Many candidates started planning their business school applications two years in advance.

Your “Story”

In addition to proving yourself in multiple areas, your experiences must fit into a coherent story about why you want an MBA, what you’ll get out of it, and what your short-term and long-term goals are. As an example, my story was as follows:

My goal is to be an entrepreneur in the technology space. I have previously worked as an engineer for Microsoft, Google, and Apple, which gave me a very strong background in software engineering and gave me the “technical” credibility. I have started two businesses and worked as a start-up, which has given me a taste of start-up life, as well as a picture into the challenges that start-ups face. I am confident that the background in marketing, finance, accounting, and management that I would get as an MBA student at [Your University] would make me a better entrepreneur. I hope to get actively involved in the entrepreneurship club, and expect to start a business either during or directly after school.

An alternative story for a similar candidate might be:

I am passionate about technology, and hope to become a VP or CEO at a major technology company in the consumer products space. I have previously worked as a program manager at Microsoft, where I have had the opportunity to lead the development of several features. I maintain a blog about the newest gadgets, which has offered me the ability to share my insights and receive feedback on them. I hope to double major in marketing and strategy at your MBA program, which will help me to better understand the direction of a company. After graduation, I plan to join Bain, BCG, or McKinsey as a consultant, where I will get to see a wide variety of business problems in a short amount of time. I will then join a medium-sized tech company and work up to a VP or CEO role.

Many of my classmates at Wharton’s MBA program admit that their short-term and long-term goals might not have been completely accurate. MBA programs want to know that you understand exactly what you want to want to do in life, and that has encouraged some people to fib a bit with their goals. The best stories, however, tend to be the truest ones.

Part-Time Schooling

The idea of part-time graduate programs is enticing to many. Rather than scrimping to get by for two years while paying tuition and forgoing salary, you get to keep your current salary while “just” taking a few classes on the side. This is a great option for many, but you should make sure that you know what you’re getting into.

• It’s really, really hard.
  You know how stressed out you get about work? Double it. Your professors won’t care that you have a major project due at work; it’s not their business. You still need to get all your homework and tests done.
  
• There goes your social life.
  Many people find that after juggling work and school, they have little time and energy left for friends. You might be able to make it out on the weekends, but grabbing dinner with friends any night of the week is probably shot.
  
• You lose some of the value (MBAs).
  A core value of the MBA is the network. If you’re working full time, you’re less likely to get to know your classmates. And to make matters worse, the full-time MBAs may not see you as their peer.
  
• You significantly restrict your options.
  If you’re attending school part time, you are probably not relocating. That means that you are restricted to schools in your area that allow part-time students. Rather than attending the very best school that you can get into, you are restricting yourself to a small set of schools.
  
• It’s much longer.
  Rather than getting graduate school over in one fell swoop, you will likely drag it out over four or more years. Are you prepared to deal with the time, stress, and cost of a graduate program for this long?
  

On the bright side, you’ll have your salary to live off of, and your company may even help pay for your tuition.

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