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The Hottest Skills that will Land You the Hottest Jobs

February 8, 2015 by Accepted.com Leave a Comment

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What are recruiters really looking for?

A recent Businessweek article highlights the top skills job-seekers need to make the greatest impression on headhunters and future employers. What’s not high up on the list? Involvement in startups. According to the recruiters surveyed in BW’s 2014 b-school rankings, employees who are entrepreneurial thinkers and “cosmopolitan self-starters” aren’t as important as employees who can “write clean e-mails, work in a team, and think analytically.”

Businessweek’s polled 1320 MBA recruiters from various industries, asking them to choose up to five skills or assets from a list of 14. Here’s what they found were most important (the top three) and least important (the bottom three):

• 68% — Good communication

• 60% — Analytical thinking

• 55% — Ability to work collaboratively

• 15.2% — Industry-related work experience

• 12.3% — Global mindset

• 8.9% — Entrepreneurship

See BW’s chart for more details:

Recruiters said that the following skills/assets were the most difficult to find among job applicants:

• 47.3% — Strategic thinking

• 44.4% — Creative problem-solving

• 42.2% — Leadership skills

Here’s the BW chart on that:

Related Resources:

• MBA Hiring Expected to Increase in 2015
• MBA Project Search: Matchmaking for MBAs and Businesses
• 5 Tips to Find a Satisfying Career

5 Tips to Find a Satisfying Career

October 3, 2014 by Accepted.com Leave a Comment

Get the details about "How to Ditch Your Dead End Job and Find a Career You Love!"

Don’t get stuck in a career you really don’t like!

Work becomes such a big part of your life after college that it is really important to find a career you will be happy in. Don’t just jump into the first job that comes your way after graduation. No matter what anyone else says, you really have to look within yourself and decide what is going to make you happy and what you are going to enjoy doing for the rest of your life.

The truth is that you will be more successful when you are happy at work. So here are five tips to find a satisfying career:

1) Do what you want to do instead of what you feel like you should do.

It’s so easy to just go along that path of what you should do. You can save yourself so much time and trouble if you just start with what you want to do. The career you started in doesn’t necessarily have to be the career you end with. There is freedom in your career and you don’t have to stick with one career. You can be so many things. Don’t worry about what anyone else thinks.

2) Do one small task daily that helps you get closer to your big goal.

If you do something daily on your way to your big goal, totally amazing things will start happening. Wake up earlier or schedule 30 minutes every evening to work on your passion. And don’t forget that the best investment you can make is always in yourself. Take a course or find a coach. It’s always worth it.

3) Learn more about yourself.

Once you recognize what your personal values are, it will feel like everything just comes into place so much more quickly as far as choosing a career that magnifies who you are. As you start to know your personality, motivations and interests more, you will learn what is important to you in the career that you pick. Then you can start searching for a career that will meet your personal and professional needs.

4) Get clear about what you want.

If you don’t know what you want, you will probably just take the first job that comes your way. This can have bad consequences leading to becoming stuck in a career that you don’t really like. Instead, get clear on what it is you want so that you can job search more effectively. Dream up your ideal workday and create a vision board that you look at everyday to remind you of your career goals and dreams.

5) Ask for help.

It’s OK to ask for help. One of the best and easiest ways to gain experience is by asking others. There are so many people out there in the world who are simply waiting to help you, and all you have to do is ask. It’s OK to seek out mentors, and it’s OK to boldly ask people for career guidance and insights. You have to be grabby. Don’t wait for opportunities to happen to you.

Take this opportunity now to decide what you want to achieve and start taking action to make your ideal career happen.

Anna Runyan is the creator of the “Love Your Career Formula.” She has an upcoming free online workshop on October 9^th, 2014 called, “How to Ditch Your Dead End Job and Find a Career You Love.” If you want Anna’s proven step-by-step system to find a fulfilling career, grab your spot here!

Goal Setting, Job Searching, and Sweet Careers

May 8, 2014 by Accepted.com Leave a Comment

Job searchers, tune in! We’d like to introduce you to the woman who wants to help you refine your goals and figure out a meaningful career path.

Listen to the recording of our conversation with Grace Kutney, founder and principle of Sweet Careers Consulting for some excellent advice and a run-down on the current state of career-searching.

00:02:59 – How Grace fell in love with career advising & started Sweet Careers.

00:08:37 – The importance of having a goal (and of being able to change it).

00:17:05 – The move toward unpaid internships: or ?

00:19:43 – Advice for international students & immigrants.

00:25:23 – How social media can harm or help your job search.

00:31:39 – Why and when Grace posts job listings.

00:34:04 – Is there still a place for face-to-face networking?

*Theme music is courtesy of podcastthemes.com.

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Delivering STAR in an American Context

February 10, 2014 by Accepted.com

Guidance for every step of the MBA admissions process!

Culture dictates the way we approach everything, even the STAR format of interviewing

This is a guest post by Grayson Leverenz of MBA in the USA.

It was late in the spring, and the international student sitting across from me was nervous because she didn’t have an internship yet. She had solid skills, a flawless resume, and she prepared for her interviews. What was the problem?

We started her session with a behavioral question. I asked, “Tell me about a time when you worked on a virtual team project.” She launched into her answer using the MBA STAR framework: Situation, Task, Action, Result.

About two minutes later, I recognized the issue. The student was still explaining the Situation.

Americans communicate directly. We value clear, concise messages, and don’t require a lot of background (or context) before the main point.

This student was from a highly indirect culture. She was taught the value of nuances in word choice, tone, and non-verbals. Her culture also required significant background in communicating messages. The Situation and Task were important to her because they provided the context.

I explained the cultural dimension of Communication to her, and gave details about the range from direct to indirect. “Americans prefer a direct communication style and are highly results-oriented. What that means for STAR is that you spend very little time, no more than 45 seconds, on the Situation and Task. You focus the majority of your answer on the Action and Results.”

Her eyes brightened. She understood. We practiced again, and she integrated the new information perfectly. The student ended the season with multiple internship offers, and used her new cultural communication skills to succeed on the job.

Culture dictates the way we approach everything, even the STAR format of interviewing. As you’re preparing to be Accepted, communicate with the receiver in mind, both in interviewing and in writing.

Grayson Leverenz founded MBA in the USA® to help international students build networks, find jobs, and have fun in the USA. Hundreds of global professionals have benefited from Grayson’s intercultural workshops, and she has worked with people from Brazil, China, India, South Africa, South Korea, the UK, and the USA to build effective virtual teams and craft brilliant careers.

Positive Employment Feedback from B-School Class of 2013

November 22, 2013 by Accepted.com

For essay tips for top b-school applications, check out our free special report!

90% of 2013 graduates were employed by September

In September, the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) polled graduates in the b-school class of 2013 and found overall success when it came to finding jobs and valuing their degrees. Here are some highlights from the Global Management Education Graduate Survey:

• 90% of 2013 graduates were employed by September. By world region, U.S. respondents fared the best with 95% employment; this is followed by 92% of Latin Americans, 87% of Indians, 85% of Asia-Pacific citizens, and 82% of Europeans. 92% of full-time, two-year MBA alumni were working at the time of the alumni poll – the highest level since the class of ’09.

• In 2009, only 84% of respondents were employed by the September following their graduation; in 2012, that figure was at 92% (slightly higher than this year).

• 74% of those queried said that they would not have gotten their jobs without their business degree.

• 15% of class of 2013 grads entered the technology sector, compared to 12% in 2009.

• 5% of 2013 alumni reported that they were entrepreneurs or self-employed.

• An eye-popping 96% of 2013 grads declared that the value of their business degree was “outstanding, excellent or good.” This is comparable to past years.

• Median full-time salary for two-year b-school grads (U.S. citizens) in 2013 was $90,000 with additional compensation/bonus of $10,000; for Indian citizens in this category, the starting salary was $34,988.

• For citizens of European countries who graduated from full-time one-year programs, the median starting salary was $101,093.

• Median part-time salaries for U.S. citizens came in at $85,000.

See the GMAC press release, “Nine Out of 10 Class of 2013 Business School Alumni Employed, Poll Finds,” for more info.

Takeaways

The #1 lesson from this data (and the Forbes ROI ranking) is that reports of the MBA’s demise are greatly exaggerated. There are very few initiatives, educations, or projects in life that get the kind of approval ratings and can report the kind of results that GMAC is reporting here. Now is it possible that the 915 responses are somehow positively biased? Yes, but GMAC had a healthy 19% response rate and sent questionnaires to graduates of 129 business schools including the 10% that report they are not yet employed.

For the first time, GMAC also studied entrepreneurs (5% of the class) and asked about their plans. However, the interesting entrepreneurial data from my perspective was the entrepreneur’s view of the MBA. 87% reported that “their education provided them with the essential knowledge, skills, and abilities to develop their business.” Given the small sample size (approximately 46 MBA entrepreneurs), I’m not sure this is quite as compelling as the other data, but it does give an indication that MBAs find their education valuable in an entrepreneurial setting.

Is the MBA a great investment for everyone? No. Poets & Quants recently ran an article on a new book, The MBA Bubble by Mariana Zanetti [Disclaimer: I have not read the book]. According to P&Q and the comments Zanetti posted on P&Q, she acknowledges she went to business school for the wrong reasons and now she has written a book claiming that the MBA is not worth the money and time it requires.

For some people and some business schools, she’s right. For others, she’s wrong. It’s up to you the applicants to make sure that you apply to programs that will help you achieve your professional goals with a strong likelihood of positive ROI. If you do, chances are high that you will graduate into the happy 90% of employed and the 96% of satisfied b-school grads.

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