Why an MBA Is a Waste of Time and Money

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Why an MBA Is a Waste of Time and Money | BNET.

MBA applications always go up during a bad economy. That is because business school generally attracts people who are lost, and more people who feel more lost when the bad job market is lousy.

But let’s be clear: This is not the type of recession where there are no jobs for young people. This is a recession where there are no GOOD jobs. McDonald’s is hiring in management. There is a bank teller shortage and a shortage of actuaries. There is a shortage of insurance agents. It’s just that people don’t grow up dreaming of these jobs. So they don’t take them. Instead, people who are early in their career – in that time when an MBA sounds like it might work – those people are determined to have only a good job. And if they can’t have that, they get an MBA.

The problem is that an MBA makes it worse.

Here are seven reasons why you should take a bad job instead of getting an MBA.

1. Business school won’t help you be a good entrepreneur.

There is no correlation between being a good entrepreneur and going to business school. In fact, according to Saras Sarasvathy, professor at University of Virginia’s Darden Business School, the most important skill for an entrepreneur is that you know your weakness and you can find people to fill in your gaps. So you pay a bundle to go to school to learn what you don’t and how to find people who can do stuff you can’t? Sorry, that doesn’t add up. The ultimate irony: entrepreneur programs are booming at business schools.

2.     You likely don’t need an MBA for what you want to do.

There are some jobs, very few, where you cannot land if you don’t have an MBA. These are mostly high-level officer-type positions in the Fortune 500. Even then, though, you probably don’t need an MBA. In fact, Forbes reports that CEOs without MBAs bring more value to investors than CEOs who went to business school.

3.     MBAs who are not from a top 10 school don’t increase their earning power.

So if you’re not one of the elite, the degree won’t help you earn more. According to the recruiting firm Challenger & Gray, the degree simply does not separate you from other people in any significant way; it’s too easy to get an MBA from a second-tier school. The cost of the degree is so much more than the combined cost of taking two years off of work and paying for the degree that you are better off taking a job you don’t particularly like and getting a night-school MBA after work hours.

4.    It’s pointless after a certain age.

Let’s say you do get into a top-ten school. Don’t go if you are older than 28. You are too far along in your career to leverage the degree enough to increase your earning power enough to make up for the sticker cost of the degree. In fact, it is so important to get the degree early in your career that Wharton and Harvard have started accepting women earlier than men because the biological clock truncates a woman’s ability to leverage the MBA early enough in their career to make it worth the money.

5.     An MBA is too limiting.

You can’t take an entry-level job after you get an MBA, so you had better know what you like to do. And can’t take a job in a low-paying industry because you have to pay back the loans. So not only is an MBA useless for most jobs, but it also makes you unqualified for more jobs that it qualifies you for

6.     An MBA makes you look desperate

Top ten business schools will not accept you unless you have a clear plan for what you will do with the degree after you graduate. You need to have shown that you have a propensity for some sort of business and that you need the degree to get where you want in that business. Unfortunately, most other schools will take you if you don’t have a plan even though it’s been shown that people who go to business school with no plan for their career graduate with no plan for their career. And then you look not just lost, but desperate.

7.     Business school puts off the inevitable.

Look, it’s really hard to be an adult. You go to school for twenty years being told what to learn and what to think and when to show up, and then you get tossed into adult life and there is no one telling you what’s right for you. You have to figure it out, but you didn’t go to school for that. In fact, school is the opposite of that. So it looks fine to be lost in your 20s. This is when everyone is taking time to figure things out. It does not look fine to spend $150,000 to go back to school just to put off the hard knocks of figuring out where you belong in the workforce. Face reality. Join the workforce.

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DrJohnMcGinn.com | Executive Coach | Leadership Consultant

Values-based decision-making is a concept I use both in my executive coaching and in my life choices. As an executive coach working with clients, one of the first steps that I do is to help the client identify their values. Probably even more important than organizational values are the individual’s personal values. If there is a lack of congruence in the individual values and the organizational values, an individual’s employment becomes work. When an individual’s values are congruent with the organizational values, employment takes on a sense of calling and can be very fulfilling for the individual (and profitable for the organization).

via DrJohnMcGinn.com | Executive Coach | Leadership Consultant.

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What managers can learn from comedians when onboarding

Blog post: What managers can learn from comedians when onboarding | All articles.

Onboarding isn’t a new topic – some great bloggers and HR thinkers have done a fine job of outlining key onboarding considerations for any organization. In fact you can read a bunch of their ideas here – just enter the word onboarding. But today I’ve invited Dan Bingham, manager of creative talent by day and comedian extraordinaire by night to share a different take – his tips for managers when it comes to making that personal connection to new employees during the onboarding process.

From the second you get on stage and grab the microphone, hundreds of eyes are immediately judging you. From the soles of your shoes to the tips of the hairs on your head, the audience is trying to figure out “your deal.” Do you look funny? Are you attractive? Overweight? Hobbit-sized? Too old? Not old enough? The audience is examining you physically, trying to solve some sort of equation where the answer is whether they like you or not. A room full of brains processes all this stuff before you even open your mouth to say “hello.”

This is the life of a stand up comedian. I know this because I am one, and I go through this process every weekend. And in comedy, as in life, first impressions are everything. I can tell from the first 30 seconds of my act whether or not I’ve made a good first impression, and whether or not the next 30 minutes will be a side-splitting night of hilarity, or soul crushing train wreck with no lights at the end of the tunnel.

The same can be said for that new bright-eyed employee on his or her first day of work. Okay maybe a little less dramatic but you get the point. They did their best to make a good first impression and it must have worked because here they are. Now the roles have reversed, they are watching your every move, and now’s your chance to blow their socks off.

So what does stand up comedy have to do with employee onboarding? Plenty. There are plenty of parallels between making a room full of people laugh and welcoming new employees aboard. So let’s start from the beginning, or should I say, before the beginning. Remember when I mentioned how audiences judge you as soon as you step on stage? (I really hope so; it was less than 10 seconds ago so.) It sounded intimidating right? Well in truth, whenever I go on stage, I’ve already been judging them since way before they even took a sip from their first drink!

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