World Business

Typically, students go into business train five years after getting their undergrad degree. A new line takes a year-by-year look at positioning yourself for an MBA

By Francesca Di Meglio

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Five years. For a newly minted undergrad, it sounds like a long fit season. It main be, but it’s also roughly the amount of work experience collected before a student enters an MBA program. Which means that granting that you’re planning on going to vocation school someday, you’ll boost your chances of getting into a top academy by spending those five years wisely.

To help you, BusinessWeek.com is launching a new series: a five-year planner for business school. The five-part line—this is the first—will provide a year-by-year guide to what you should be doing and thinking about in erection the sort of résumé and skill set that will be attractive to MBA admissions committees.

But what are we waiting for? Five years goes by the agency of petty quickly. Here’s what you should be doing in Year One.

The kindly of job you have being delivered of from graduation is not half as important since your performance and the responsibilities you have. Whether you’re working at any investment bank (which is typical for someone destined for the MBA track) or breeding middle school (with your mind pose on one age starting your own business just though you haven’t yet dipped your toes into such endeavors), your goal should be to do your job and do it well, says Lawrence Murray, former associate director in MBA Admissions and current program boss of the BSBA Program at Univeristy of North Carolina-Chapel Hill’s Kenan Flagler Business School.

Set away to show an evolution in your career, Murray adds. But this is just the first step. Figure out your place in the organization and the organization’sitting place in the industry.

Admissions committees will be looking to call on that you made your mark and took advantage of every chance; fit you had to have existence a guide. They wish for to understand that you have inceptive and never shy away from challenges and responsibilities. They put on’face to face care if you do this at a tiny startup or some big incorporated body with a well-known name, says Scott Shrum, director of MBA Admissions Research at Veritas Prep and MBA blogger at BusinessWeek.com.

During this first year on the piece of labor, take advantage of any breeding sessions your company offers, soaking up knowledge about the industry, learning the ropes, and developing skills that you’ll be able to put into action. You’re preparing to build a résumeé that is more than just a list of titles you held; it should eventually have existence a demonstration of your abilities and accomplishments. Ideally, you should have already gotten started on this during internships. Now you’re structure put on and enhancing your skills.

While mostly experts agree that it is not wise to up and quit a job right away, they also say that you shouldn’t have being afraid to leave if there are better opportunities elsewhere or if your current job isn’t offering you any chance instead of growth. Don’t job-hop, says Rosemaria Martinelli, admissions director at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, but leave if you have to, and be ready to give a good explanation to business schools and in posse employers.

At the expiration of Year One, you should feel more confident about your work and have at least a slightly clearer picture in various places what you want to do eventually. You can’confidentially expect to be CEO at this point, if it be not that you should have seen horrible growth and adjustment in yourself and your work, says Linda Abraham, president and founder of Accepted.com, an MBA admissions consulting fixed. "You are really becoming an adult," she says. "Mommy and daddy are not doing it altogether with regard to you anymore."

Networking, or make contacts in your industry or the greater common, is important for potential MBA candidates for many reasons. For starters, especially at this early stagehouse of your career, you want all the help you can get to hit and fashion exhausted a career path that will earn you one great gig after another.

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