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The Cranfield MBA: Springboard to Career Success
How does your MBA serve the needs of companies and students?
The statistics for student employment from Cranfield School of Management speak for themselves.
Of the latest MBA cohort to graduate, 93% were in new roles within three months of leaving the School – an impressive figure and one that reflects the time and effort we invest in our students’ career development during the MBA programme.
Cranfield offers a one-year, post experience MBA, so our students are older (the average age is 31). They have at least eight years’ work experience, GMAT scores averaging 660 and they represent – in any one cohort – around 30 nationalities.
They are therefore ambitious, determined, high-performers who have clear expectations of the development they want from their MBA, and the career progression they expect to achieve. It is up to us to meet those expectations, to develop these already-successful managers into exceptional leaders, and help them secure their next role along their career paths.
So how do you do it?
One way is to look carefully at the skills top managers need now, and will need in the future, and then develop those strengths among our students during the MBA programme.
We significantly re-designed our MBA last year to take account of the changing needs of the business world. Our alumni advised us on the skills they most value from their studies, and the skills they expect in graduates they employ.
As a result, personal development – always one of Cranfield’s strengths – is now deeply embedded in the programme. Our students work in ‘learning teams’ throughout their programme so we develop graduates who offer a practical approach to management, are strategic thinkers who can deliver long-term solutions, and can work with other people to achieve results.
Our nine-strong Career Development Service works with the students from the moment they arrive to long after they leave, advising and supporting, and creating opportunities for them to meet employers and recruiters.
They organise a wide range of activities each year including more than 40 personal development workshops, careers fairs, in excess of 100 mock interviews, and leadership assessment centres. They offer one-to-one coaching, arrange employer visits, produce a customised yearbook of students to send to prospective employers, manage the student in-company project programme, and organise numerous networking opportunities for students to meet and talk to prospective employers and alumni who regularly recruit from the School.
The team works with both the students and companies to identify and match their values and skills, and after they graduate, MBAs have access to an online personal development system to enable them to analyse and progress their development throughout their career.
Company connections are maintained with many top employers including American Express, AT Kearney, Deloitte, Deutsche Post, Amazon, Nike and Goldman Sachs. All of this helps us to achieve one of the best employment rates in the business school world.
On completion of their MBA the average salary increase for Cranfield graduates ranges from 60% for Western European students (non-UK), to 211% for Asian students. Their MBA is therefore a springboard for career progression with 67% of graduates changing sector, 57% changing job function and 39% moving country.
Dr Bill Tribe, a 2005/06 MBA student, has nothing but praise for his Cranfield experience: “Both the leadership assessment centre and mock interviews have been crucial advantages in my obtaining a job offer early in the course.”
“The careers staff build networks with the highest calibre employers, whilst being approachable and ever-willing to help guide students from the very start of the programme” he says.
Our record in graduate placement and helping our students and graduates to develop their careers is enviable. The current Chief Executives of Asda and easyJet are Cranfield MBAs, as is the Managing Director of John Lewis and the President of Sony Ericsson.
Our network of 10,000 alumni recruit from Cranfield because they know, first-hand, the quality of MBA graduates we produce. Our alumni also repay us handsomely by investing their time in the MBA programme, returning to the School to advise current students, to take part in mock interviews and assessment centres, and by making donations to the School to ensure high levels of teaching and research are maintained.
