In my experience, outside of specialized consultants, many consulting firms
hire preferentially philosophy/history majors with knowledge of languages
and supervisory experience. Sales and community experience is helpful. MBAs
are for scutwork, as they say, and you're supposed to pick up engineering
background unless you are a specialist.
Persons with knowledge of opera who enjoy country music are considered way
ahead of the pack as business and economic analysts, whatever the
background. Most other requirements are there to satisfy government
mandates, dazzle customers or mislead those who do not have the background
and are trying to get hired. There are even standards based on hobbies an
interests that are used for hiring, as these tend to be quite revealing when
all other factors are constant.
Alexander Proudfoot, for many years the top implementation consulting firm,
hired top persons exclusively based on their ability to apply the philosophy
of Gracian, Sun-Tzu, various Samurai thinkers and Lao-tse to business
situations in interesting ways, Aristotle's Physics was required reading
for top persons. Top marks to anyone on the list who figures out why all
this must be so.
The NYT is 70 years behind the curve and why are academics assuming they
understand that it has any understanding of how consultants act?
For many years a major firm used a device called a consensor on those with
academic training or government backgrounds. This device was like the
electronic voting devices on TV that averaged responses. They were asked a
set of questions on how to solve a problem. Those that did not follow the
pack were hired, especially if they knew opera.
Many consulting firms, however, exist that do not follow such standards as
they are in the business of justifying decisions already taken. For them
MBA's and other degrees are a signaling device and are so called quite
openly, also "union cards."
Best Regards,
MG
Sent: Saturday, September 30, 2000 10:15 PM
Subject: The M.B.A. - why bother?
>
> Business schools have been criticized for being pure credentialing
> agencies. The New York Time ran an article today about how consulting
> firms are hiring non-MBA's. usually people with graduate degrees
> in any field. In house studies show that MBA do just as well
> as non-MBAs.
>
> The article is:
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/01/business/01MBAS.html
>
> Question 1: What took firms so long to realize this? Did they just
> depend on the MBA as an easy signal (smart, business oriented) until
> the stream of MBA's started to get diverted to the internet start ups?
>
> Question 2: In a competitive market for labor, what value does the
> MBA degree have? The NYT article reports that non-MBA pick up what they
> need in a few weeks. Is there any value added?
>
> -fabio
>
