Help! Family Business after MBA

Question

Hi guys,

I am currently writing my essays and after a lot of introspection, I have come up with my long term and short term goals. Could anyone please point out any shortcomings or gaps or logical flaws in the proposed career progression?

Profile:
Nationality: Indian
GMAT: 720
Decent GPA, Non elite undergrad
Work Experience: 3.5 years at top software company (think Microsoft, Amazon, Oracle). No formal leadership opportunity at work but plenty of informal leadership stories.
Youngest in department history to get company's top performance award. One of the youngest to be promoted. Part of an elite group which works on innovation, reporting directly to the global head.
 
Background: Comes from a business family. Only son of first generation entrepreneur. Family business in mechanical engineering.
Strong extra-curricular both in college and after college. Good community engagement.

Short term goal: After MBA, work as a consultant for a large manufacturing company, preferably in industrial machinery. This is in order to gain experience about how huge manufacturing companies work and scale. (Bain has an excellent portfolio in that area.)

Medium term goal: Use computer technology skills, MBA skills and consulting experience to grow family business to one of the top companies in its field. (Its a huge field. The industry leader has annual sales of over $5 billion.)

Long term goal: Use the resources from the company to work on really complex technology + people problems which are being faced by India.

Schools I am applying to:
Stanford, Berkeley, Kellogg, Duke Fuqua, CMU Tepper, UCLA Anderson

Also, if you have any advice regarding my application, that will be greatly appreciated!

Cheers!

jeffreyadcom · Answer

Positives:
1) Decent GMAT score 
2) Clear career goals with steady, logical progression. Easy to build the career goal essays; but would be hard to explain the switch from IT work ex in other essays.

Negatives:
1) Work ex is about a year less than par.
2) Undergrad brand. Stanford could be difficult! If you drum up family business ahead of your short term goals, then it'll be easy to impress Stanford ADCOMs. Dream big NOW and GSB would let you in : )

Drop Short term Goals, club your medium & long term goals to build a coherent "world-conquering" pitch. I could assist you with your essays. All the best.

99Colleges · Answer

Here are my comments on your career goals:

Short-term : Why manufacturing? Is it for family business? Second, you can’t control which clients or industry you work in as a consultant, at least in the short term. There are lots of variables involved.

Medium-term : If consulting in manufacturing is a path to expanding the family business, then that path may just get broken because you may not necessarily work with clients in that industry. And if that’s not the path, then the original question looms: why manufacturing? Moreover, consulting to entrepreneurship is a flogged-to-death rationale given year after year by many. I’m not saying it doesn’t work, but because adcoms have been exposed (in essays) to this career paths so much that they can easily get skeptical if you fumble even small in your reasoning. Also ‘MBA skills’ work more for short-term goals. Medium and long-term paths build more through earlier professional experience and network.

Long-term : Prima facie, looks disconnected. People rarely use resources of the company unless they’ve made billions and are in philanthropic mode.

anibjoshi · Answer

Thanks for your reply! The main reason I had consulting in my short term goals is because the switch from IT to Manufacturing in my long term goal is difficult to justify without any prior work experience in the industry. But then I decided to think of the family business as "a high technology company with an established product line that needs better processes, better marketing strategy etc". The kind of things that the MBA can give me. And my own computer science expertise can be used in making the product line "smart" instead of the current pure mechanical products. So revised: Short term goals: After MBA, go back and head the marketing division, and develop and execute a strategy to expand the existing customer base, currently in 5 countries to 15 countries. And use my IT expertise to optimize processes like ERP systems, etc (which are currently not present). Long term goals: Become one of the world leaders in the $20 billion "specialty industrial valves" with presence in all 38 countries. Develop "smart valves" which have better efficiency, better life and higher performance, which will lead to lower running costs for steel plants, power plants, oil and gas refineries etc, thus saving billions of dollars of the world economy in the long run. Does this sound like a coherent world-conquering pitch? Again, thanks for all your help! I really appreciate it :-)

anibjoshi · Answer

Hi! Thanks for your reply! Yes, you are right. I mentioned manufacturing because my family business is a industrial machinery manufacturing company. My reasoning behind consulting was to get some experience in the industry before going back to the family business. But then I decided to not focus on the manufacturing and engineering part (in which the company already has expertise and an established world class product line) and instead focus on the other aspects of the company which are currently not world class (HR, Marketing, IT etc). Also, my own technical expertise in computer science can be leveraged in development of "smart" products (better sensors, better software, self error detection, etc) So my revised goals strategy is: (I have written it in an above answer but I'll repeat it here) Short term goals: After MBA, go back and head the marketing division, and develop and execute a strategy to expand the existing customer base, currently in 5 countries to 15 countries. And use my IT expertise to optimize processes like ERP systems, etc (which are currently not present). Long term goals: Become one of the world leaders in the $20 billion "specialty industrial valves" with presence in all 38 countries. Develop "smart valves" which have better efficiency, better life and higher performance, which will lead to lower running costs for steel plants, power plants, oil and gas refineries etc, thus saving billions of dollars of the world economy in the long run. Does this sound like a connected and believable goal strategy? Thanks for all your help! I really appreciate it! :-)

jeffreyadcom · Answer

It does : )

All the best.

Regards,
Jeff

99Colleges · Answer

Looks fine. Though, anything audacious merits some explanation as to how you're uniquely positioned to achieve it.

Second, whatever you're mentioning, don't forget the overarching issue of why you want to pursue an MBA. Your goals, especially short-term, should derive some value from an MBA program.

VeritasPrepDozie · Answer

Thanks for sharing your profile. You have a solid profile and your career plans are decently aligned. I think Kellogg, Stanford will be really tough as well as Haas. I think the key for you is to identify elements of your profile that stand out from the masses. You come from a competitive applicant pool so just being good enough won't cut it with the schools you are applying to

MBAbot · Answer

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Help! Family Business after MBA

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