How has networking been beneficial to you?

Question

Most people believe getting an MBA is not all about the education, but about the networking and the people you meet. I've heard this from so many students, graduates, and schools. So I would like to ask this question: How has the networking you did during your MBA years benefited your post-MBA career? Is the networking really all that? Is it more important in certain fields than others?

Thanks!

Thanks!

riverripper · Answer

I dont know how important it is in all areas or for all people but it definitely is much more beneficial than a lot of people realize. Most companies I networked with I at least got an interview invite from. This along with the additional info you can gather from a company are typically the biggest benefits of networking. I dont think networking alone will get you an offer but it will set you apart and help you not only get interviews but perform well. Off campus networking will open doors to opportunities you may not even know existed or will expand way beyond what a few paragraphs in a job description will tell you.

Personally without networking I wouldn't have ended up where I am. It got me the interviews and also gave me a very different understanding of the position than the job description. During internships I had an offer based solely on networking which is unusual but not unheard of. You just have to talk with the right person and make a very good impression, in my case it was a SVP of a company who was well above the person making the internship hiring decisions. However, I declined that offer but still maintained that individual in my network and still talk to him on occasion.

KingKREEP · Answer

nsp, correct me if I am wrong, but I think you were asking about the network of classmates we develop in Business school as opposed to "networking" as part of internship/full–time recruiting right? Since river has already answered the latter, I will take a shot at the former.

As a disclaimer, I have to say that I have not graduated business school yet, but will finish up this year. A lot of my friends however, have just graduated with the class of 2010 and I have asked them this very question. All answers I got were firmly in the affirmative - that the B-school (Ross in this case) network was phenomenal. From a purely opportunistic perspective, I know of a few stories where certain graduates helped their still jobless classmates land interviews (some of which turned into jobs) at the firms they began working at after graduating. I also know of a case where one grad put his classmate in touch with a friend, and they have founded a company now which is projected to have $500K in revenues by the end of fiscal 2011. Now, from a purely social perspective, when I visited NY last summer, the Ross 2010 grads were regularly meeting for happy hours (not school coordinated),birthdays, dinners, etc. and I got a chance to jump in on a couple. The impression I got was that they were more friends than former classmates. So, short answer to your question: yes, the network appears to be of phenomenal help post MBA - both from a career perspective, and for just plain fun.

How has networking been beneficial to you?

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