Building your job pipeline as an MBA student in Germany
One of the key areas where I have seen my MBA mentees at the WHU-Otto Beisheim School of Management struggling with is finding a job opportunity that excites them and makes a good match with their interests, expectations, and profile. Therefore, now that the fall hiring season (September-October) after the summer break is coming up in Germany, I thought it was timely to write about this for those MBA students who are getting ready for the “manic” process of landing a job.
Landing a job is an extremely inefficient process
Allow me to start by explaining what I mean when I said the word “manic” above and also add a short disclaimer.
If you have great connections to potential employers or are a highly gifted MBA student, with a strange-to-find combination of business, technical, and creative skills and expertise which are currently high on-demand (e.g. an MBA with strong data analytics experience or an MBA with deep AI skills) plus a strong personal brand which clearly and actively “sells” you towards recruiters (more on this on my article “Positioning 101 for MBA students”), your experience might be different. You may actually be one of those few MBA candidates who are fortunate to get continuously approached by recruiters and whose biggest challenge is to select who to go to (for which my previous article “Job selection guidelines for MBA graduates in Germany” might be of help). Recruiters are literally “fighting” for you, which is how most early MBA applicants and students I’ve met think it should be. If this is your case, this article is probably not relevant to you.
Nevertheless, chances are that you are not in this situation. I am not saying this to discourage you. I am also not saying that you do not have anything special to offer. What I do want to say is that, in reality, most MBA students, no matter how good they are and how great their business school is, are still going to struggle to find a job that makes a good match with your interests, your expectations, and your profile. Therefore, it is very likely that you will experience the high inefficiency of the job market today and all the pain and frustrations that it brings along for the candidates.
Now, back to the definition of “manic”. I’m always amazed of how much effort landing a job is for the majority of the MBA students I have interacted with, especially for international students. Here is the typical example:
In my first applications “sprint”, I applied to 15 companies, I got invited to an interview with 5 of them, and got no offers.
In my second application “sprint” (e.g. targeted to a different set of companies, to different type of roles), I applied to 20 companies, I got invited to an interview with 3 of them, and got one offer which was pretty bad (not a matching role with the candidates’ interests, low compensation, etc.).
In my third application “sprint” (e.g. again targeted to a different audience), I applied to 25 companies, I got invited to an interview with 5 of them, got 2 “good enough” offers, and finally selected one of them (more about “good enough” vs “perfect” jobs in my article “Job selection guidelines for MBA graduates in Germany”).
You may be thinking, “but Sergio, this is ridiculous. I am a student at one of the top business schools in Germany. I have been told that companies come here all the time and that job opportunities for us are great”. Unfortunately, what I have experienced with multiple MBA students I have mentored is that this is actually not an uncommon scenario. Most MBA mentees I have had go through multiple “sprints” (a term that I borrowed from the agile development methodology used primarily for software), each sprint typically implying a “pivot” in their application approach (different roles, different companies, different industries, etc.). If you think about all the effort that going through each sprint implies (customizing CV, customizing cover letter, sending application, etc., etc.), it is hopefully clear how inefficient the process is when you compare the effort that students typically put in versus the output they get.
The solution: Continuously building a “strong job pipeline”
For those of you with experience in sales and marketing, the term “pipeline” or “funnel” should be well known. For those who don’t, “pipeline” basically refers to, within this context, to your list of job options at a given time.
Job search works very similar as how businesses work. Here is a simple example to make it clear: You have 100 leads who gave their e-mail address on the landing page of your new product or service you launched. You e-mailed them, asking for a call to connect and only 40 of them replied back. You talked to those 40, but only 10 are actually a good match for your offering. From those 10, ultimately only 2 of them bought your offering. In other words, you started with 100 leads in your “pipeline”, but only 2 of them converted into paying customers. I see these type of examples over and over working with my clients in the B2B software industry, but it happens almost across every industry. That is the reason why companies pour a lot of money into marketing campaigns, outbound sales, etc. in order to build a “strong” pipeline since they know that, at the end, only a handful of those leads are ultimately going to become their customers.
Job search is not so different than that. Therefore, throughout the years, I am now convinced that it is key for any aspiring professional, looking to develop their career, to continuously build a strong job pipeline.
Approaches toward building your pipeline: Passive vs Active
You may now be thinking, “ok, ok, I get it. Building my pipeline is important, but when should I start and where do I start?”
Well, the answer to the first question “when should I start?” is very straight-forward. The answer is NOW!!!! A job typically doesn’t come to you when you decide that you want one. A job search process for a middle management position in Germany, from the moment you start to look for a job until the moment you actually sign your employment contract, can take anywhere between 6 to 9 months. Therefore, if you haven’t started to build your pipeline already, today is the day to begin.
Regarding the second question, “where do I start?”, there are two general approaches to consider: a “passive” and an “active”. I ordered them intentionally in this way since I think that most MBA students only focus on the “active” approach, leaving the “passive” approach aside which, in my opinion, is even more important, especially in the long run.
By “passive” approach I refer to the deliberate steps you take to attract potential employers to you. Passive does not mean that you do not do nothing. It means that, opposite to the “active” approach, you do not proactively reach out employers directly (e.g. sending your application online, reaching out to hiring managers) and/or indirectly (via headhunters, career portals, etc. — more on these indirect options in my article “Brief guide on Headhunters, Career Portals, and Job Listings for MBA students and graduates in Germany”).
The Passive approach
I include this approach first since, as I mentioned before, I’ve seen many MBA students doing nothing to very little on this approach.
The passive approach comprises everything that you do to make your profile more attractive towards potential employers and get them interested to work with you and reach out to you. It covers both online media (e.g. your own website, your social media) and offline media (e.g. regular participation as speaker at events related to your domain of interest and expertise, membership at industry associations). At the end, this is closely linked to the development of your own personal brand.
In my opinion, personal brand is an extremely important but also a complex topic for most MBAs, especially since there is no “one-size-fits-all” formula or a single “go-to” source for it. Nevertheless, there is a fantastic book that I recently read in this domain and which I totally recommend titled “Innovation Capital: How to compete and win like the world’s most innovative leaders”. This book shows you, based on an extensive research of multiple “innovation leaders” like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, how to position yourself as an “innovation leader” to win resources and support from key stakeholders, including potential employers, to develop new ideas and innovative projects.
Another great personal branding framework that I found is from Victor Cheng, an ex-McKinsey consultant. In a nutshell, Mr. Cheng’s framework is summarized as follows: Personal Brand = Reputation x Amplification via Media. See the resources section below for more information on this framework.
I do not intend this to be a comprehensive guide on personal branding. There are great resources about it and the two that I mentioned above are a great place to start. I suggest you even consider working with a personal branding agency. It is not cheap, but I consider it is an investment worth doing. Nevertheless, here are five key areas that I suggest you to check out:
your social networks: I know this is a no-brainer, but I’m still amazed on how little effort many MBA students I’ve worked with put into really building a strong and consistent brand throughout the multiple social networks they use, especially across professional/career-oriented social networks such as LinkedIn and XING (the latter relevant for German-speaking countries)
your own website: Having a “hub” where all your digital presence is centralized, interconnected, and curated is increasingly important in today’s business world. I personally built my first own website (www.sergiogchavez.com) earlier this year and I have realized how relevant it is especially when connecting with new people and sharing the impact and value of your work. Of course, you can also use it to share it with your parents and family if you want to get an extra tap on your back :) You may even here feedback like “hey, I didn’t know you do X or Y” or “now I finally understand what you do!” Building your own website is possible nowadays with little technical knowledge thanks to website builders like Wix or Yola. What I personally found most difficult is not how to technically set it up, but to select the content to put out there and structure it in a way that it shows a comprehensive picture of who you are, what you do, and how you can help others. Therefore, I suggest that you do try to get help from people you trust and knows your career path to build and curate your content.
your own proprietary content: Developing a recurrent stream of contents around one or a few specific topics and actually providing some valuable insights towards a specific target audience or audiences is also a great way of getting people’s attention. In my experience, the key here is “consistency”. It is not “quality” as many people would think. Yes, it does need to provide value to your intended audience, but it does not need to be perfect from a writing/grammar perspective. What is important is that you “stick” to it and share something useful to your target audience(s) on a recurring basis through the channel that is most convenient to them. I know this first hand as I have done multiple tests in this regard. This series of articles for MBA students and graduates in Germany is a great example of it.
your affiliations: Who you associate your name with is also key. In this sense, associating yourself with a well-known school, with a well-known employer, with a well-known association, etc. allows you to “borrow” their reputation. Therefore, it is key that you carefully curate what your affiliations are and how you communicate them for them to be relevant to your target audience. Being part of the MBA program at a leading business school is already a great affiliation on its own, but it is typically not enough. You also want to show that you are not only “warming the bench”, but that you are contributing in some way to make the community around your business school better. Student initiatives are a great way of doing this. Keep also in mind that affiliations need to be real for them to be relevant. In other words, it is useless to say that you are part of X or part of Y if you are really not contributing to X or Y in some relevant degree. People will ultimate ask you what you do and what your impact is in X or Y and having a poor or false answer can ultimately damage your credibility.
your endorsements: Who you praise, who you support, who you invest in, also speaks on its own. It shows people what you value and what is important to you. Due to that, it is also important that you curate and carefully pick what and who you endorse, both online and offline. Similarly to your affiliations, your endorsements allow you to “borrow” the reputation of the person, the project, and/or the company you are endorsing. Use endorsements wisely and, as with affiliations, do them when you do have a good knowledge of that what you are endorsing and have some actual connection to it.
The Active approach
This is the approach most MBA students know and use. As mentioned before, this could be further subdivided in direct and indirect. I won’t reiterate or expand on these concepts since most MBA students are well versed on them and since I have also written about them in previous articles.
It is also important to distinguish between a “targeted” and an “exploratory” active approach. Targeted means that you have a list of specific companies you would like to work for and you reach out to them. Exploratory means that there is a specific domain in which you are interested (e.g. startups, finance, hi-tech) but you don’t have an actual list of specific employers you would like to work for. Therefore, you reach out to multiple people and entities (including companies but also other entities as universities, trade associations, etc.) working in that domain in order to ultimately identify specific employers you would like to work for. Either way, whether targeted or exploratory, here are some ideas on how to build your job pipeline based on this active approach:
look into your own network first: This is many times overlooked especially by international MBA students. You may think, “I want to work in Germany and all my contacts are working in my home country with no connection to Germany”. That is not always entirely true. Look deeper and you may find out that a close contact of yours is actually working with a client or a supplier who has a team in Germany. I know this first hand because this is how I actually got my first full-time job in Germany.
take advantage of your business school’s alumni network: This is also a no-brainer. Nevertheless, what I do see is that many MBA students start to connect with alumni later than they should. In my opinion, you should start connecting with alumni since the moment you are applying to a business school. Even more, you should double, triple, quadruple your efforts once you get accepted and decide to go to a specific business school. Since the moment you are accepted, you are already “part of the community”. Therefore, ask the MBA admin team to provide you with as many alumni contacts as possible who are working in the companies or in the domains of your interest and ask those alumni to connect you with other alumni who are also relevant for you. Keep in mind that not all alumni are going to reply to you. Not because they don’t want (there is typically a non-written rule that says that you should support always your peers from your school), but because they have other priorities than helping you. Therefore, it is important that you make your introduction distinct and offer something valuable to them in exchange for their advice or connections (e.g. connect them with someone relevant to them, buy them a drink when they are in town, bring some gift from your home country).
leverage your business school’s faculty: professors working at your business school typically have great insights and connections at companies within their field of research. Take advantage of them and ask them about companies that may be a good fit for you. Ask them also about introductions they could facilitate for your with key contacts at these companies. Keep in mind that professors cannot always give you the names of their contacts as they may have some privacy agreements between them. But do ask them about alumni, especially previous students they had, who may be working at these companies.
be on the look for company or executive rankings and awards: There is currently a wealth of rankings and awards that you can use to spot interesting companies to work for. In Germany specifically, local publications as manager magazin, Wirtschaftswoche, Handelsblatt and Gründerszene continuously publish interesting company rankings and organize awards. Also international publications as Forbes and Fortune are great sources. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find a German version to Wealthfront’s US-specific “Career-Launching Companies List” (see 2019 list here), but these type of lists are a fantastic resource to build your pipeline.
follow your target employers, its leadership team (global and local), and their key executives through social media: Nowadays, most top and mid executives have an online presence, including a profile in LinkedIn. Unless you know them or have something valuable to offer them which would justify you to connect with them directly, I suggest you use the “follow” function from LinkedIn. Many executives contribute in LinkedIn on a regular basis and the majority almost always share job opportunities at their companies, especially in their teams. Therefore, this is a great way to spot when a new job opening is available.
attend events where your target employers are present: Events are typically a great opportunity to increasingly connect with your target employers, especially if an executive will hold a keynote. This way, you can get insights typically not available to the general public but also get to know key individuals taking hiring decisions. The key here is to do your “homework” in advance, identify who are the relevant people who will attend, and what are some relevant talking points for you to share with them. Do not approach them with “hey, I need a job. Can you give me one?”, but genuinely approach them with questions regarding career opportunities at their company and topics which are interesting for them and for you. Take advantage of your status as a student to get special rates at these events but also to have a more “friendly” introduction towards executives. It is also very different when you approach executives saying “I am an MBA student at X and would love to hear your thoughts about career opportunities at your company” than saying “I am unemployed and would love to hear your thoughts about career opportunities at your company”.
look into your own consumption patterns: sometimes the best opportunities are right in front of our nose. Look in the type of things you buy and where you buy them. Look at the labels of who produce them and look into the companies and executives behind them. This may seem too basic for some MBA students, but I have seen this over and over as one of the best way of spotting great companies to work for especially considering that you already have great insights on them by being their client!
Wrapping it all up
Continuously working on your job pipeline is one of the best investments you can do during your career, especially during your MBA.
Keep in mind that timing is key and the earliest you start, the better.
Keep also in mind that this is a messy process. You can first start with a list of 10 companies, reach out to all of them, get rejected by some and get demotivated by the others, and end up throwing away that list and creating a new one from scratch. You may even spot, unexpectedly, some great companies that you’ve never thought about but have an exciting business model. Therefore, my suggestion is to keep an open mind and stay open to possibilities.
What is most important is talk to the people in the trenches. Try to talk to current employees of those companies, especially alumni, to get a better feeling of how life is at those companies and the career opportunities for your. If you can, try to even land an internship if your availability allows it.
I am convinced that there are great companies everywhere and that one of your main jobs during your MBA is to find out those that match your interests and profile. Therefore, don’t overthink it and start today. It is worth the effort.
Resources
Book: Jeff Dyer, Nathan Furr, Curtis Lefrandt. “Innovation Capital: How to compete and win like the world’s most innovative leaders”. Harvard Business Press. 2019
Article: Victor Cheng. “A Framework for Your Personal Brand”. 2016 (I suggest you register at the bottom of the article to get information about the “How to Develop a Personal Brand” program. I personally bought the program and found it extremely helpful)
Ranking: “The 2019 Career-Launching Companies List”. Wealthfront. 2019
