Welcome to MBA Podcaster, the only broadcast source for cutting edge information and advice on the MBA application process, I’m Janet Nakano. Focusing your MBA education has a lot of benefits, you can fill in gaps in work history, give you expertise in the field and help you break into a specific industry. In Part I of our series on MBA tracks we learned that there’s a difference between just taking an elective course to actually specializing your MBA degree. Last time we explored tracks in entrepreneurship, technology, general management and finance. This time we’ll look at four more popular tracks in non-profit management, marketing, real estate and healthcare. We’ll talk to the heads of well established MBA programs in these fields. If you missed part I of our series, visit our website mbapodcaster.com.

Not for profit organizations are ironically big business. According to the national center for charitable statistics there are about 1.5 million non-profits in the US alone and in 2004 the non-profit sector accounted for more than 8% of wages and salaries paid. Kristen McCormack is Faculty Director of the Public and Non-Profit Management Program at Boston University School of Management, she says there is less and less difference between for profit businesses and non-profits, “I think it’s a trend in business schools now is that the lines are actually blurring between what’s for profit, what’s non-profit, what’s government and what are the roles of those three organizations. So increasingly you’ll see a for profit business that might be in the business of running half way and drug addiction recovery houses, then on the other hand you might have a non-profit that’s actually running a for-profit business subsidiary so you might have the Delaney Street Foundation in San Francisco that’s running moving services and landscaping services and a restaurant. So the trend in business schools is that there’s really a blurring of those lines. Non-profits technically are organized differently as a corporation under IRS law, the majority of non-profits, though not all are tax-exempt charitable organizations so that’s a 5013 Corporation under IRS law. But generally they are a corporation that is organized for the purpose of public benefit.”

Increasingly, MBAs are needed in the non-profit industry since many of these charitable organizations are built on business principles. McCormack says MBA students with a non-profit concentration go into three main areas, “A third of our students go on to run and manage non-profit corporations, everything from art organizations to environmental organizations, to housing advocacy organizations. They can be executive director, they can be director of development, the chief financial officer, program developer, so in some management position at a non-profit organization either local non-profit organizations or national non-profit organizations of which there are over a million in the country and it’s actually the fastest growing sector. Another third go into something that’s related to non-profit which is corporate philanthropy, corporate social responsibility, socially responsible investing, that’s not non-profit management but many students who enroll in a non-profit program at a university will increasingly have that as their focus. And then the third are people who go into government organizations for the government accountability office somebody might be you know a senior analyst there and we also look at the non-profit consulting. Most of the big firms now have non-profit consulting so somebody who graduated last year for instance works for Deloitte in their public and non-profit consulting.”

Finding a job in the non-profit sector might be somewhat challenging, McCormack says most non-profits don’t recruit on campuses, “The majority of non-profits whether they’re local or national don’t have the ability to recruit, they don’t have paid corporate recruiters the way some of the financial firms do. There are some exceptions to that. For the most part non-profit organizations don’t have enough staff to go to career fairs, so you know we’ll have a spattering of them at our career fairs but most of the connections that our students make are through the alumni network, we’ve got a very strong alumni network of almost 800 alumns and we subscribe to a non-profit MBA connection which ferrets out very wonderful jobs that are appropriate for our MBA students. We also work and uses the resources of idealist, we you know go to their fairs, our students go to their fairs that they sponsor which are quite heavily populated by non-profit organizations. So we really access the network that’s out there, we also have a lot of connections with non-profit head hunters and non-profit recruiting firms.”

We often hear that you’ll have to take a substantial pay cut in the non-profit sector, and while it’s admirable to work for a socially responsible cause you still want to pay back that hefty MBA education. However, McCormack says non-profit salaries are competitive, especially at the top, “The highest paid positions in the sector are the director of development, the chief financial officer and the executive director and those three tiers are very well paid, there’s a quite a shortage of people both you know on the finance side and fundraising side and in fact even the number of executive directors who are predicted to retire in the next ten years is substantial. There’s a trend toward a number of the non-profits that started in the 1970’s for instance and may even have those same executive directors, those people are now retiring so there’s an anticipated shortage of executive directors and leadership in non-profit organizations.”

If you’re interested in pursuing a MBA with a concentration in non-profit management, McCormack says you should evaluate programs on a few criteria, “First look at the course offerings, some programs look maybe a little bit richer than they are, you know so there’s a listing of courses but then you find out that courses taught once every two years or hasn’t been taught for a few years. So ask how frequently courses are taught and how many electives are available per semester. And second would be what are the opportunities for students to do hands-on projects both related to classroom learning as well as internship, you know what support is there for that. And then third what are the networks available for job placement after graduation. I would also very much always always visit the programs and ask to sit on a class, talk to some current students, definitely do your homework because marketing only goes so far and honestly all of the programs look good if you’re you know looking on the web, but you really want to go there and get a sense of who are the people, who are the students, who am I going to be going to school with, is this a place that I want to be.”

Yale, Stanford and Harvard are also schools with strong non-profit concentrations.

You can blame it on Donald Trump’s reality show or the recent real estate boom, whatever the reason real estate is a popular concentration. Meanwhile, real estate companies are seeing the benefit of hiring MBA graduates and business schools; well you definitely won’t have a hard time finding real estate courses in MBA programs. Julia Hwang is Executive Director for the full-time MBA program at the Haas School of Business at the University of California Berkley , “What we have seen is because the residential real estate market has slowed down and other areas are still strong so builders such as Holt Homes or Shay Homes have reduced their hiring but we’ve seen really solid recruiting from asset management firms, investment banks and corporations who need real estate professionals to manage their facilities by development and leads.” Hwang says careers in real estate generally fall into two categories, development and finance. On the development side you’d take on residential or commercial projects working in areas like risk management, market research, acquisitions, financing and operations. In the finance are you could focus on corporate or investment finance which include areas like asset management, loan origination and mortgage banking. Though Hwang says careers in real estate aren’t limited to the real estate industry. “We have students join investment banks where they focus on the real estate industry and we’ll have students work in real estate departments of large technology and retail firms. So we have recent graduates who’ve been hired as development associates for both residential and commercial developers, the CFO and then the associate of that investment manager for a real estate investment trust, and an analyst focusing on the real estate industry for a major investment firm.”

Real estate is by nature risky business, properties are expensive investments while seeing a return can be slow in coming. Hwang says that’s why the industry looks for candidates with specific skills, “The people in the real estate industry are looking for people with a lot of tenacity and people who are comfortable in taking risks to succeed. Communications skills are another important characteristic that recruiters are looking for and they’re also looking for people who are really comfortable in working with all types of people so including professionals you know financiers, citizen organizations or environmental groups and so being able to deal with all these different constituencies are an important aspect and then looking for people who can multi-task and certainly be creative in their problem solving.”

Recruiters from the real estate industry do recruit on MBA campuses but Hwang says many students will have to reach out to companies on their own or they’ll often find jobs through networking, “We think the approach of having the theoretical into classroom experience as well as the offerings of extra-curricular are really important because this industry’s a lot about the contact that you make. So that’s really important to get your name added and also to understand what the different distinct function, or positions do.” Wharton and Kenan Flagler also offer real estate concentrations.

Marketing is one of the giants in MBA programs. There are a variety of careers and plenty of opportunities. Lucinda Wright is MBA Career Services Director at the Eli Broad College of Business at Michigan State University. She says look at marketing as a continuum with one end highly quantitative and the other end creative, “And you start on the highly quantitative side where there’s some overlap even with people with finance backgrounds, you have business development. And in business development, what you’re doing is looking at the landscape and helping out a company determine their new incremental revenue streams, the new strategic platforms, what are the opportunities and gaps in the market place that perhaps the company could capitalize on and develop new revenue streams. So it’s very financially based, you’re looking at viability, attractiveness, the strategy, you know corporate competencies, can we win, how big is this market place. It’s also the upfront of innovation, you look at the market place and you say gees looks like mass customization is a trend out there and we don’t really have a premium brand that fits into that maybe that’s an area where we could launch some new products and gain you know some new competitive space, you look at how viable that is, how attractive that is to the company. So those are where business development can exist. Sometimes business development is called strategy in companies as well. Then moving down the continuum you come to new product development or product development then normally an MBA is not highly prized in this particular bucket. Normally this job is housed in the RND area and so they value advanced degrees in whatever the technical area is. But there are occasions where marketers are asked to be a liaison and can be embedded in our MBA and work with product developers to commercialize their ideas. So it’s not unheard of it’s just less likely, if you want to do product development you’d be better off getting a different degree than a MBA. Then you slide down to market research; in market research you’re looking at obviously the consumer and customer dynamics of a marketing organization, so answering you know the business question that the brand marketers may have or the business developers or the MNA folks. So you’re the technical expert and you look at every aspect of marketing but you do it in answering business questions and you take data and information and you elevate that insight and business recommendations for the organization. So that’s the more quantitative side and all of those jobs are much more consulting in nature that the job itself is an internal consultancy, you don’t run the business, you have a function within marketing and you present recommendations to them that the brand marketers typically run the businesses or you know senior leaders for instance. So from a personality perspective, the people who gravitate to those jobs obviously you know like the more highly analytical side of things but they also have to like being a consultant and have great influencing skills.”

Brand management is another popular career choice for MBAs. Wright says in this field you’ll still have one foot in the highly quantitative side, “But now you start to see the creative side. You also have to be balanced on the creative side. In the traditional classic brand management world you can not be successful if you don’t have good advertising instincts and creative instincts. However you run a business and so you also have to be very disciplined and fact based and grounded in the financials and what make sense and you know can we make money, is this is there profitability involved so you can’t be total creative because that’s what you have agencies for, ad agencies, but you have to have insight into consumer behavior and have a feel for being able to evaluate creative so one foot in quantitative, one in creative to be truly successful. And now you’re running a business, now it’s not being a consultant, now your risk profile changes too because you have to be willing to take all of the risk and have be the one accountable, the buck stops with you.”

Brand management, business development and market research may be the most popular career choices in marketing but Wright says there’s another area that’s looking for more MBAs, “There is an increase especially for MBAs although they tend to not be as excited about this but in channel marketing which is really customer marketing and it’s different from sales being the channel marketing person responsible for a Wal-Mart for instance, what you do is you become the marketer for the retailer so you have to know their customer better than they know their customer and it’s a two level job, you have to help them increase their business as well as increase their you know their appeal, on the customer and consumer sides.”

Marketing is a career path that will weed out those not fully committed to it says Wright, so make sure you have the marketing spirit, “If you’re not innately curious to why people behave the way they do, if you don’t you know watch advertising, if you’re not interested in new products coming out, if you don’t do some of those things naturally and normally then it’s probably not your thing because that’s what you do all day long, is you wonder well I wonder why that store’s doing double coupons or you know gosh I think that advertising is really hideous. If that’s not innately things that you’re already doing then you’re probably not a brand marketer or market researcher because that’s what you do all day long. Now business development’s a little bit different, if you like to run the numbers, if you like to puzzle, you know the strategy type of puzzle piece thing, that’s more the business development side although there’s an element of that across the board but you really have to like putting price tags on things and really you know figuring out whether something works or not.”

Health care is a complex industry and it runs as a business at least here in the US. It is a huge concern for most Americans and with so many scandals at hospitals with doctors and insurance companies better healthcare management is in demand. Errol Biggs is Director of Health Administration Programs at the University of Colorado at Denver Business School, “The MBA with a major in health, the MHA which is pretty traditional, these people tend to be running hospitals, they are in HMOs, they go into pharmaceutical companies, they are running big medical group practices and consulting.”

While Biggs says salaries are competitive with other fields like accounting and finance, healthcare management can be quite lucrative. Hospital executives earning million dollar salaries and more are not unheard of but salaries like those are often criticized in the midst of rising costs in care. Biggs says it’s one of the biggest industries in need of more talented managers, “There’s a lot of opportunities, there’s a lot of problems like chaos, access to healthcare, the baby boomers are getting older, there’s going to be a shortage of doctors.” Biggs says not many recruiters come to campus but hospitals, clinics and the like will contact the school with job opportunities for their students. If you want to work in the healthcare industry he says it’s important to have a healthcare concentration, “Many, maybe not all, but many healthcare organizations hospitals, HMOs, group practices, consulting, they don’t hire regular MBAs because they don’t think they have any clue what’s going on in healthcare.”

Healthcare management is a very specialized field says Biggs so if you decide on this path, choose a program carefully, “The best way to choose a program, I tell students all the time whether you come to the University of Colorado or not, number one, do not go to an unaccredited program. Number two do not go to a brand new program or a program that’s recently started, go to a program that has a strong alumni association where you’ve got graduates you can interact with and they help you. And number three if you absolutely want to live in New England or New York City or Boston, you shouldn’t come to Colorado or west coast or Texas you probably ought to go to school in Boston or even George Washington, Washington D.C. or Columbia, the networking is better and there are always exceptions of course, somebody could graduate your way from Colorado and run a hospital in Maine but in general those three things are what you want to look at.”

For information, advice and to register for your weekly MBA Podcast visit mbapodcaster.com. Be sure to join us again as we continue this series on MBA tracks, in part III we’ll cover accounting, human resources, operations management and more. I’m Janet Nakano and this is MBA Podcaster, thanks for listening.

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