Why is Meaningful Experience so Necessary?
Five Key Benefits of Relevant Work Experience
Jul 14, 2009
It’s that great effort, sweat, and tears from hard work, not the words of thinkers that gets rid of impractical idealism and goes after the harsh realities of a business today. This struggle and the daily preparation for it call for depth and character in a person. It bonds them with their peers and unites them into a selfless culture. This crucible of reality removes all theory that is not viable.
While they certainly contribute to the development of business leaders, it is an illusion that the answers to the challenges of businesses can be found behind walls of ivy of a business school today. It is the scars of accomplishment more than the wrinkled brow of thought that reveal the mettle of the leaders that are needed today.
Four Compelling Reasons for Meaningful Work Experience
- Employers want intelligent graduates who can make sense of complex information, solve problems, work in a team, communicate effectively, manage their time, and cope with pressure. They want to see that people have experienced getting to work on time, learned how to work with a diverse range of people, understand customer service skills, and can even tolerate mundane work.
- Experience gives evidence that a business suits a person and that person suits the business. People with experience have already found out if a particular line of work is really what they want to do.
- With more and more graduates competing in the job market each year, a good degree is no longer a guarantee of securing a good job. Most employers are looking for recruits who have more than just a degree. Increasingly they are looking for candidates who are well-rounded individuals with a range of well-developed practical and personal skills that they can draw on from day one of working.
- Today it seems that every applicant will have a degree and it is the work experience added to that degree that is making the difference that counts. Business schools are great! They add value to students' education by actively providing insights into the practices of some of the world's best theorists and business leaders. There is just so more that needs to be learned.
Five Key Benefits of Relevant Work Experience
- Initiative and risk-taking is best learned from others' experiences. In every type of new business venture there was a small percentage of risk-takers who lived to tell the tale, instantly defining newer paradigms.
- Adaptability and the ability to roll with the punches and come on top each time cannot be taught but it can be learned through experience. An individual can learn to assimilate the operating environment and conditions and, using that as a base, take action.
- Each instance of variation in a business has a counterbalancing impact on some other factor with a resulting change in the operating environment. The skill to succeed in this ever-changing, always evolving environment resides in the people in the positions of leadership, not in the schools they went to.
- Application is critical because the correct application of a model or tool is usually at an individual's discretion. It is his or her interpretation of the situation that forces a judgment.
- The introduction of leading edge knowledge in course curriculum typically happens only after the pioneering practitioners have experienced it. This generally involves some lag time, and given the breadth and speed of change, this is an uphill task.
So while a good business school is the basic foundation that equips individuals to get a firm footing in the corporate arena, there are several other skills that one needs to assimilate to survive and succeed there.
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