雇主最看重MBA应聘者的哪些技能？

Sionade Robinson has an almost impossible task. As associate director for the MBA programme at Cass Business School in London, she must manage the expectations of high achievers about where their business school degree will take them.

西奥纳德•罗宾逊(Sionade Robinson)有一项几乎不可能完成的任务。作为伦敦卡斯商学院(Cass Business School) MBA课程副主任，她必须管理优秀学员对于商学院学位将把他们带向何方的期望。

One student arrived in her office distraught after being rejected by a large investment bank from its fast-track management programme. They were offering just 15 places worldwide, Ms Robinson recalls.

一位学生来到她的办公室，他感到心烦意乱，因为一家大型投行的快速通道管理层计划拒绝了他。罗宾逊回忆说，他们在全球只有15个名额。

“People think an MBA is a golden ticket, when it is not,” she says.

她表示：“人们以为MBA是一个金奖券，实际上不是。”

Landing a job after business school has never been straightforward. But a new survey by the Financial Times could help shed light on the process. The anonymous survey reveals what skills leading employers want — and what they don’t — from MBA graduates. You can read the full methodology at FT.com/work-careers.

从商学院毕业后找到一份工作从来都不是容易的。但英国《金融时报》的一项新调查可能有助于解释这个过程。这项匿名调查显示出领先雇主希望MBA毕业生具备什么技能，以及他们最不在乎哪些技能。你可以在FT.com/work-careers查看完整的调查方法论。

Our findings suggest students should prepare themselves for a changing MBA jobs market. Our subsequent conversations with employers found graduates should be realistic about the roles for which their MBA degree alone will qualify them.

我们的调查似乎表明，学员应该为不断变化的MBA就业市场做好准备。我们随后与雇主的对话发现，毕业生应该对MBA学位本身让他们有资格做什么工作抱有现实的想法。

One in three of the employers we surveyed said they struggled to find business school graduates with the right skills.

在接受我们调查的雇主中，有三分之一表示，他们很难找到具备合适技能的商学院毕业生。

The five most important skills were not core MBA subjects, such as finance and marketing, but more loosely defined qualities, or so-called soft skills, such as the ability to work with a wide variety of people (cited by 76 per cent of employers) and the ability to prioritise (cited by 72 per cent). Of these, employers said the ability among MBA graduates to manage their time effectively was the most difficult to find.

最重要的5项技能并非财务和市场营销等MBA核心课程，而是定义更宽泛的素质，也就是所谓的软技能，例如与不同人工作的能力(有76%的雇主提到这点)以及区分轻重缓急的能力(72%的雇主提到)。雇主们表示，其中，在MBA毕业生中最难发现的能力是有效管理时间。

The findings may be explained in part by a perception gap. Employers in some sectors, such as oil and gas, civil engineering, transport and energy, see little need for senior staff to hold an MBA degree. Part of the reason, they say, is that they do not believe that business schools teach the right skills.

认知差距可能在一定程度上解释了这些调查结果。一些行业(例如油气、土木工程、交通和能源)的雇主认为，高层员工不怎么需要具备MBA学位。他们表示，部分原因是他们不相信商学院会传授合用的技能。

Business schools are reacting by trying to broaden the pool of MBA employers. At Chicago’s Booth School of Business, technology companies such as Amazon and Google have overtaken management consultancies and investment banks as the biggest hirers in recent years. The school is looking for new sectors in which companies may be interested in hiring their MBAs.

商学院的反应是努力扩大MBA雇主池。在芝加哥布斯商学院(Booth School of Business)，最近几年，亚马逊(Amazon)和谷歌(Google)等科技公司取代管理咨询公司和投行，成为最大雇主。该学院正在寻找可能有兴趣聘用MBA的新行业。

Julie Morton, associate dean of careers services and corporate relations at Booth, says half her team of 22 are employed specifically to spread the word about the value of hiring MBA graduates. Many of the companies new to hiring MBA graduates are interested in soft skills, such as the ability to network — one of the most important skills cited in the FT survey, Ms Morton adds. The trick is convincing companies that MBA students have them. “We work with companies all the time where the MBA is not the goal,” Ms Morton says.

布斯商学院就业服务和企业关系副院长朱莉•莫顿(Julie Morton)表示，在她22人的团队中，有一半专职宣传聘用MBA毕业生的价值。莫顿补充称，很多对聘用MBA毕业生不熟悉的公司对软技能感兴趣，例如拓展人脉的能力，这在此次英国《金融时报》调查中被列为最重要的技能之一。关键是让企业相信，MBA学员拥有这些技能。莫顿表示：“我们一直与企业合作，即使他们对MBA无所谓也是如此。”

Several employers told the FT that MBA qualifications were not their priority. At Servest, the facilities management company, four people in senior posts have MBAs. But the company, which employs 51,000 people across the UK and South Africa, did not seek MBA graduates to fill any of these roles, according to Dennis Zietsman, Servest’s deputy chairman.

几家雇主告诉英国《金融时报》，MBA资历并非他们特别看重的学历。在设施管理公司Servest，高管职位中有4人拥有MBA学位。但据副董事长丹尼斯•齐茨曼(Dennis Zietsman)介绍，在英国和南非雇用5.1万员工的该公司，从未特意寻找MBA毕业生来填补任何高层职位。

“It’s the type of person rather than the business degree that we focus on,” he says. “[MBA graduates] have never been our star performers.”

“我们关注的是人，而不是商学位，”他表示，“(MBA毕业生)从来都不是本公司表现最优秀的员工。”

Some joining the company with business masters degrees have struggled to convert theory into practice, he says. “Case studies in the MBA programmes seem to be based on big corporates, often American, which cannot be applied to smaller corporates that have cultures different to those that they’ve studied.”

他表示，带着商业硕士学位加盟公司的一些人很难把理论应用于实践。“MBA课程中的案例研究似乎基于大公司，而且往往是美国公司，这些案例不适用于文化不同的较小公司。”

Neither are MBA graduates a priority for the clients of Mark Butter, director of Blueprint Recruitment Solutions, a company that specialises in executive appointments for the oil and gas, marine, civil engineering, transport and energy sectors.

对于Blueprint Recruitment Solutions公司董事马克•巴特(Mark Butter)的客户而言，MBA毕业生也不会被优先考虑，该公司专门从事油气、海洋、土木工程、交通和能源行业的高管招聘。

“They are far more likely to be concerned with whether the candidate has industry qualifications, such as being a chartered engineer,” Mr Butter says.

巴特表示：“他们更有可能关心候选人是否具备专业对口的资质，例如注册工程师。”

Adrian O’Connor, founding director of Global Accounting Network, which helps with appointments of qualified accounting professionals up to finance director level, says an MBA is a “nice to have” rather than a sought-after qualification.

帮助合格会计专业人士找到财务总监职位的Global Accounting Network的创始董事阿德里安•欧康纳(Adrian O’Connor)表示，MBA“有也不错”，但不是受追逐的资质。

Some clients will accept an MBA instead of an accounting qualification, Mr O’Connor notes. “This is particularly true in either the more commercial finance roles, or indeed at board level.”

欧康纳表示，一些客户会接受没有会计学历的MBA毕业生。“在比较侧重于商业金融的职位或者董事级别，尤其如此。”

The FT research suggests there may be an opportunity for business schools to market graduates more effectively among companies not used to hiring at this level. Even among Mr O’Connor’s clients, the perception is that business school graduates are good at networking — listed in our survey as among the five most important skills to employers.

FT调查似乎表明，商学院或许有机会更有效地向不习惯聘用高级别应聘者的企业推销它们的毕业生。就连在奥康纳的客户中，普遍的印象也是商学院毕业生善于建立人际网——在我们的调查中，这一条被列在企业最看重的5个技能中。

MBAs hear very often that they are special during their courses — when coming back to business, reality often hits them hard

MBA的学生在课堂上常常听到老师说他们是特别人才——在回到商界后，现实往往给予他们沉重的打击

survey respondent ——————调查受访者

Often, MBAs do not have much patience. When companies hire them, the MBAs have been off the market for between one and two years. It takes time to integrate and learn about a new company

MBA的毕业生往往没有多少耐心。当企业聘用他们时，MBA的毕业生已经脱离市场一到两年了。他们需要时间融入并了解新公司

SURVEY RESPONDENT ——————调查受访者

“Clients view it as a strong testimonial of someone’s intelligence and ability to apply that,” Mr O’Connor says.

“客户把这视为应聘者具备并且有能力运用智慧的强有力证明，”奥康纳表示。

Ilona Drozd is campus recruiter for the online travel site Expedia in Europe. The company became interested in hiring MBAs for senior strategy roles in part because many of its board directors were MBA graduates, Ms Drozd says.

伊洛娜•德罗兹德(Ilona Drozd)是在线旅游网站亿客行(Expedia)欧洲区的校园招聘官。她表示，该公司开始有意聘用MBA毕业生担任高级战略岗位，部分是因为很多董事会董事都是MBA毕业生。

Despite this, Expedia does not have a specific graduate programme for recruits with an MBA. This year the company, which employs more than 20,000 people worldwide, hired just nine MBA graduates in the UK and three in the US.

尽管如此，亿客行并没有针对MBA毕业生的特定招聘计划。在全球拥有超过2万名员工的该公司，今年在英国和美国分别聘用了9名和3名MBA毕业生。

The most common reason for rejecting applicants coming in at the senior level, where an MBA graduate would typically aspire to start within an organisation, is a lack of cultural fit and an inability to solve complicated problems, according to Ms Drozd.

德罗兹德表示，在高级职位(MBA毕业生通常希望在较高级别进入一家企业)上拒绝应聘者最常见的原因是，不具备文化契合度和解决复杂问题的能力。

Soft skills, such as teamwork, are important but they are not enough, she adds. “The ideal candidate is someone we would like to have long term, which means they have to really want to work at Expedia.”

她补充称，团队协作之类的软技能很重要，但还不够。“理想的应聘者是我们希望长期聘用的那类人，这意味着他们必须真的想在亿客行工作。”

Kevin Marvinac is both an MBA graduate and chief operating officer at TransparentCareer, a database of salary data for people hired from business schools, which is aimed at helping MBA graduates hone their search to find the ideal job.

凯文•马尔维纳茨(Kevin Marvinac)是MBA毕业生，也是TransparentCareer的首席运营官。这是一个为商学院毕业生提供薪资信息的数据库，旨在帮助MBA毕业生找到理想工作。

He believes that an MBA is helpful in securing a rewarding senior executive role, but admits that it is not sufficient in industries where people are also expected to have certain technical skills or experience. The FT survey found big data analysis, for example, was one of the hardest skills to recruit.

他认为MBA学位有助于找到一份回报优厚的高管职位，但承认，在应聘者还需要具备某些技术技能或经验的行业，只有MBA学位是不够的。比如FT调查发现，大数据分析是最难招聘到的技能之一。

“It is really hard to be a product manager at a tech company, for instance, if you don’t know how to code,” Mr Marvinac says.

“如果你一点都不懂怎么编写代码，那是很难在科技公司担任产品经理的，”马尔维纳茨表示。

Too much tactical execution and not enough big-picture thinking 战术执行方面搞得煞有介事，大局思维意识不足

Survey respondent ——————调查受访者

The ability to deal with ambiguity is missing 缺乏对付模棱两可问题的能力

survey respondent ——————调查受访者

Find the full methodology and add your comments at FT.com/work-careers

你可以在FT.com/work-careers查看完整的调查方法论并发表意见。

About the survey 关于调查

The FT asked 48 employers what professional skills they want — but cannot find — in MBA graduates. We surveyed leading businesses around the world, chosen for their popularity as recruiters. They are headquartered in all continents and in countries including Brazil, China and Nigeria as well as Europe and the US.

FT询问了48家雇主：他们需要MBA毕业生具备哪些专业技能——却找不到?我们调查了世界各地的领先企业——依据它们作为招聘方的受欢迎程度选定。这些企业的总部分布在各大洲的多个国家，比如巴西、中国、尼日利亚以及欧洲和美国。

The businesses were spread across 12 sectors, among them e-commerce, industry and finance. We kept the responses anonymous.

这些企业涉及12个行业，包括电子商务、工业和金融。受访者都是以匿名方式接受调查。

We asked the companies to rate 29 so-called soft and hard skills according to importance and how difficult they are to hire. The skills most and least valued by the surveyed companies are presented in the graphics.

我们让企业依据重要性和招聘难度来评比29项软技能和硬技能。受访企业最重视和最不在意的技能都呈现在图表里。

We intend to expand and improve the survey in 2018. If you have comments and suggestions, or you are an MBA employer who would like to take part, email business.education@ft.com

我们有意在2018年扩大和改进这项调查。如果你有任何意见或建议，或者你是愿意参与调查的MBA雇主，请发送邮件至business.education@ft.com