Goizueta’s MBA classes put students to test, teach variety of skills
Matthew Brown, Natarajan Srikrishnan and Jake Harris dig into project analysis
One of the most important skills an MBA can possess is the ability to dive into a new business situation and come out quickly with recommendations backed by great thinking. It’s one of the reasons companies love hiring MBAs, so learning to dive in effectively on a new project with a new team must be a priority for many students. Goizueta excels at preparing you by helping you structure your thinking, collaborate with teammates and produce quality results that would move the needle in the real world.
First, the Goizueta MBA doesn’t just teach technical skills like finance and accounting. They also teach strategy and structured problem skills that help you organize and set up a project to find success. Without structuring the project work, scope and timeline to complete it, work can become scattered and inefficient. Not only do classes teach these types of frameworks, but students are provided with a chance to do real projects for companies through the Impact 360 class. A project I worked on last year was for Home Depot, and it gave me a chance to dig into gigs of real world data to find a solution to an operations issue the company was facing.
Second, in today’s world of ever-changing priorities and matrix organizations, being successful in the workforce means you must be ready to collaborate with people across the organization. On the very first day at Goizueta, you meet your core team. You will work with these five to six people on your team on class projects for the entirety of the first semester. Finding a way to work effectively together is important for your success, so the school coaches you through the process of exploring each other’s strengths and personalities while also setting clear expectations for how you want to approach work and what you hope to get out of school. After the first semester, you often create your own teams depending on the class, and it gives you an opportunity to refine the skills you’ve learned while constantly working with new people.
Core Team 28 Presents Project, left to right: Darias Holloway, Matthew Brown, Leo Kim, Natarajan Srikrishnan, Jake Harris
Third, Goizueta ensures you create quality work. Classes at Goizueta are no cake walk, and professors challenge you each step of the way to consider new concepts, methods or data points. Some classes will teach new software skills that can be applied to generate new findings, while other classes will push you to continuously explore new industries. My global marketing class currently has a class project due at least once a week, where we take a look at business cases facing different companies and markets and apply strategy frameworks to determine solutions.
These three factors combine to make Goizueta MBAs excel at tackling new projects—not just in school, but also in the real world. It prepares us for our internships and is another reason our alums excel so well in the working world after school.
