MBA not always key to landing a plum job

Eve Tahmincioglu • Profile • E-mail

Melanie Holmes is an executive for a Fortune 500 employment services firm and two years ago, at age 55, she decided to go back to school and get her MBA.

Why? It’s not what you think.

“It was a personal thing. I just wanted to achieve it,” says Holmes, a vice president for Manpower Inc. “I didn’t expect anything differently in my job nor did I expect to go higher up the ladder.”

Holmes is one of those executives who doesn’t believe you need a master's degree in business administration to become successful in business. And she’s living proof of that, having moved up the corporate heirachy after starting out as a secretary.

Lately it seems that everyone and his or her brother has been going back to school to get an MBA, but the importance of this higher degree is getting diluted, and it’s never really been a guarantee you’ll get that plum executive job.

Believe it or not, the majority of CEOs running major companies in the United States do not have MBA degrees. Research done by BusinessWeek magazine in 2006 found that fewer than one in three executives who hold high level positions in corporate America had an MBA.

And a more recent poll conducted by Pace University professors Aron Gottesman and Matthew R. Morey found that out of 488 top companies surveyed only 159 had CEOs with MBAs at the helm.

The study also uncovered an interesting fact that may sound counterintuitive: There was no evidence that having a CEO with an MBA helped the stock-market performance of the firm. In fact, “there was some marginal evidence that it might hurt,” says Gottesman.

Even though tough economic times are usually thought of as a great time to go back and get some more education, plopping down big bucks on an MBA doesn’t mean doors will automatically open.

“Colleges seem to churn out MBAs like tissue paper," says Joanna Smith Bers, managing director and talent officer for New York-based DB Marketing Technologies. "There may have been a time when those three letters actually distinguished job candidates from the pack, but no more. As a senior manager at a business insights management consulting firm, I have found that the MBA is more embellishment than substantive.”

While there are still some jobs, particularly in the financial sector, where an MBA is usually a must, recruiters and hiring managers say they’re looking for applicants with real-world experience who have have actually run something.

A higher degree can surely open doors, says Jonathan Mazzocchi, a partner in Wyman’s accounting and finance division, but “experience will always trump MBAs.”

There are companies that are looking specifically for MBAs and ask headhunters for that specific credential.

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