The Cass Business School of the City University of London recently entered into a partnership with Strengthscope, an assessment tool that helps MBA students to develop awareness about their unique strengths, optimise those qualities and use them for career advancement.
Jenny Portalska, head of MBA careers at the School, told BusinessBecause that those who sign up for the MBA program consider it a transformational experience in career development. Some of them want significant changes in their role, sector, location or all three.
They need to find a career that would energize them and provide long-term satisfaction. With the change in role or sector, they also need to know how to convince their employers about their true worth. Cass works with them on how to sell their transferable skills and offers support throughout their career transition.
Strengthscope’s online strength assessment system helps in revealing the students’ true motivators. It identifies their top strengths and enables them to speak clearly to potential future employers about what they will bring to their organization and how their idiosyncrasies differentiate them from other candidates.
Strengthscope’s managing director Dr Paul Brewerton said it helps people to have more honest, authentic conversations about who they really are rather than who they think they should be. They will thus be able to identify the career path that is best for them.
He said out of 24 identified work-based strengths, the likelihood of someone having the same Top 3 in the same order as anyone else is 1 in 12,000. Similarly, chances of getting the same Top 7 in the same order as anyone else would be 1 in 1.3 billion.
At present, 75% of the students are confident about finding future roles that fit with their career goals, up from 27% at the start of the program.
When people feel a greater sense of ownership for who they are, they would be able to recognize the career path, role, and organizational culture that is the best fit for them,” he added. “By playing to your strengths you are more likely to feel engaged and have a positive experience at work, which can increase performance and results by 70% plus,” he is quoted by BusinessBecause as saying.
It also helps organizations identify candidates who are sturdy enough to navigate change, and resilient enough to take the knocks that inevitably come with that. They will be more confident hiring people they know can seamlessly move role, department, or even organization because that reassurance will have been articulated at the interview stage.
Strengthscope claims to have had success with the Cass MBA students. At the start of their MBA (Full-Time MBA class of 2017), 41% of students said they felt able to apply their strengths in selecting a fulfilling career.
Afterwards, that figure rose to 94%.At present, 75% of the students are confident about finding future roles that fit with their career goals, up from 27% at the start of the program.
Similarly, 61% of students when they started the class had expressed themselves to be very confident in communicating their strengths and abilities. That figure has now climbed to 92%. As many as 82% of students feel confident in using their strengths in a new industry or sector, up from 57% at the start of the MBA.
The school puts emphasis on career development from the start. During the first two weeks of the program, students work extensively with the careers and professional development department to try and understand themselves, including what all they want to retain from the past and those they want to change.
One day per week is dedicated to careers and professional development on the Full-Time MBA, where students work on building professional development skills and goals for their future career.
While communication, teamwork and leadership skills are sought by the employers, technological advancements have brought in additional requirements of being comfortable with change, innovative, and digitally literate, Jenny said.
Even within Consulting, there is more focus on fintech and technology, she said and pointed out how disruptive brands like Uber were changing the marketplace. In this context, the team, with the help of Strength scope, enables the students to gain clarity on their preferences and carer goals in a continuously changing job market, she added.