Meet The Team: Michael Shulver, Warwick Business School

This week we speak to Michael Shulver, a Warwick Business School admissions manager who also teaches Operations Management on the MBA.

 

Michael was a Royal Air Force officer before doing the Warwick MBA himself, and he thinks it’s a great generalist programme for people from many backgrounds.  

 

Read on to find out how to impress in case study questions, showing that you’re an “experimenter” and Warwick’s kissing penguins!

 

I’ve been teaching here since 2008 but I did both my Doctoral studies and the Warwick MBA here so I have a long-term connection to the place. Funnily enough, many of our students also return to us for further study later in life. We really do cater for people throughout their career, and lots of our graduates refer their friends and colleagues to us. Our word of mouth, as the phrase goes, is very good.

 

We take candidates from all sorts of professional backgrounds but what they have in common is that they are ambitious, open to new ways of thinking, and very personable.

 

We turn out graduates who are attractive to business because we start with excellent candidates – they are usually pretty experienced, and looking for new challenges. We equip them to meet those challenges and get where they want to be.

 

If you’ve got the required managerial experience and meet the academic criteria then it’s all about your personal statement.

1)      You’ve got to really want to come here. People choose us over other business schools because we’ve got vision, and we choose people who properly get what we’re doing. Make sure you show us that you understand that we are contemporary, mould-breaking, not afraid to experiment and that you will you fit in here.

 

2)      We want to develop people who are creative and flexible thinkers, who’ve got something to give back, and who are going places. So make sure you tell us what you want to do and where you want to go. What’s your vision? What are you going to contribute?

 

3)      You’ve got to show us you’re an experimenter. Tell us what you’ve done, how you did it, what you’ve learned through your successes and failures. Tell us how what you learn here make a difference to your life and career.

 

I like to get a feel for how candidates approach problems. I tend to sketch out a scenario, and then ask the candidate what they would do if they were a local manager in that scenario.

 

For example (and this is obviously a scenario I can never use again!) I might describe a new type of heavily-branded retail store that is failing. The store is a 'pilot' and the intent is to roll out the design in several cities in the UK. I ask the candidate to imagine that they are a management consultant, hired to figure out why the store is failing. So that is just three sentences; and not much for the candidate to go on. Some candidates dive in and talk me through 'solutions' right away. Sometimes these are 'canned' solutions, and sometimes they are just guesses.

 

Better candidates will ask more questions, and dig away until they can commit to some ideas. There are sometimes real answers but more often than not the scenarios are open ended, and there is no one true solution.

 

I like to know how candidates spend their free time. I think you can find out a lot about how driven or motivated someone is by the sorts of things they are involved in outside of work. Involvement in sports, pastimes and hobbies is a sign that the candidate is rounded.

 

I also like to know how the candidate has dealt with failure. I think it’s important be able to demonstrate some failures, because people who can do this successfully are often people who try new things and have the resilience to pick themselves up after. A question about failure is probably expected, and unfortunately some candidates prepare canned responses that are designed to show themselves in a good light.

 

My recommendation is to just be honest here. Innovation, creativity and so on are numbers games. If you push yourself professionally and personally, you will fail now and then. Be ready to talk about what that failure has done for you.

 

We genuinely recruit from all industries. We run the Warwick Global Energy MBA for energy industry professionals looking to stay in that field, but we do get some energy specialists choosing the general programme to change sector. In fact, lots of our students are looking to change sector and occupational field.

 

I was in that position back in 1992. I had been a Royal Air Force officer for nine years. I was a leader in a very specialist environment. I knew that my skills and knowledge could be applied in a commercial environment, but also recognised that I would need some help with 'translation'.

 

I thought back then that the Warwick MBA would be an ideal bridge from the military to business. I was right. We teach people all the key management fields, and also offer them new and specialist areas like Behavioural Science, so our students can really tailor their course to their developmental needs.

 

My current favourite is Hong Kong, and has been for some time. Why? Well, I really like the way people are able to get along in such confinement. Hong Kong Island and Kowloon are extremely dense, but people have evolved structures, systems and ways of behaving that act as social lubricants. As an Operations academic, I also appreciate the efficiency of things like public transport there. The MTR is just awesome.

 

Alongside this order is a brash vibrancy that means HK is never boring. The way people exploit space in HK is astonishing sometimes. You can be walking down a street, and find tiny manufacturing plants crammed into a space the size of a small bathroom.

 

Then there is the mix of cultures. I like to immerse myself in local Chinese culture as much as possible, but if I'm in need of a break, I can always find a 'home from home' in HK.

 

The campus has a great choice of places to eat, but I normally bring my own lunch into work. I often end up eating in the office, but if I have the rare luxury of time, I go to sit on the 'Kissing Penguins'. The 'Kissing Penguins' is a sculpture on a rise just opposite the Warwick Arts Centre. The sculpture is in the centre of campus, but it's oddly quiet. You can hear lots going on around you, but when you sit there on one of the penguins you are kind of 'buffered' from the world.