The Financial Times has found that one in three employers struggled to find MBA grads with the right skills, and one of the five most important skills employers quoted was an understanding of the digital impact on businesses.
It’s crucial now that MBAs choose a business school that reflects this growing trend, and for graduates Eleonora Ferrero and Andrea Camacho Mattos, the global one-year MBA from Hult International Business School was the only option.
“I had a chat with people from different business schools,” says Andrea, “and the best impression I got was from Hult.”
Eleonora also found Hult the best fit for her needs. “I had a few priorities for my MBA—it had to be very entrepreneurially focused and highly international,” she explains. “Hult was definitely the best for this criteria.”
On the MBA at Hult, students have the option to rotate between three of the school’s six global campuses, located in both established technology hubs and emerging markets—London, San Francisco, Boston, Dubai, Shanghai and New York.
Students also get the chance to take electives in disruptive technology, preparing them for any changes in the future world of innovation.
Networking in Silicon Valley
Andrea has a background in engineering and completed his undergraduate and masters degrees in the subject in his native Italy.
After transitioning into the business side of engineering and working as a project manager for Danieli, a supplier of equipment to the metal industry, Andrea decided it was time to complement his engineering and business experience with an MBA.
“I wanted to work a little bit more on my teamwork and project management, and have more technical experience with it,” he says.
“The differentiator that made Hult stand out was also the background of the students,” he explains. “I wanted to learn from somebody from a different background to me.”
Hult certainly attracts a diverse group of professionals—there were more than 160 different countries represented in Hult’s overall student population in 2017-18, and MBA students came from backgrounds as varied as real estate, nonprofit, and healthcare.
Andrea chose San Francisco as his ‘home campus’ on the MBA at Hult International Business School, spending ten months completing the core modules in the city. It was Andrea’s experience at the heart of Silicon Valley that made all the difference when it came to getting a job in the tech sector.
“When you’re in San Francisco, it’s hard not to have a relationship with the tech industry in Silicon Valley,” he says. “The Hult campus in San Francisco has a lot of action among local startups.”
During the MBA, Andrea worked with a local startup in Silicon Valley, Bizruptor, helping to design a strategy for helping the company enter the US market.
He’s now working in London for Profusion, a marketing agency that uses AI and machine learning to connect brands with customers—a company that had already hired Hult graduates. It’s this alumni network that’s most valuable, Andrea says.
“I would definitely say that within Hult there’s a huge interest in technology, and that’s because there’s such integration of different students,” he notes. “The Hult alumni network is a very strong tech community.”
From consulting to digital innovation
Eleonora Ferrero (pictured) started her career in consulting, first for Deloitte and then for a smaller, boutique consulting firm in Milan, Italy.
The decision to do an MBA came after Eleonora started her own firm, and realized that what she needed was more in-depth business knowledge. “When you start a business, you also realize how much you don’t know,” she recalls.
She chose Shanghai as her home campus but chose to rotate to San Francisco during the last portion of her MBA, getting a glimpse at life in Silicon Valley.
Eleonora also took advantage of the broad variety of electives that Hult offer—aside from the core modules in traditional MBA topics, Hult offer electives in disruptive technology, which can include courses on AI, the Internet of Things, drones, and blockchain.
It’s these courses that are helping Eleonora now in her current role, as director of European operations at Mind the Bridge, an innovation advisory firm that helps entrepreneurs and startups.
“My MBA has helped me to have a more global view on technological trends and also learn how to analyze the market,” she notes. “I really learned a lot of tools and methodologies that help to identify trends and speak the tech languages in different geographies.
“I really believe that the variety of subjects you discuss during your Hult MBA, and the variety of companies you study and interact with are extremely valuable—it really gives you a perspective on what is needed.”
