Identifying Exceptional B-School Candidates

Sponsored by Acuity Insights

• Business schools are looking for prospective students who have not only technical and academic knowledge but also strong communication and leadership skills, which are traditionally more difficult to assess.
• Lifelong learners and business stakeholders expect business schools to embrace sustainability and societal issues as part of their purpose.
• Successful business leaders are those who adapt, push for societal change, and balance financial impact with sustainability goals.

Transcript

Kelly Dore: [0:14] Today's businesses need to be much more agile and adaptable in their way of thinking. In order to do that, they need to bring in leaders who have those skills and attributes and who can build that within their company as well.

[0:26] We know that businesses are needed to solve the complex real world problems that we're seeing in our society. In order to do that, we need our business leaders to have those attributes that can address those problems.

[0:40] What does it take to become an exceptional business leader? We know that you need the fundamental skills, knowledge of finances, or strategy, or accounting. What we know about the world that we live in today is that the technical and knowledge skills are really rapidly changing. Just look at the pace of AI in the last few years. It's changing dramatically.

[1:00] What's not changing, though, are the more durable skills. When somebody is a good communicator, a good collaborator, or a really strong leader, those are the skills that stay with them for a lifetime, enabling them to adapt and react to the world that's changing around them.

To make the impact in society, we need the business leaders who are strong communicators and strong collaborators.

[1:16] At Acuity, we know that the things that we assess fundamentally impacts the things that we value. When we assess only an applicant's GPA or their academic knowledge, those are the things that we're placing value on. Those are the things that we're stating as a business school that we prioritize and value. 

[1:35] We need to shift that. We need to help our applicants understand, help our students understand, and help the community understand that we value a lot more, that we are putting the planet and the people over profit, and we're starting that from the very beginning of business school, that it's not just somebody's grades that determine their success.

[1:53] It's really about who they are as a whole person, because we know that to make the impact in society, we need the business leaders who are strong communicators and strong collaborators.

[2:03] We work with programs to help them identify students who are not only exceptionally brilliant but also who have the adaptable skills and the durable skills, like collaboration, like communication, who are going to allow them to be the business leaders of tomorrow.

[2:20] We know that the community, students, and industry are all seeing a shift in wanting business schools to bring out people who are putting people and the planet over profit. That means that business schools need to bring in students who are going to be able to address the changing needs of society.

These business leaders are not only going to be working for sustainability goals, but they're going to be building and changing the way that we think about business in the future.

[2:41] In order to attract these students, business schools need to align their mission and their purpose to these goals of tomorrow. That means making sure that they're highlighting how their mission and their purpose as a business school is making an impact on society, talking about that and highlighting the impact that they've had both in their local community and around the world. 

[3:04] When we think about the business leaders of today and tomorrow who are going to be the most successful, they're the business leaders who are adapting, who are being agile, and who are pushing for the societal change that we need to see and the impact that they can have.

[3:17] We're finding people who are not just focused on profit, but who are understanding how business needs to change in order to better impact society while still having the positive financial impact that we know the businesses need to have in order to be sustainable.

[3:33] Overall, these business leaders are not only going to be working for sustainability goals that we have for our planet, but they're going to be building and changing the way that we think about business in the future.