7 Things You Can Learn After Business School

Once you have chosen to go to a business school you have a good idea about what you want to do for a living. While one of these educational programs will help teach you how to get into the job field you want and the basic things that you will do when you are there, you will also find that there are some business skills that cannot be taught.

You will just have to pick up these skills on the go. Although, it will help to figure out the things will not learn in business school ahead of time.

Confidence

The idea of confidence falls into two categories when it comes to working in a business. You must first display confidence in front of your employees to earn their respect, but you must also know how to portray confidence in your ideas and strategies in front of your investors, suppliers, and clients. Otherwise, these people will think it wiser to put their money elsewhere. Since confidence is a facet of personality, it cannot be taught in a classroom. The type of confidence that you will need in business is one that comes with a lot of time and experience. Therefore, you may find that you enter the business world without one of the key attributes. However, you can learn confidence by watching people around you or when you realize just how vital this component is in the world of business.

Learning From Your Mistakes

When faced with a classroom full of people listening to an expert in the field of business, it is natural to think that successful people only get where they are by not making any mistakes. However, when you enter the real world, you will quickly learn that the people who succeed are the ones who make the most mistakes and recover well.

It is no secret that everyone makes mistakes, even when they are outside of the workplace. You will not learn about fixing your mistakes in business school, but this is your chance to learn and gain some experience in the real world. Whenever a mistake occurs be sure to own it. Take a step back and try to think about what you can take away from the unpleasant experience. That way, you can continue to learn and grow long after your time in school.

Hiring Employees

Your teachers at business school may be able to give you some funny anecdotes about the hiring process, but there is never enough time to explain how the employment system in business works. You cannot teach young people about a gut feeling after all.

Unfortunately, that is one of the major parts of hiring employees. You can be taught how to correctly analyze candidate resumes and ask the right questions, but bringing the right staff members on board relies heavily on your intuition. Again, this intuition is something that will come with time, and hiring the wrong employee can always serve as a mistake that you can learn from. Therefore, you shouldn’t feel too much pressure about learning about the hiring process.

Tech Skills

Anyone that makes it as far as a business school is likely to have received some basic IT training at school. Unfortunately, basic tech skills will only get you so far in business. The business world is more than just compiling databases and writing Word documents.

Once you start operating in the business world, you will quickly learn that the technology that you use is quickly replaced by more innovative machines. What’s more, you can pick up a lot of time-saving ways to use tech, like sending compressed PDFs by email instead of entire documents. That is why some individual tech skills will help you stay up to date with this influx of new technology. Keep an open mind, and you will easily be able to develop your tech skills in the real world.

Communication

Communication is a skill that is very similar to your confidence. That is that it is a personal skill that you will pick up over time. But that doesn’t mean that you cannot learn more before this.

Communication can once again be broken into two different categories. You must first know how to communicate verbally between two groups of people. Communicating with your employees should be simple enough as you will establish the tone and mood of the company yourself. However, communicating with your investors and potential clients requires you to know how to be a bit more formal. You can look to others for examples of how to do this from your peers. But you will probably get a good head start in this department from what you learn in business school. Then you have written communication. This is a medium that is rapidly changing over time with the increasing use of email and social media. Unfortunately, you will have to learn how to manage this aspect yourself, but at least you can rest easy knowing that everyone else is in the same boat.

Creativity

Many people make the mistake of assuming that working in business is all about managing facts and figures. While this is true, a lot of people seem to ignore the creative elements involved. A class in business school may reiterate that creativity is required in business, but it is not something that you can teach.

Creativity involves coming up with innovative solutions to problems on the fly. Once again you will get better at this as time goes by, but it is important not to ignore your creative instincts. Lean into your ideas and don’t be afraid to engage in some self-reflection to learn about how your creative process works. You will be glad you did when the time comes to get creative.

Taking Risks

In essence, the decision to attend business school in the first place can be viewed as a risk. History is full of examples of innovative business leaders who struck out on their own straight after high school to find success. However, there is also a benefit to taking a few years to learn some of the tricks of the trade from the experts. This process should ideally put you ahead of those who did not take this risk.

While the decision to attend business school may have been a difficult one, you may not be happy to learn that working in business full-time involves taking much bigger than this on an almost daily basis. You cannot teach someone how best to take a risk. All you can do is learn how to weigh up the odds with the information that you have in front of you. From there, all you have is your gut and intuition to carry you forward. Every risk you take will come with a different set of stakes, but you should get better at this process as you become more comfortable with your decision-making skills.

Conclusion

Attending business school will teach you the ins and outs of the industry. Having this knowledge in your pocket as you enter the business world should put you ahead in most situations. However, there are a few aspects of the trade that you cannot learn in a classroom. Pay attention to these and do not neglect them and you should have no trouble succeeding in the real world.