An Unusual Career Competitive Advantage

When you think of a career competitive advantage, you generally think of a skill you have, how you organize your life and even the school you attended. I received many emails on the previous post about competitive advantage being less important than comparative advantage in your career. In this piece I am focusing on how you fund your studies as a major point of building a career competitive advantage. While I refer to my undergraduate studies, this line of thinking applies to masters, doctoral and MBA candidates. How you fund your studies can be the largest career competitive advantage you can generate, which sets up this enormously strong foundation to help you in the future. So when you are thinking about funding your studies, realize that grants, school scholarships etc., are not always the best options. A lot of students, I would say the majority, worry most about getting so-called full-ride scholarships from their schools. They ignore corporate funding which can be a far bigger competitive advantage to have. Note, this piece is not about whether or not you get funding, it is about the type of funding you need to create this career competitive advantage. I went to a…