Choosing The Right MBA And Career Path

Its already fourth week of January 2020 after a great New Year party and Makar Sankranti Celebrations, MBA aspirants in India have the mark sheets of various management courses entrance exams taken. Notably, Common Admission Test (CAT) conducted by IIM and Xavier Aptitude Test (XAT) by XLRI. Students have mixed feelings with their scores and the anxiety of how will they make it up to the dream B-school in their minds.  Next two months will be highly challenging and packed schedule for MBA aspirants appearing for the Selection process of B-Schools popularly known as Written Ability Test (WAT) and Group Discussion/Personal Interview (GD/PI) conducted with multiple stages and well-defined weightage at each step based on candidate profile, finally tallying the score to publish list of selected and waitlisted candidates by the admission team. Generally, there are three broad category of MBA Aspirants with a different objective

1. Fresher or Unexperienced Candidates – undergraduates with no corporate exposure.

2. Experienced Candidates – graduates employed with years of industry experience in wide-ranging job profiles. They are ready to quit the job or take a long leave from their employer for full-time MBA. This category has a lot of heterogeneous people with profiles like high work experience opting for Executive MBA, short term Certificate Programs, Weekend MBA programs, Online MBA etc based on their situation.

3. Entrepreneurs – these candidates aspire to start own business firm or take forward their parental business with latest entrepreneurial mindset and unique thinking from business School teachings.

The expectations and need of MBA varies highly among the above three categories, must not be treated as homogenous in any angle.

MBA Aspirants are busy with shortlisting B-schools to apply where there are higher chances of conversion and they fit in for the score secured in eligibility exams.  Also understanding more on the Business school features like overall view and Brand value, academic structure, faculty profiles, current batches profile, Corporate and International tie ups, recent achievements and accolades in various forums, Alumni base, big profiles of alumni in corporate world and successful Entrepreneurs, finally the placement report with detailed employer profile and compensation for the job profiles hired in the past years. Most of the above factors are very dynamic based on several internal and external factors which keep changing from time to time. Hence aspirants must not completely take them as criteria to make the final choice.

In the midst of all this, there needs a lot of groundwork and deep-dive study to understand what actually one aspires out of MBA course and how their career path will be post-MBA degree. It is not just about getting admission into dream B-School but also on how you shape your business education and define the right career path out of it rather a generic and safe answer to every question, greatly cut off from the industry reality in today’s VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous) world. This unclear and safe options badly impact the students in every instance when they appear for the job interview at each firm. Worse when the industry downturn occurs and corporate hiring gets highly stagnant, students have very limited choice in their hand at such situation and have to accept whatever job profile is available. It does not just stop till here, lot of MBA grads end up in a job profile which they don’t like or not inspiring to work after couple of months of on-boarding the firm. Employees quit the job role and employer, switch to another profile in short span of time with endless reasons. It becomes a black mark to their B-school from the employer, which may stop future recruitment from that college for such bad experience.

So how should one handle such dilemma state better? Below are the following four important fundamental work to be done by aspirants

1.   Why and What after MBA – Firstly, A MBA aspirant must be very clear with What the Management education is all about in today’s Business Schools and what they will get out of it at the end. There must be a clear AS-IS and TO-BE process with Pre MBA and Post MBA path. They need to discuss with Alumni who are passed out, not more than 5 years from B-schools as syllabus and environment keep changing fast year on year. Aspirants must read lot of Blogs and success stories in various forums written by graduates. This ground work must be done before the admission process, only then with full confidence they can clear the interview process, which involves wide ranging questions on MBA course understanding and applications out of it. Many students easily fail in this round due to poor exposure and lack of awareness. This needs to be fixed with at most clarity and good understanding.

2.  MBA Specialization – the second step is the choice specialization in MBA. There are common specializations like Finance, Marketing, Operations and Human resource with wide subtopics under each. Specialization is something which many students are confused even till the second year of MBA or are never serious on right choice with general MBA specialization as safe option.  Many B-schools involve choosing electives as the mode of MBA specialization rather a complete semester subject list. There are some specialised B-Schools which offer unique programs in Rural management, Foreign Trade, Supply Chain, HR & Labour Relations, Media and Entertainment, Healthcare, Global MBA etc which are very niche purpose. The current Corporate Buzzword is Business Analytics specialization which is extensively used in all job functions and industries. Students can also have major and minor specialization as a lot of job profiles require multiple skillset of MBA. Aspirants must be ready with the answer in the selection process with good justification. Especially the experienced folks must be clear with right choice of specialization as it must align with their past work experience or they will be considered as MBA fresher in the industry nullifying their previous corporate job experience.  Students do have some time to make a final choice till the second year, but must not delay it.

3. Job Profile – The third component being what kind of job profile do MBA graduates aspire and fit in. Aspirants must have a good knowledge and exposure of actual work MBA grads do in the corporate world. They need to be well aware of this before enrolment of course, which will help them shape their career option aligning with their MBA specialization. They need to discuss with graduates working in the industry and alumni base of the respective colleges. Aspirants need to understand post MBA job and Pre MBA job vary to a large extent with different objectives/expectations and with the industry they are deployed into.   Job profiles depend on B-School Ranking and list of companies which visit the college each year, recruit diverse job role with compensation package customized based on batch overall profile and candidate performance. Also hiring is quite dynamic based on many external factors like Employer business need and investment projection for the next couple of years. Recently more organizations are hiring graduates using the Summer internship performance of two/three months and release the offer letter known as Pre-placement offer (PPO) or Pre Placement interview (PPI) rather executive hiring process. Hence Internship process itself is a step towards Executive placements which happens in couple of months after On-boarding MBA program. Some Firms are moving towards high powered leadership program like Young leadership program (YLP), Future leadership program, Innovation team and etc designed especially for elite B-schools which prepares young MBA graduates to a high visible decision making jobs reporting directly to a C-suite boss.

4.  Nature of Industry – the last important point is the industry one gets into with the job profile. There will be similar job profiles but the nature of work and expectations highly vary in each industry based on its business process and underlying function. Like Sales role in insurance industry varies from the sales job in IT industry with a different product, specification and target audience which require a specific skill set, but both revolves on how much sales conversion one can achieve and make the business grow. MBA aspirants must have a good knowledge of underlying business flow and top employers of some common industries like Banking, Insurance, Healthcare, FMCG, Food processing, Manufacturing, Automobile, Real estate, Media and etc. Switching job from one industry to another is not easy and requires a strong foundation. Organization hierarchy and work culture varies a lot in each industry.  Experienced folks must have a well-defined plan either to make a career progression in the same industry as Pre MBA or make a career switch to different industry with the different job role.
The above four points are very important groundwork for any MBA aspirant planning to join their dream Management education. Once they are clear with it, must design their MBA course with suitable achievements and aligning their resume accordingly. Aspirants post MBA enrolment must continue to learn and work sincerely as they prepare for the entrance exams and corporate job with tough bosses. Two years or even one MBA program is a very short duration which moves like a fast blowing wind with exponential learning curve every day with unique problem statement. Hence students need to act fast and smart with every opportunity in a highly matured manner.