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Anurag Singh

Should I do MBA now or wait for 2 years to get some job experience?

Hello, I am Anurag. I completed my B.Tech from IIT Kanpur and got jo


by Anurag Singh
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4 answers

RE: Should I do MBA now or wait for 2 years to get some job experience?

Ajit sankar  Mallik
Ajit sankar Mallik
Verified Career Expert
MD PhD,(CABMM) and University Hospital Zurich
  • Zurich

Hi Anurag,

To strike on your query: you have a job offer at hand and you could pretty much start right away without any waiting period.
If you can make yourself successful, many corporates can support your MBA or mini MBA courses within your job brackets. I excatly do not know where do you stand interms of MBA preparation/ offer etc as of now. If I take that point in negation, that you still have to prepare and get an offer for MBA, then the ideal options will be to take the job offer and simulatneously prepare for MBA and in parallel, explore options for industrial MBA.
To support my logic:
1) Preparation for MBA needs atleast some time (8-12 months) upto the point of admission based on a typical admission cycle and GMAT/CAT exams and all. Why to waste this time window, where as you can pretty much substantiate this period with some corporate experince in your CV?

2) If you work thought corporate sectors, you could opt for various executive MBA options, which stand quite strong in global domain. Executive MBA (eMBA) demands some "job" experience. Other options for MBA are part time MBA, Acclerated MBA, Dual MBA, Online MBA, weekend MBA (tailored for people in job!)

3) If you go for MBA now, you have a CV of Btech + MBA, let's say in 2 years down the lane
but, if you go for a job, you can modulate your career to have an executive MBA + experience in job + chances to get your MBA sponsored too!

4) Many corporates also allow for part time / online MBA options in which you don't need to be at the campus all times. You need to go there for exams and for certain filed based projects. These are quite accepted norms these days i.e. work + parallel higher dgrees like MBA or mini MBA or eMBA. Once you gather the job experience you could know the next pattern of streamlinging you wish to pursue and then even you can have the option to choose the MBA profile accordingly (MBA in Healthcare, human resource, marketing, communication, project management, enterpreneurship for example) vs Vanilla MBA i.e. MBA wihtout any specialization.

If you have more specific queries, do get back to us.
Cheers!

RE: Should I do MBA now or wait for 2 years to get some job experience?

Anuj Agrawal
Anuj Agrawal
Verified Career Expert
Career Counselor and Director at EduWire
  • Delhi

Hi Anurag,


I would suggest you to go for job as the MBA market scenario is not very good at present.

With your experience in corporate sector you will have better understanding that for which particular mainstream you should go for in your masters and also you will have an edge of work experience during the entrance interviews in premier institutes as some of the good institutes prefer candidates with work experience over freshers.

Also, you might land in to a very good management job on the basis of your work and your B.Tech degree that you might not require to do MBA then.

I hope I am able to satisfy your confusion to an extent.


RE: Should I do MBA now or wait for 2 years to get some job experience?

Dr. Anand Wadadekar, PhD
Dr. Anand Wadadekar, PhD

Dear Anurag, let me tell you that the dilemma you are facing is very natural and very common. So firstly do not feel that this is a very unique career problem. I am very happy and you should feel proud that you managed to complete your BTech degree from a premier engineering institute that is IIT Kanpur. Not everybody gets a chance to be in IITs. Therefore as suggested by Expert Anuj and Ajit, I would also recommend you to go for the job you have secured and do not worry about MBA for 3 years. Being an IIT graduate itself is a good thing and I definitely feel that you should make use of this job opportunity that has come in your way and make the most out of it

. Also I would like you to understand that it is not mandatory to be an MBA to become a Manager in future, ofcourse an MBA definitely gives you an edge and a better understanding of the business and strategies, etc. Please understand that you should not worry about doing an MBA at this point of time since you already have a job in hand. Many people today are not able to get jobs even though they may be highly qualified. Therefore I would like to see you concentrate and focus on your job and learning there which will actually help you grow in terms of salary, job profile and status. In future if you feel that an MBA is necessary, then the work experience of atleast 3 years stands a very good status while applying to MBA. Also please note that if you do not an MBA related to your field that is manufacturing or operations, then it may happen that pursuing an MBA Finance or HR or Marketing will get into a very different industry domain where seldom your IIT engineering knowledge will be useful. Therefore while choosing the specialisation, I would recommend you to choose either Operations or Systems. After a solid IIT engineering degree doing finance or marketing and doing a table chair job of accounting, finance or raoming around in the market for marketing of services or product does not make sense. After gaining an experience of 3 years atleast, you can also think of doing MBA on part time basis, if you do not wish to do it full time, since doing full time will amount to leaving your job. There are many good institutes in India which offer part time MBA. Best Luck

RE: Should I do MBA now or wait for 2 years to get some job experience?

Dr Aparna
Dr Aparna
Verified Career Expert
PhD Organizational Psychology
  • Hosur

Dear Anurag,


First of all I would like to congratulate you for being an IIT Kanpur graduate. You have mentioned that you have completed your BTech and are willing to do an MBA further. Good to hear on that. First of all I would like to help yourself question that why do you want to do an MBA. While being an IIT BTech graduate, please ask yourself if you dont want to do an MTech in your same field. Also make sure that you are genuinely interested in a business degree like the MBA, and are not doing it just because MBA is the most common destination for graduates in India. However, if you are confident of doing an MBA in future, and are rationale about it, then please go ahead for it after gaining a couple of years work experience.

An MBA degree is very ideal for a person who had already gained a few years of work experience. In fact I can list down the reasons on why an MBA should be studied after gaining some industrial knowledge. I have guest lectured a few MBA colleges in Bangalore and Chennai in my area Organisational behaviour and I would like to tell you that

  1. A person with prior work experience understands the management theories and concept pretty well compared to someone without absolute any work experience. Most of the theories taught in class needs some basic understanding of how real businesses are managed. If you have had work experience, you can easily relate to it and understand the subject to the core. Where as students without work experience most often cannot pursue this sort of understanding and often seek fellow students or faculties help.
  2. An MBA is often taught using Case study methods. Case study method means, students will be presented real business problems and will be put in groups to discuss and find solutions. In this group exercise, students can often bring out their professional experience in applying solutions. So having some work experience will ideally help.
  3. Once you graduate employers who come on-campus to recruit you will be very inspired to pick MBA graduates with prior work experience rather than students without work experience. Having prior work experience is therefore an added advantage in terms of securing a job.
  4. Finally you can also expect high salary package post MBA graduation with some work experience. For example, if you have had at least two three years of work experience, your starting salary after an MBA would be definitely more than 7-8 lakh. Where as if you do an MBA as a fresher, you can expect a salary of 4-5 lakh and above. Again, you might not be convincing to some employers because they demand some work experience any time.

Above all, take time to prepare for your CAT exam and crack it. You can take around two years to prepare for CAT, and simultaneously do a full time job. Two years is highly sufficient to crack CAT for a genius candidate like you. With this you can easily get into IIM A/B/C or IIT'S. If you get into IIM/ IIT's you can definitely expect a pay of more than 10 lakh per annum as minimum.

Hope this helps. My best wishes to you for your future. Good luck.
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RE: Should I do MBA now or wait for 2 years to get some job experience?

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Caching Date: 11/21/2024 5:19:15 PM