source: Career Core
After completing high school, I seemed to run after the best colleges or universities in the country or abroad to complete my graduation in flying colours because that was necessary to land myself a good job or take the next step in my career. However, once I completed my graduation, I was unsure and did not know what to do next – whether to get placed with a big organization or continue higher studies.
While some decide on earning straightway, others tend to fulfill their dream of getting a management degree and completing their MBA from a reputed organization. The sky is the limit when you enroll in an MBA program full of belief, hope, desire, and enthusiasm. However, once the graduation time comes closer, we tend to be lost in our choices as to what to do next after acquiring an MBA degree.
Facts About MBA Graduates
At first, I would look into some statistics. Since 2010, the recent grad’s employer demand has reached its highest level as announced in its forward-looking Corporate Recruiters Survey by GMAC which is an organization that administers in the GMAT exam. In a survey which was conducted in the year, 2016 in the month of February and March stated that the recruiters prefer to hire recent graduates from the business schools which was about eighty-eight percent compared to the eighty percent of the companies that hired in the previous year.
In the current MBA market, jobs are still there and there is no reason to worry. However, you might not be satisfied with the job role or the company you are getting recruited for and hence you need to reskill yourself like I did for that particular role and be ready with the opportunity comes. You need to have patience and keeping improving your skills.
Have a Plan
All MBA graduates must have a plan, and hence not having a plan for an MBA graduate is not typical of. It’s a once in a lifetime experience that students get to pursue an MBA. Generally, in advance, students know what they would do after graduation. On the back of several years of work experience, and after careful consideration, the decision to do an MBA was taken. Most MBA graduates have a clear picture of their career and know what they want to do. It is not a wise strategy to decide what to do after obtaining an MBA degree.
I was fully aware of what I would want to achieve in life and was always looked after by the admission committee. Based on self-understanding, a clear thought out career strategy is what the admissions officers would want to see. Why you want to do an MBA and your goals after completing is what they are most interested in.
Based on the professional path of mine, the MBA program was considered by me. The right MBA programs could only be selected when in mind you have clear career goals. Whether an MBA meets your need or how your career could be boosted could only be known after that. On your own scale, each program value could be rated and the facts could be uncovered. For a newly minted MBA grad, it is very important to be realistic. Adam Heyler once said in his youtube channel that your CV could become credible and your network would be expanded if you have the MBA degree. But the lack of work experience would not certainly be made up the MBA degree. Time management is also an important factor which is taught by MBA.
The Post MBA Dilemma
source: PrepAdviser
The current job market possesses a tremendous challenge to every professional, even someone with a lucrative degree as MBA. Gone are those days when an MBA degree guarantees you a high paying job in a big firm. Nowadays, the wave of entrepreneurship has engulfed many and hence so many graduates are moving towards entrepreneurship and starting out their venture. However, it is not a piece of cake to be an entrepreneur in this competitive market and almost ninety percent of start-ups fail after its inception. I was not into entrepreneurship and choose to upgrade myself and follow my dream.
I pursued my MBA in Finance which is often a go-to choice for many students during their graduation certainly due to the prospects of working in major insurance or a banking company. I wanted to work as a Business Analyst, Risk Analyst, and so on. Thus it was pertinent for me to develop an analyst intuition and master the analytical tools such as SQL, Excel, Tableau, etc. If you are interested in working as a Decision Scientist or a Data Scientist, you need to upgrade your skills like me to more advanced skills like Machine Learning, Deep Learning and so on.
However, once I found the potential that data carries and the diverse nature of this field, I wanted to expand my horizons and work as a Data Science consultant in some big corporation and hence I started exploring other domains like Marketing, Human Resource and so on. MBA in Marketing is another such lucrative career with high post-graduation opportunity. Some of the work designation after completing MBA in marketing are – Research Manager or a Senior Analyst, Marketing Analyst, and so on. Data is the new oil and all marketing firms are using the unprecedented potential of data to market their product to the right customers and stay ahead in the race.
Being a Marketing Analyst, you would be responsible to gather data from various sources and thus having the skills of data collection or web scraping is very important. Additionally, I learned at least of data visualization tool like Excel, Tableau, Power BI and others to analyse the performance of different marketing camp gain which could be presented to the shareholders who would make the final business decision. Overall, it was about finding patterns in the data using various tools and ease the process of making decisions for the stakeholders.
MBA in Human Resource may not be as lucrative as the above two but certainly has its own share of value in terms of responsibility and decision making. Whether or not you have been employed as an HR after your graduation has no relation to the fact that you need to Master HR Analytics which I did that would help in dealing with employees.
As an HR professional, you would be engaged mostly in employee relations and thus it is necessary to understand the satisfaction level of each employee and deal with them separately. Onboarding a resource garners a huge amount of financial cost and hence predicting the attrition probability of an employee could avoid financial loss. Thus, data collection and machine learning are two of the important skills which I learned further along with my interpersonal skills.
Supply Chain Management has been in demand and I realized it is important to understand applications of Data Science in this regard because it could take me a long way in my career. The impact of supply chain dynamics could be analysed using the right analytical tools. Data could be collected and leveraged to identify the efficiency of the supply chain.
Additionally, the price fluctuations, commodities availability could also be analysed using Data. If you master Data Analytics like me, you could reduce the risk burden of an organization.
Healthcare management is another important field where students pursue an MBA which deals with practices related to the Healthcare industry. As Data Science had a vast application in the healthcare industry, I had to get my hands dirty and learn the nitty-gritty of analyzing a healthcare dataset. In the HealthCare careful usage of data could lead to ground-breaking achievements in the field of medical science. Applying analytics with relevant data could help in reducing medical cost and also channel the right medicine for a patient.
Deep Learning has made tremendous progress in the HealthCare industry and hence I took some time to understand the underlying working structure of neural networks. It could unearth hidden information from the patient’s data and help in prescribing the appropriate Medicare of the patient.
Conclusion
Though this was a generic overview of the skills I mastered for my own career aspirations after pursuing my MBA. In general, analytics is the need of the hour and every MBA graduate or each professional irrespective of the field they are in could certainly dive into this field without any prior relevant experience. In the beginning, I felt a bit overwhelmed by the vastness of the field but as I moved along I found it interesting and gradually get inclined towards the field.
Overall, along with the management skills, the technical expertise to deal with data and derive relevant information from it would land you a much higher role of a manager or a consultant in a firm which I eventually managed to achieve where you would be the decision maker for your team. Upskilling is very important in today’s world to stay relevant and keep in touch with the rapid advancement in technology.
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