Introduction + MBA Stream Wise Expertise Required (Part1)

We all want to be successful in life and in this capitalistic world, your monthly paycheck is a good measure of your level of success (though people might disagree on this). In order to have a good paycheck it’s important to have educational degrees which can be testimonial to your abilities. In this context an MBA degree; which stands for master’s degree in Business Administration stands as one of the most sought-after degrees across the world (including India). That said very few people actually talk about what things to expect when you join an MBA college and what are the things you can keep in mind before actually planning for doing an MBA (mostly in Indian contest) .Having completed my MBA in 2017 I thought of putting together all my thoughts in one place to actually help future aspirants prepare for their MBA journey. I find QnA to be the best form of writing the articles since the readers can easily jump to their relevant part without reading the entire article. So, the remaining portion of the article will be in that format.

Ques - Should I plan for doing my MBA as a fresher of should I gain some experience and then do MBA? which stream should I target while applying for MBA based on my experience?

    

Ans- A very common question among MBA aspirants. There are 4-5 type of roles for which companies hire students:

1.      Sales & Marketing: These are roles from famous FMCG, Telecom companies and other B2C companies likes Emami , HUL , Coca Cola, Colgate, Vodafone, Airtel,Loreal etc etc .These are the best management roles you can get after doing your MBA since the growth trajectory in these roles is very steep. Though initially for some roles you have to do field jobs but over the course of 1-2 years your role changes from sales to marketing and after 3-4 years your CV is the most sought after by recruiters .Now the problem is these companies prefer freshers more than people who have work experience (especially in IT sector).I have personally known a lot of students who have joined MBA colleges after taking 1-2 years of experience in TCS, Accenture and don’t find themselves shortlisted at all. So If you want to go in this role try to join directly as a fresher or if you want really want to gain experience try for Sales & Marketing experience in B2C companies only rather joining pure IT Companies like TCS, Wipro which will make it more difficult for you to get shortlisted.

2.      Finance: These include Investment Banking roles by companies like JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse etc., Rating companies like Icra, Crisil , MNC banks like Citi Bank , Deutsche Bank etc etc Now here is the catch; I’m only talking about proper finance roles in all these companies not the sales and marketing roles of a banking company (which will again fall in the first category). These are very high paying sector, but the work life balance is screwed. In order to get a role here it’s important to have good accounting knowledge beforehand ; so here are the things you can do to get these roles before you join any MBA Institute:  1) Try to do graduation in accounting rather than Btech since this will make your accounting fundamentals really strong and you will have no problems understanding the financial concepts in MBA  2) In case you don’t have accounting knowledge and are Btech grad try and clear CFA or FRM level1 before joining MBA to make your accounting & finance concepts clear.  The reason I’m stressing this fact is Btech students who dream of joining investment banking companies find it very difficult to understand accounting / financial concepts since its very different from technical concepts which you have learnt in your graduation years. When joining an MBA college >50% students think of doing majors in finance but after 1 year this percentage drops to <10%;  reason being you have to complete with very bright technical students who understand accounting concepts very easily or students who have accounting knowledge beforehand thus making it impossible for you to complete with these students during placement process which are for a very limited number of seats (plus 2 years is a very short time to grasp financial concepts, even if you are successful in cracking an investment banking company it will take another 1-2 years for you to come to the level of your peers affecting your performance appraisals in this process)

3.      Supply Chain: Companies under this bracket includes management roles in Tata Steel, M&M, L&T, Amazon, Walmart, Nike, Vedanta, Adani, Ambuja   etc. in inventory management, Management Trainee, Purchase manager and all other roles which are B2B in nature and deal with behind the scene management of work instead of B2C roles of sales and marketing. In order to crack these companies, it is good to have a mechanical degree in Btech / diploma in mechanical engineering plus some prior experience in above mentioned companies. These companies are also very strict in their selection criteria and hardly pick anyone from IT background especially the huge chunk of people who have experience in TCS, Wipro, Accenture etc.

4.      IT & Analytics: These companies prefer someone having technical experience in IT domain.  Product Management Companies, Regular IT companies (TCS Wipro Infosys CapG) , Big 4 Consulting companies in IT vertical roles draw out a large chunk of students having work experience in IT background as they understand the work culture & working style. Analytics specific companies will prefer someone who have analytics background however it’s not a table stakes criterion during selection.

Conclusion1: So, depending on your current background and your preferred stream you can choose if you want to gain additional experience or not. For example, if you want sales and marketing role than instead of gaining experience in IT you can directly try for getting into an MBA college. If you want to go into finance role and have zero accounting knowledge than I will suggest gaining IT/Manufacturing experience won’t help either unless you plan to do a CFA / FRM also in those 1-2 years. If you want to go into supply chain or IT, then having an IT / Supply chain background helps.     

Conclusion2: I have left out unique work experiences like experience in hotel management, dental, psychology etc. now for profiles which are very niche (general composition in an MBA batch is 30-40% freshers 30-40% people with IT consulting experience 10-15% people with supply chain 5%-10% people with Accounting , FMCG work experience ) and form <3% of total batch size these are very good to have work experience  and the more unique your profile is, the better are your chances of getting shortlisted for a company. For example, if you have hotel management in hospitality than you have very high chances of getting selecting in a consulting roles since it requires people to be very polished and interactive similarly  say you have experience in psychology than MBA in HR is a very good field of choice for you.