MBA

Education
&

C
areers
July 2006 32
IN FOCUS
WHAT TO EXPECT FROM AN MBA AND WHAT NOT TO!
M
any myths abound about the utility of
an MBA. It is regarded by many as a
veritable passport to a lucrative and
successful career. This has led to a mad scramble
for seats at premier management institutes and
most young students would give virtually
anything to gain entry into the hallowed portals
of an IIM.
In the midst of all this, you would do well to
understand what exactly an MBA will mean for
your career. It is important to realise what is of
value in the MBA that you so dearly desire and
what is not. This will help you enormously in
selecting the institutes you would apply to and
also in what you would do once you get there.
The exposure and the peer group: This is
probably the biggest benefit that you get from a
good B-School. The quality of students you will
interact with will be the biggest source of
self-improvement. This is actually the reason why
the best institutes, like the IIMs, give the best
value addition to your career. The best students
are found at the best institutes and your
interaction with them, more than the institute
itself, provides you with your best learning
opportunities.
It is therefore necessary to interact regularly with
as many of your fellow students on campus as
possible. All top-notch institutes try to ensure
that they have a diverse group of students on
campus. By mixing with this multi-skilled group
from all over the country, you will be exposed to
various thought processes and ideas that you
may never have come across before. Absorb as
much as you can from all of them. Understand all
points of view even if you do not agree with
them.
Since the peer group is such a vital facet of
learning at any B-School, it also stands to reason
that a correspondence MBA can never match an
on-campus programme in terms of learning value.
The group learning element is largely missing in
a correspondence programme and this has a
serious impact on the learning that occurs.
The faculty and infrastructure: It goes without
saying that the faculty plays a very important
role in the development of your career at a
management school. However, it is extremely
unlikely that you will get uniformly good faculty
members even in the very best of B-Schools.
Most students feel a sense of dissatisfaction with
the quality of the faculty that they come across.
This need not be a cause for too much concern.
It is important to realise that, MBA education
being largely experiential in nature, it is difficult
for even the best institutes to attract teachers
who have both the necessary academic
expertise and the required industry experience.
You will have to make the most of what is on
offer. Please make sure that you get out of the
bunking mindset of your under-graduate days.
The opportunity to attend classes of some star
professors will never come again and missing
them would be outright folly. The inputs you
get from some of these classes would be
invaluable at a later stage in your career.
An MBA equips you with the necessary tools to handle various business functions.
However, there still remains a lack of clarity on the value addition
that is gained by the pursuit of an MBA.
To clear the haze, Mr Manek Daruvala, PGDM (IIM-A), writes on this issue.
July 2006 33
MBA
Education
&

C
areers
IN FOCUS
Most management institutes these days have
quality infrastructure in terms of library and
computer facilities. The crucial thing is to make
use of this infrastructure. You may not get access
to such a vast repository of high quality data
and journals easily in future. Even if you do not
go through too much of what is there, make sure
that you find out what sort of information is
available and where. Later on in your career
you are bound to need matter from the journals
you passed by during your institute days. You
must make a conscious effort to be totally
up-to-date with the latest technologies on offer.
After you leave the institute your knowledge will
fast become obsolete in any case. You cant afford
to be outdated even before you leave!
Placements: The excellent jobs on offer to fresh
MBAs is undoubtedly the primary reason for the
popularity of MBA as a post-graduation option.
Salaries on offer are truly mind-boggling. Without
getting into the details of the exact salaries on
offer, it is sufficient to say that the pay packages
are indeed mouth-watering.
However, there are few important things to take
care of while planning for your future career.
Remember that the placement that you get at the
management institute is only the first job of your
career. In the excited atmosphere on campus, it is
easy to make the mistake of planning for your
placement rather than planning for your
long-term career.
Many students tend to target specific
organisations / sectors and select optional
courses based on what they feel will help them
make it to those organisations. This is a very
common blunder. It may help you win the battle
of placements but it may well result in your losing
the larger war of your career. It is necessary to
plan for placement but it should not become your
overriding concern on campus. Remember that
you joined the B-School to learn and add value to
yourself. Placement should be the end product
of your learning, not the primary reason for being
at a B-School. At first glance, this advice may
well sound difficult to fathom but you would do
well to mull over it carefully.
Later on in life: While MBA is undoubtedly a
good door-opener, it is not an open-ended
passport to success in your career. You will get
a good job based on your academic credentials
and the reputation of your B-School you wont
get your promotion because of it. In order to
move on in your career you will have to prove
your capability to deliver results to your
organisation over and over again. Nobody
will bother about what institute you passed out
from it is only the quality of the work you do
that will count.
Your alma mater will help you in networking with
the people who matter. The alumni associations
of most management institutes are active only in
fits and starts. Make sure that you put in a bit of
extra effort to attend alumni meetings whenever
they happen. You will do your career no harm
whatsoever by meeting a group of well-connected
professionals on a regular basis.
Summing up: Admission to a good management
institute can be an excellent springboard for your
career. However, to benefit optimally from the
opportunity, you would need to put in a lot of
effort both on campus and later on in your career.
An MBA will not reduce the need to work hard, it
will only make hard work more rewarding.
(The author is Founder - Director,
T.I.M.E. Pvt. Ltd.)