Earning An MBA Is Not Enough, You Must Learn To Apply Your Skills

Are you planning to pursue an MBA for a better career? But can an MBA degree guarantee success? Let’s have a look....

Nowadays most B-schools and colleges are providing an array of options to students for pursuing business degrees. With growing challenges in the corporate world, earning an MBA has become more important now than ever before. But simply becoming an MBA graduate does not mean that you will climb the success ladder. No matter how much business schools say that an MBA is a guarantee towards a better career, I believe that you will achieve success when you utilise your business knowledge effectively to develop innovative ideas and solutions for your company.

Is An MBA Enough?

In today’s corporate world you will find more individuals who are either pursuing or have already earned an MBA degree. I agree that nowadays being an MBA graduate opens up various new career opportunities which can enable you to achieve your professional goals. Moreover with intense competition in the global job market, having an MBA degree can give you an edge over others and add value to your resume. But I can tell you right now that it is not enough.

Joanna Smith Bers, Managing Director and Talent Officer for DB Marketing Technologies in New York, said “Colleges seem to churn out MBAs like tissue paper. There may have been a time when those three letters actually distinguished job candidates from the pack, but no more. As a senior manager at a business insights management consulting firm, I have found that the MBA is more embellishment than substantive.”

Earn The Skills, Not Just A Degree

Hence you must take the effort to set yourself apart in different ways by not only acquiring business skills and knowledge, but also effectively applying those skills in a business setting. Ahmed Sharawy, an MBA graduate and an aspiring entrepreneur, believes that being able to use your knowledge to develop business plans and strategies is as important as, if not more, than earning an MBA degree. He said “The way schools and people talk about MBA, makes students and candidates believe that graduation is an achievement that entitles degree holders for a better life. But the real achievement is using what we learn to come up with innovative ideas and incubate them long enough to be successful and useful.”

This means that you will need to gain significant work experience in a relevant field either before or while you pursue your MBA degree. Your experience will demonstrate that not only you have the critical skills, but you also know how to use them at the work place to improve your productivity and add value to business.

Going The Smarter Way

But the fact remains that pursuing a full time MBA programme does not leave any space for you to gain work experience by doing even a part-time job. This is perhaps one the biggest challenges of traditional full time business programmes. I guess this is why numerous students from around the globe are now going for online MBA pathway programmes for the excellent flexibility and convenience it offers. As there are no fixed or scheduled classes, you can easily choose to work a full time or part time job and also pursue your online MBA simultaneously. Moreover, you will be able to apply what you learn at the workplace and hone your skills further. This will allow you to develop efficient business plans and strategies for your company by using your MBA knowledge.

Once you have completed your top up MBA programme and acquired adequate work experience, you will have a shot at boosting your employability to a great extent and make you a desirable candidate to prospective employers.

The Bottom Line

So if you think that simply by earning an MBA you can become a hot-shot manager at a Fortune 500 company, then you couldn’t be more wrong. Getting an MBA is certainly not a bad idea, but you need to keep working on yourself to build your career.

Manpower’s Holmes says she doesn’t want to discourage anyone from getting an MBA, but that students should understand there are limits to how much it can help. Dora Vell, an executive recruiter from Waltham, Massachusetts, said “It’s not the degree. It’s what you do with it. An MBA is just noise.” She adds “It doesn’t help me every day, but it made me feel smarter and gave me more confidence.”

What do you think? Feel free to share your views and opinions on MBA and how it can help your career. We would love to hear from you.

Is An MBA Needed For Creating A Rewarding Finance Career?

Do you want to pursue a career in finance? Are you thinking about getting an MBA? Will an MBA degree boost your employability and offer you excellent career opportunities in the financial services sector? Let’s have a look...

MBA For A Finance Career

An MBA in finance will provide you some great opportunities to start your finance career. You can work in multinational corporations as a financial analyst, financial advisor or an accountant. To help aspirants achieve their career goals, globally reputed B-schools like London Business School, Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard Business School are currently inviting applications for the MBA programmes they offer. But can an MBA degree actually help you in building your finance career? Or is it just a waste of your money?

Most people believe that simply by getting an MBA you will be able to amp up your career. However, the fact is the progress of your career basically depends on your skills, abilities, knowledge and experience. However, an MBA qualification can definitely open up new doors to better opportunities. It depends on you how you make the most of these opportunities and use your skills in the workplace.

Is An MBA Enough?

Your MBA education will prepare you to start your finance career with confidence and knowledge so that you can add value to your company. To make the most of your MBA degree you will need to possess intelligence, specific skill sets, experience and money or the capacity to take student loans. Moreover, you also need to make the right connections with the right people so that you can work in the best positions in financial services.

According to the efinancialcareers CV database, it has been observed that if you wish to make your career in trading, then there isn’t any sense in pursuing an expensive MBA programme. Apparently, merely 7 per cent of trading professionals who have posted their resume on efinancialcareers database in the last one year posses an MBA degree.

Why You Need An MBA

An MBA can significantly help your career if you are planning to build your career in the investment banking division or IBD as more than 15 per cent professionals in this field have an MBA qualification. In the United States, MBAs are particularly widespread in this sector with almost 19 per cent IBD professionals with MBA degrees, as compared to 13 per cent in Europe.

Furthermore, if you plan on working in private equity in the future, then spending huge loads of money on your MBA can be worthwhile. The private equity sector comprises of the highest volume of MBA qualified professionals in financial services, with American private equity firms with the most MBA graduates. However, it was found that MBA graduates comprise of only 19 per cent and 22 per cent of the total PE populations respectively.

So if you are planning on building a rewarding career in the financial services sector, then you should consider the fact that most of the professionals in the financial services sector are not MBA qualified.