No individual with a career in business decides to pursue an MBA without a clear cut goal in mind. Like any shrewd businessman, a business professional invests in an MBA degree only to reach a level of success in their career that would not have been possible otherwise. It is a well-known fact in the business industry that an MBA will turbocharge both your salary and your career, thanks to the career options it opens up. Ever since the advent of online MBA programs, this proven method of career enhancement has become available to almost all business professionals.
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Why Considering Getting a Different Job
It is highly likely that a person who pursued an MBA degree has reached the ceiling at their current company, and is looking to open up new opportunities through his degree. For this reason, it is not unusual to change your employer or your industry altogether after acquiring your MBA. Indeed, if your current position doesn’t offer you enough room to grow and fulfill your new post MBA potential, don’t hesitate to move elsewhere; other people in your position are doing the exact same thing. This trend has been confirmed by the growing majority of MBA graduates who landed jobs in industries that were completely different from their old ones; 52 percent in 2010, 55 percent in 2011, and 64 percent in 2012, according to the Graduate Management Admission Council.
MBA Career Paths
An MBA degree allows you to diversify and revitalize your career by increasing your worth in the business market an opening up several lucrative avenues.
- A career in consulting – This career path is both fast paced and high earning, and it is also one of the most popular choices for MBA graduates. A degree is mandatory for a career in consulting, and going for a job in this field will allow you to work in many diverse industries.
B-school graduates have an aggressive level of demand at topnotch consulting firms which makes it highly competitive; it isn’t easy to acquire a job at top firms such as PricewaterhouseCoopers or McKinsey & company, and a prospective applicant will, without doubt, face a steady stream of written tests and face to face interviews with the firm’s senior managers as well as case studies that require a highly intelligent business mind with analytical and interpersonal skills. However, once you manage to land this dream job after getting your MBA, you will be able to earn salaries that start at $75,000 at the very least (even an undergraduate who is studying for an MBA can earn $60,000 at KPMG, as reported in a Management Consulted study), which gives a clear indication of what you will be able to earn after getting your MBA. MBA graduated who land a consultancy jobs are not only able to pay off their loans rapidly and painlessly, they also have the advantage of earning one of the highest salaries in the business field through an extremely prestigious and stimulating career.
Almost four in ten MBA graduates from Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University opted for consultancy jobs. McKinsey & Company alone took 54 such graduates under its wing! In fact, the renowned Big Four – KPMG, Ernst & Young, Deloitte and PricewaterhouseCoopers – all offer plenty of opportunities to MBA graduates. An example would be the month of October last year when Ernst & Young visited five different business schools to handpick MBA graduates for their company, which already has over 160,000 employees.
This may not be the easiest way, but it definitely is the most lucrative way for extracting the best value from your MBA degree.
- A career in marketing – With the overall competition surge in a number of fields such pertaining to information technology, pharmaceuticals and sports management, there is an increasing demand for marketing MBA graduates who are adept at dealing with changing marketing trends. An advertisement manager who oversees the promotional campaigns for their employer in order to generate new customers is paid a median salary of $81,882. A marketing manager who spearheads their company’s search for fresh markets, monitors marketing trends, and recognizes new services and products to aid the company in gaining an insight into the relationship between present customer demand and profits receives over $120,000 on average.
The present economic environment has seen many companies struggle to keep their clients through improvement in advertisement and marketing strategies; the formulation of which requires the expertise of an MBA graduate with a marketing focus. According to the Department of Labor, the impending retirement of baby boomers will open up opportunities for marketing managers, meaning that MBA graduates with a marketing specialization have plenty of success and excitement to look forward too.
Opt for Something Different
Most MBA graduates go for well-trodden career paths such as banking, consulting and marketing. It is important to know, however, that these aren’t the only options out there; there are other less travelled career paths for an MBA graduate.
An excellent example of such a career path is in sports – an industry that employs a good deal of MBA graduates. If you’re a strategic thinker with strong communication, networking and negotiating skills/experience, you can go for a business manager job in Major League sports – a career with starting salary that falls between $90,000 and $110,000.
Exploit Multiple Field Experiences
If you didn’t start out in the business field i.e. earned a Bachelor’s degree in engineering or architecture etc., you can leverage your unique blend of professional qualifications to obtain high paying jobs. For example in the case of engineering, you can opt to be a project and onsite operation management for engineering / construction firms. Most of these organizations have plenty of professionals to handle the technical aspect, but only very few who have an understanding of both the technical side and the managerial side – which will make you an extremely valuable asset. As an example, the current median salary of engineering managers is $118,932, a sum that goes head to head with most mainstream MBA careers.
Conclusion
An MBA degree is a worthwhile pursuit not only in the future financial compensation graduates can look forward to, but also because of the limitless career options an MBA opens up before graduates. More importantly, MBA degrees aren’t only beneficial to business professionals; they can also augment the careers of those who started out as professionals in completely different domains.
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Julia, originally from Germany, earned her MBA degree in 2016 at the Rotterdam School of Management in the Netherlands. She has worked for over 6 years as a Project Manager in the Tourism, Banking and Logistics industry. Eager to explore the world, she has traveled to over 30 and lived in 5 different countries, even exotic far flung places like Papua New Guinea. Now she focuses on her writing career, helping others to find their path in life.
