Completed Your Engineering? Why and How Can MBA Be A Good Option Next
Pursuing MBA after getting an engineering degree is not a new trend. While an engineering degree has always been a great option to quickly get into the job market, an MBA degree can open a floodgate of opportunities to advance your career by leaps and bounds.
Besides acting as a launchpad to propel the future growth of your career, an MBA degree can be a great opportunity to acquire a different level of skill set that can even highlight your core competence.
7 Reasons to Choose MBA After Engineering
- Management Skills
Engineering graduates already have technical skills with strong domain knowledge. They are usually aware of applied mathematical concepts as mathematics is a core subject in the first four semesters of any engineering course.
However, engineers can lack business management skills. An MBA degree can help them understand the management concepts and the in-depth understanding of how a business operates and the factors that can affect the management decision at the top level.
- Leadership and Personality Development
The vast and tedious engineering syllabus does not leave many opportunities for students to focus on personality development. Therefore, engineers from different socio-economic backgrounds might have different comfort levels while interacting with small or large groups of people.
An MBA course from a reputed business school can help such engineers to overcome their reservations and develop interpersonal skills. They can develop leadership skills and new insights into people’s psyche, which were hitherto unknown to them.
- Demand for Specialisation
The emergence of new disciplines, business opportunities, and greater technology integration has blurred the line between the traditionally segregated roles and positions. As a result, companies today prefer employees who can juggle multiple roles and responsibilities and effortlessly blend in new roles.
Therefore, a management degree with an engineering background is highly sought after in many industries as such managers don’t require extensive training in the technical aspects.
- Higher Remunerations
While the pay package of an individual can depend upon many factors like education, experience and achievements, it is no denying that an MBA degree gives you a head-start. For instance, the average salary of an engineer in the USA is $59,427, but the average salary of an engineer can be upwards of $82,000 depending on the engineering and MBA specialisation.
Especially, engineers with a few years of work experience in the relevant field can command a higher salary after getting an MBA.
[READ: Average Salary of a Top MBA in the USA]
- Better Career Prospects
While there is no shortage of employment opportunities for engineers, engineers can often find their job roles limited to their domain. Such individuals can experience a professional mid-life crisis early in their career where they find it difficult to stand apart from the crowd.
However, an MBA degree can break the shackles of industry-specific jobs. An engineer with an MBA degree can find exciting career opportunities in a wide range of industries that can also help individuals in landing new managerial and even leadership roles.
- Entrepreneurial Aspirations
For some people, a job is not enough regardless of the pay package. They want to be their own boss and dare to embark on the journey of entrepreneurship. Such people can pursue engineering to gain technical knowledge to materialise a far-flung idea germinating in their minds.
Such entrepreneurial engineers can up the ante by pursuing an MBA degree that can give them a deep insight into how to start and run a new business.
- Networking
Reputed MBA schools regularly organise seminars, discussions and field trips for students to interact with industry veterans. They also assist students in securing internships at top companies.
Such activities can allow students to establish networks with industry insiders, which in turn can provide them with excellent industry exposure while studying.
Post MBA Challenges for Engineering Graduates
- Landing an Unrelated Job
Engineers who already have a few years of work experience before an MBA can find the process of switching to an entirely different domain a bit overwhelming. However, engineers have an accommodative attitude that helps them blend in any work environment or job profile.
- High Competition
Post-MBA, an engineer should be prepared to face high competition regardless of the specialisation he chooses. For instance, an engineer with MBA in Finance has to compete not only with fellow engineering graduates but also with commerce and economics graduates.
- Making Up for Lost Time
While most of the undergraduate courses are of three-year duration, an engineering course is 4 years duration. The duration is more if you have pursued your BE or B Tech after a 3-year polytechnic course.
Therefore, a two-year full-time MBA course can make the wait for the job a little longer for engineering students. Hence, they would have to work harder to make up for this lost time.
MS or MBA: Which One is Better for Engineers
An MS degree helps you in specialising in the technical field, whereas an MBA degree drives you to management-specific jobs. While any of these degrees can set you toward better job prospects, you should consider factors like your personal interests and career goals.
If the engineering field excites you and you want to better your career in core engineering fields, then MS can be a good option for you. Alternatively, an MBA can be a good option if you pursue a management career.
However, it is a fact that the average salary of MBA graduates from top B-schools can be relatively higher, giving MBA courses an edge in providing a high return on investments.
MBA Specialisations That Can Propel Your Engineering Career
Although any MBA specialisation can help an engineering graduate to advance his career, the following ones can have special mention based on the current global hiring trend.
- Finance
MBA in finance is one of the most popular management specialisations today. Finance is intricately linked with all aspects of a business, including manufacturing and production. Since an engineer is usually well-versed in the technical aspects of a production or manufacturing process, having an in-depth knowledge of financial management can be proved asset worthy as such individuals can have a larger role in estimating profit and loss, departmental coordination and management decisions.
- Marketing
Even the greatest of products can’t survive in the absence of proper marketing. When it comes to preparing strategies to market a product that requires technical knowledge and inner-working of the product, individuals with engineering backgrounds can have the edge.
An MBA in marketing can give you a rare opportunity to mix your technical prowess with market trends, consumer behaviour, and other aspects of advertising.
- Operations Management
The field of operation management can be tailor-made for engineering graduates as it requires them to have a certain degree of technical knowledge regarding the design, development and manufacturing process of a product.
Additionally, you can learn how to establish supply chains for vendors, develop inter-departmental relations, and quality control.
If you are determined to make it big into the corporate world and don’t mind walking the extra mile in terms of hard work, pursuing an MBA can prove a milestone in your professional career. Remember, from Google to Microsft, the list of Indian CEOs with a combined degree of engineering and MBA is long and impressive. So there is no reason why you should not aim for such a list.
