An MBA is a mighty achievement that anybody tasked with undertaking would not underestimate. Part of the reason they exist is to propel you forward and further in your career, along with your finances – but they do come with their own cost and you will have a price to pay still.
For example, if the company that you work for is willing to pay for the entire cost or for part of the cost of your MBA, expect your signature on a piece of paper to contractually bind you to work for them for at least two years once you have successfully completed your MBA, ultimately in order for them to get back the investment which they have made in you.
Why an MBA is relevant to your career
Explaining what an MBA is exactly, in its most fundamental form – it is basically a general degree in which you will learn to become the best professional you can be in your chosen career, with paths of specialities you can choose to take and which are there to help you in whatever your career speciality is, so if you’re a consultant, you will further learn about how to maximise profits in a business, for example.
That’s a point worth thinking about too, for those who choose to undertake an MBA degree so that they can change career paths or move up through the ranks of their current career, as the curriculum and modules involved in an MBA degree program do not necessarily just teach business as a general subject.
Rather, the objective of an MBA is to teach the students what the principles are fundamentally in various fields of business, like marketing strategies and the more administrative parts including accounting. There’s no doubt that the value of an MBA is appreciated greatly by employers, but it is widely agreed that the overall value of having an MBA on your resume changes depending on where the MBA grad wants to end up in the working world.
How an MBA affects your career
Another factor which carries implications around the value of the MBA degree attained is whether the degree was obtained at a good university, or one that specialises in business, such as the Hult International Business School.
When you get an MBA from a well-respected and reputable establishment it’s going to be seen higher up in the ranks than an MBA from elsewhere. Because, the student has a better understanding of business principles due to specialisation.
This gives employers more peace of mind when they are hiring someone with an MBA, or looking to hire someone with an MBA, as they are going to want to work with people who know how the cogs work in a business and how they need to be oiled in order to give that business legs and further flourish.
How an MBA might improve your salary and widen your career prospects
It is widely accepted and agreed that an MBA can indeed increase your earning potential. This is for a myriad of reasons, one being as we mentioned before, the prestige of your school – that will really push you into the realm of greater earning potential.
Your choice of career also matters – if you choose to go ahead and put your new-found skills to work in investment banking, and IT for example, or consultancy, you’ll earn more money than other graduates with an MBA who work in different sectors. This is because within those industries mentioned, specialist knowledge really is key to the stability of the foundations of those industries.
In business, you have to know how to network successfully in order to get ahead, as one good old adage goes, “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” A graduate with an MBA that networks with other professionals in his or her field of work will find that by having done so, they will have built their personal brand greater than those who haven’t networked, meaning that professionally they will get further because other professionals know them and remember them.
As mentioned, there are plenty of advantages to earning an MBA degree, and we’ve spoken about how your career might be affected by an MBA, but another point worth taking into accounting is that while an MBA can increase your salary, the prospect of it doing so becomes greater when you get an MBA within a specialized field, particularly if you already know what industry you want to go into, because you will be more valuable an asset to that industry if you have specialised in it than someone who has not.
