What kind of jobs can I get with an MBA?
One might ask, what is the big deal about an MBA? What do students actually get to do after graduation? Because an MBA Stack is so versatile, there is no one job available to MBA graduates.
This is a choose-your-own-adventure type of degree!
Many students enter into an MBA to gain information as they advance into leadership positions, plan for future promotions, gain skills that will allow them to become an entrepreneur, or possibly allow for a career shift.
Entrepreneurs
One great end goal for MBA students is to prepare for stepping out as an entrepreneur. This type of venture can look very different from person to person and sector to sector.
Some entrepreneurs are able to gather investors to bankroll a new business operation, and they can work there full-time. Many, however, are starting a new venture while paying the bills with another job. Either way, an MBA is great for these adventurous business leaders because entrepreneurs have to be Swiss army knife leaders.
Most entrepreneurs don’t have the luxury of hiring a full crew of employees to manage every aspect of the business day-to-day. They need to envision, budget, market, project manage, create websites, and much more.
An MBA can give entrepreneurs an overview of many different aspects of owning and managing a business. This allows entrepreneurs to handle the many aspects of a business till it is big enough to hire support personnel.
Can entrepreneurs become successful without an MBA?
Yes, of course. But let’s look at some facts.
Did you know that 20% of US small businesses fail within the first year? Let’s extrapolate that out a little more.
- Thirty percent fail in their second year,
- 50% are gone by the fifth year,
- and the number of failed small businesses climbs to 70% within ten years of starting.
Not only is this data important to look at, especially since these rates have stayed consistent over time, but it also begs the question of why.
While these rates can slightly change based on the entrepreneurs’ industry, there are some common reasons for businesses to go belly up. The biggest contributors to business failure include:
- poor business planning,
- cash flow problems,
- marketing issues,
- poor growth management,
- and inadequate forecasting.
These are all issues that are discussed in MBA programs.
Managers of People and Projects
The typical focus of many students in an MBA is to gain the training to become an efficient and effective manager of people, projects, and money. Why is that? The reasons can be as varied as the professionals giving them, but a common factor is income. Let’s take a look at some examples:
The average base salary for an HR Representative is $50,067 per year.
- An HR Manager, on the other hand, has an average salary of $68,442 per year.
- An HR Director makes an average of $89,261 per year.
- An Information Technology Specialist makes an average of $57,820 per year.
- An IT Manager makes an average of $88,816 per year,
- An IT Director makes over $120,000 per year.
This trend goes on and on across industry lines.
These advanced roles as managers and directors take professionals who are adept at managing people and projects. The leaders need to be able to:
- communicate clearly,
- handle organizational change,
- understand how to motivate employees,
- be able to manage finances and deadlines,
- and effectively work with cross-industry teams.
But these advanced jobs do offer advanced payrolls as well!
C-Suite Roles
Are you already in a management position and one step away from an executive role? Maybe getting an executive MBA or an MBA with an executive specialization is the route for you. If you already have your foot in the door of management and leadership and want to get more tools and insight into what it means to lead in a large-scale manner, an executive focus could be a good choice. This type of MBA degree is focused on vision casting and large organizational leadership.
One thing to note is that one of the critical attributes of an MBA is peer-to-peer interaction. Many times, the students in an MBA are the ones that have the biggest impact on the types of discussions and projects taking place.
Within an executive MBA, all the other students will be higher-level managers and executives as well. This allows for the dialog to be specifically tailored to the challenges and opportunities within the C-suite. This type of think tank is hard to pass up.
