Should engineers go for MBA after B.Tech?
Engineers, after striving for the four years of graduation, face the biggest dilemma of their lives. They are left with the choicest few options to lead their life unto. And God help you if you happen to be a mechanical engineer passed out from a private institution. No company would be hiring freshers. You will be asked for experience which you cannot get until you get a job.
M.Tech/ME is a distant dream since all you could think about is going abroad to pursue them and that is not a piece of cake for everyone. This leaves engineers with the few options close to home other than MBA. Others have to argue that MBA after B.Tech is a total waste of time.
Yes:1. The fresher’s dilemma : The most prominent reason why B.Tech pass outs go for MBA is the lack of openings at core and technical levels. Lack of experience makes them anxious when they find no other option for them but to go ahead and try their luck in management and in the meanwhile accept whatever little pay they get at work.
2. Boredom : Even when you hit upon your core job, you get bored soon doing the same kind of technical jobs that becomes melancholic after a few years. They get the feeling that they are stuck in the race where things are not even moving ahead. Reality hits home and engineers are out to explore the only option closer and that is MBA.
3. Growth : Apart from boredom another reality that gives nightmares to engineers is the lack of growth prospects at their jobs. It is like waking up to the same stuff everyday and being hopeless about anything better to happen in your life. To attain new heights, they do need to add management skills to their technical ones.
4. Comes handy : The marketing and sales enhancement capabilities come handy even if your technical skills are enough to get you a place at the company. The pricing of a particular product, its marketing and management, analyzing the outcome and designing better strategies to sell them off is extremely helpful. Apparently, engineering did not teach you any of these, hence leaving you to the only option and that is getting into a B-school.
5. Complimentary : If engineering focuses on creation of something, management is all about getting the creation sold out. If engineers are good at designing things, management studies make them able to deploy the designs too. The soft skills are extremely important too and since that was never taken into consideration while you were graduating, MBA comes to rescue.
No:1. Different paths : If you were not serious about engineering, why could you not have thought of that before? If a higher study in your technical field does not appease you all the same, it is quite clear that you took up engineering just for the fact that either your parents wanted you to do that or you thought that life would be easier after that. These are two different paths and you decide to leave one halfway only to join the other. Hardly makes sense.
2. You do not need it : If you are happy and satiated in your core field, there is no reason why you should need business skills to ensure that you get growth options. You should rather go for higher studies in engineering and enhance the skills that you already possess instead of doing something totally out of your league and frustrating yourself in the process.
3. This is not a shortcut : Students usually think that there is no life and job security after B.Tech and having management degree would get them to a better position where they could easily relax and look forward to a secure job. This is so not true. You do not always happen to take a different step and skip the struggle that lies ahead.
4. Banking after engineering? What sense does it make to do B.Tech first and then MBA and then land in a bank job? You did not study all those years of engineering to do simple banking calculations now did you? It is better to find yourself in a place that pays less but makes you happy doing things that you always wanted to do.
Engineers going for MBA are not a rare thing these days. With less core jobs for freshers, there is hardly much option for them to consider but go with the only one that could give them some job security and a better future option than struggle with codes when all you did was study machines. Lack of technical jobs for freshers is such a big problem that needs to be addressed; what with all those new engineering colleges opening up in every next city/town.
