When will you be able to see the value of an MBA in your career?

As someone aspiring to doing a full time MBA or someone who has just secured that prized MBA admit, this would be a key question in your mind – When will I be able to see the value of my MBA degree? Most people wrongly assume that it will be the day they graduate with them being offered plum leadership positions and huge salaries. Unfortunately, this is not true even for the IIMs (see truth about MBA salaries). Even large companies like Unilever, P&G etc take fresh hires through a 18 month-long program where they are supposed to work as trainees.

So, the question still remains – when is it that you will see your effort of two additional years of study pay off? The answer is that like all things in life, the payoff will come with patience and hard-work. Assuming that you graduate from a Top Tier B-School, you will get a job at the junior to middle management level, from where the opportunity to grow fast will be immense. This will take a lot of hard work putting into practice your business, leadership and networking skills and showing results so that you can climb the corporate ladder to higher management positions. This exercise takes roughly 8 to 10 years, but at the end, the effort is well worth it in terms of money, status and the ability to make an impact on society.

At this point, some of you may be asking, if it does take 8 to 10 or maybe 15 years to realize the value of an MBA degree, then why do an MBA – I can get there without an MBA by working hard. Why spend 2 years of my life and undergo a huge opportunity cost when I have to work hard after that anyway? Well, yes, you can get to the top of the corporate ladder without an MBA by working hard , however, doing an MBA puts you at the right place in an organization and equips you with the knowledge needed for growth. Hence, the effort needed to get to the same leadership position in the same time frame without an MBA degree would be orders of magnitude higher. That’s why, most people who wish to rise in their careers, prefer to do it through the MBA route.

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