Why do lakhs of students take B-School entrance exams and do their MBA?  In India it is basically for the money. You get a “better job”, a greater pay package and supposedly more work satisfaction. I don’t know about the first and third points but yes, the greater money part is generally true. And how important is work ex to secure a seat in a B School?  For most of the colleges (in fact almost all the colleges in India), you do not need work experience. It is definitely considered a plus point if you have some work experience though.

Why does work ex help anyway?

One, you mature as you work. This is probably one reason why some companies prefer to hire people with work experience over others.

Two, if you intend to continue in the same field (say, if you work in marketing and you want to continue in marketing after your MBA), you might be able to better appreciate the concepts being taught in the class. And yes, people do get better placement offers compared to freshers in some cases if the field you want to pursue remains the same.

Three, you become more realistic about what you want by interacting with people from the industry. This might help in you choosing your field of study as well.

The major drawback however, is that you might effectively end up “losing” a couple of years. People more often than not change their fields: say from IT to marketing, from operations to finance etc. “Opportunity cost” is something you might want to look into before taking the plunge.

I had worked for a couple of years before I went for my MBA. I think it was a very useful. I personally learnt a lot of things. I learnt that politics has a place in every industry and that you have to learn how to deal with it. Motivating a group of people is probably the most difficult and the most important thing which you can learn. You will have people who are frustrated with their jobs in every kind of industry. So, it is not important to be in a field which is ‘happening’, rather you should be in a field in which you are really interested in.

Finally, if you manage to get into say the top 10 institutes in India, you should probably go for it – work ex or no work ex. If you are open to the idea of studying in some good institutes outside India, you might want to put in a couple of years of work experience before starting to look around.

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