This year in April, I completed my Master of Management course from Shailesh J Mehta School of Management, IIT Bombay. The highlights of my journey would be the Fresher’s Party, Summer Placements, Internship, French Study Tour, Pre Placement Offer, Placement Team, presentations and evaluations, and especially the final semester with #onelasttime posts all around.
If I compare my job profile, pay package and responsibilities prior to MBA and now, the investment has surely borne fruit.
Mind opener
MBA/PGDM/MMgmt essentially is a structured experience, more than a professional course. Industry interactions, learning from business case studies, understanding markets, money and material flow, and consumer minds are some things that cannot be taught in theory. What a B-school basically does is opens up the mind to numerous dimensions, which works wonders for an engineer whose brain has mostly been functioning in binary mode (talking about professional life only).
After the course, one is equipped with skills and tools that help analyse a situation or a business case from different perspectives. This is put to test by corporate houses during summer internship. Some companies pay interns more than their regular employees and ensure that they recover twice the stipend in a couple of months.
The evaluation through summer internships is a fair one, where the student also gets to evaluate the company’s work culture. Recruiters too, cannot be dazzled by flowery jargon and a nice placement-day suit.
The right mix
With restricted batch sizes and a healthy mix of freshers and experienced candidates, campuses such as Faculty of Management Studies (FMS), SJMSOM, IIT Bombay and Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies (JBIMS) have created a niche for themselves in industry circles, alongside IIMs.
The freedom to choose our own profile and the organisation which appeals to us worked out to be the biggest advantage in my campus. Choosing one’s own electives instead of a pre-assigned specialisation allows us to play to our strengths (Engineering or Work Experience Background) and pursue interests without making compromises.
I have been working as Management Trainee in Supply Chain domain on a new acquisition made by my organisation, working Saturdays and remote location was definitely my plan.
Two Pay-Days into the job and I feel I have worked a lot more; I have learned a lot more and have a lot more responsibility. Also, going back to production, I feel my four-year mechanical engineering course did not come to naught. Fortunately this is a part of my answer to “Why MBA?”
Again, experiences have been varied. I believe MBA courses should come with the same ‘statutory warnings’ like Mutual Funds!