Does MBA after B.Tech Translate to Better Job Opportunities?

Pursuing a postgraduate degree program in management after engineering has become a fad among the Indians since the previous decade! It is no more a surprise that seven to eight in every ten CAT aspirants are found to be graduate engineers, as the India Inc. churns out millions of engineering graduates every year, and this figure is way more than those of the US and China taken altogether!!

The primary reasons for the Indian students to opt for management education after finishing technical or engineering courses can be summarized as follows.

• An engineer who is stagnating in a technical profile and decides to go up the managerial hierarchy.
• Engineers who wish to convert an excellent product or service they have created or implemented into a lucrative business venture.
• There is a pressing need for the engineers to move from and beyond putting operational procedures to practice as well as building stuff, to pricing and selling their products and also the business services to the appropriate consumer group.

Curriculum

• First year : Foundation courses are taught in the following core areas of higher learning during the first two academic semesters.
  • Accounting
  • Economics
  • Corporate finance
  • Strategy and frameworks
  • Human resource management
  • Organizational behavior
  • Leadership
  • Fundamentals of marketing
  • Information technology for future managers

• Final year: Specialization courses can be done in the penultimate and the final semester; followed by a summer internship and similar to the lines of their North American counterparts, a number of Indian business schools have started to offer the provision for either dual-specializations, or the option for taking up one major accompanied by two minor areas of specializations in the recent times.

Admission Process

Aspiring students are required to appear for MBA entrance examination like CAT (Common Admission Test) and XAT (XLRI Admission Test), which are literally considered as rites of passage in India, and those with qualifying scores are called by respective business schools for group discussion (GD) and personal interview (PI).

Some of the salient aspects and definitive observation of the MBA selection process are listed below.

• In sharp contrast to GMAT (Graduate Management Aptitude Test), CAT and XAT are elimination tests.
• The qualifying scores, more popularly known as cutoffs among the Indian student community, varies from one management college to another.
• Most recently, an increasing number of top-tier management institutes in India including the IIMs have replaced the GD-PI with WAT (written ability test).

Career Pathways & Job Portfolios

The techno-managers are hired by all sorts of public and private companies, and the most two promising sectors are found to be the BFSI and the IT, as per the historical employment statistics.

• BFSI
  • Investment banker
  • Hedge fund manager
  • Finance Controller
• IT
  • Consultant
  • Analyst
  • Project manager

Typical Job Profile

• Marketing
• Public liaison
• Team management
• Financial risk and credit analysis
• Stock investment and share trading

Prospective Career Opportunities for Engineer-Turned-MBA Graduates

There are quite a few benefits of pursuing an MBA for graduate engineers, and the most significant ones are illustrated below in brief.

• Technical and management acumen: Every type of skill or expertise can be of immense value for individuals. Nonetheless; in the present era when science, technology, and engineering are playing an instrumental role in radically reshaping people’s lives and businesses; nothing could be better than a right blend of managerial and technical skills. One can put to use this killer combination of competencies for the advancement of a professional career in a multitude of technology-driven companies. The dual knowledge of management and technology is also useful when someone is about to float own venture
• High market demand for professionals: Nobody can ignore the ground reality that the requirement for BTech-turned-MBAs is far greater in comparison with graduates from other disciplines. It is predicted that this particular trend will continue for years as technology has become indispensable to the lives of almost every people if not all. However, it would be a gross mistake to assume that graduates from other streams will not be in demand in the coming days. Still, management and technical expertise will always remain at the very core of any business corporation to maintain its growth and sustain the revenues. Hence, it would not be an exaggeration to infer that there will always be a pressing demand for competent techno-managers in the market, domestically as well as globally.
• Opportunities to get absorbed by global brands: A vast majority of the global brands recruit professionals with management and technical background. Various annual compensation surveys do reveal the fact that the number of employees having bachelor degrees in engineering followed by an MBA outnumbers workers with other academic credentials. The remarkably large pool of candidates with such dual degrees can also be attributed to this particular hiring trend. However, all reputed organization including the Fortune Five-Hundred routinely employ freshly minted MBAs for various challenging roles in the BFSI (banking, financial services, and insurance) and IT (information technology) industry.
• Higher salaries: While the pay packages are dictated by a number of factors, an MBA hailing from an engineering background from an ivy league institution like the IIT (Indian Institute of Technology), IIIT (Indian Institute of Information Technology), or IIST (Indian Institute of Space Technology) get better remunerations than others. Though an academic qualification is never considered the only decisive criterion for job roles or salaries; it is pretty much evident and an open secret that engineer-turned-MBAs seemingly perform better in various types of recruitment tests like quantitative aptitude, logic reasoning, interpretation of graphical representation of business data; as well as in different examinations and certifications for the advancement of their careers. A candidate’s prospects become considerably better if one has strong leadership skills and possesses excellent verbal and written communication ability.

Scope of Government & Private Sector

The present hiring trends indicate an inclination for public sector jobs among the graduating MBA students coming from engineering and technical backgrounds in the subcontinent.

A recent survey by the ASSOCHAM (Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India); which was conducted in 2014 noted that the MBA graduates prefer top-notch state and central government companies for a number of reasons; such as job security; enviable growth of PSUs (public sector undertakings) like IOC (Indian Oil Corporation), SBI (State Bank of India), BP (Bharat Petroleum), and HP (Hindustan Petroleum) and their historical enlistment among the Fortune Five-Hundred; as well as a bearish private sector; and this particular recruitment pattern is more evident in some of the highly leveraged industrial sectors like real estate, power, telecom, and other infrastructure.

A survey in the recent past that involved more than five hundred students from various reputed business schools in India including the IIMs (Indian Institute of Management) revealed that sixty-five in every hundred MBAs wish to work for government companies. It further indicated the ever-increasing demand for management trainee jobs in the public sector among the Indian MBAs.

The finding of the ASSOCHAM: 2014 survey mentioned before is indeed surprising as the government jobs typically pay in the range of one-third to half of what the plum corporate roles offer. It has also challenged the much popular assumption that Indians would like to view entrepreneurship as a lucrative career option. Also, the survey concluded that MBAs in India are ditching the domestic as well as multinational corporate farms because of their aggressive hire and fire policies, and opting for fixed increments offered by government jobs instead of numerous roles available in private business houses where salaries and promotions are proportional to hard work and merit.

The most sought-after public companies among the Indian MBA graduates are as follows.

• ONGC (Oil and Natural Gas Corporation of India)
• IOC (Indian Oil Corporation)
• NTPC (National Thermal Power Corporation)
• HPCL (Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited)
• BPCL (Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited)
• SAIL (Steel Authority of India Limited)
• SBI (State Bank of India)

The number of applications for various roles in a select list of top government organizations for 2013-14 is presented below. 

• SAIL: 2,20,000
• ONGC: 1,50,000
• NTPC: 1,20,000
• IOC: 1,00,000
• GAIL (Gas Authority of India Limited): 90,000
• HPCL: 88,000
• BPCL: 75,000

The elite PSU companies generally offer an annual package of around one million Indian rupees (INR), which is substantially higher than the mean starting CTC of seven to eight LPA INR provided by the private sector for fresh B.Tech degree holders.

In addition to all the benefits mentioned above, the following special allowances are allocated for their employees by the central and state governments.

• Children education allowance
• Professional pursuit allowance
• Bungalow maintenance allowance
• Courtesy allowance
• Hard duty allowance
• Canteen subsidy
• Remote area allowance
• North-East allowance
• Cabin allowance
• House rent allowance
• Dearness allowance
• Hostel subsidy
• Transport subsidy
• Mobile bill reimbursement
• Newspaper reimbursement
• Concession in the procurement of equipment like laptops, furniture, etc.

Pay Package Trends

Average annual CTCs in Indian rupees for selective verticals are listed below. It may be noted that the following list is partial/indicative and all figures are expressed in LPA (lacs per annum). 

• BFSI
  • Investment banking: 9-10
  • Insurance: 7-8
  • Credit and risk: 9-10
  • Finance: 2-5
• IT
  • Operations management: 8-10
  • Technical project management: 14-17
  • Technical services management: 7-12

Top Recruiters

• BFSI
  • SBI Capital Markets Limited
  • Bajaj Capital Limited
  • DSP Merrill Lynch Limited
  • Birla Global Finance Limited
  • Housing Development Finance Corporation
  • PNB Housing Finance Limited
  • ICICI Group
  • L & T Finance Limited
  • Karvy Group
• IT
  • Tata Consultancy Services
  • Infosys
  • Wipro
  • HCL Technologies
  • Tech Mahindra
  • Oracle Financial Services
  • Mindtree
  • Mphasis
  • Rolta
  • Cyient