OPPORTUNITIES FOR ENGINEERS TO EXCEL

THROUGH MBA
Professor A.Ramachandra Aryasri,
Former Director,
School of Management Studies,
Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University Hyderabad
Hyderabad 500 085

Who are Engineers? Engineers are born lucky professionals. They are the architects of the
modern world. Optimizing is their strength. Their orientation is to add value in every activity
they do. They have an eye for excellence, creativity and innovation. Not all engineers are as
successful as Mokshagundam Visweswaraiah. What separates a successful engineer from the
others is their devotion, commitment, hard work, excellence and their competency to take
imagination to imagineering. While we teach all engineering students the technical skills and the
best practices across different industries in various sectors in the world economy, very few pick
up the necessary skills of management and only those who pick up these skills excel. In fact,
they study couple of courses in managerial economics, accounting and management, as part of
Humanities and social Sciences Component.
What we teach in Engineering? Engineering courses are designed in such a way that they give
total orientation to the students of engineering about the conceptual, technical and managerial
inputs so that they can to deliver the best given any assignment whether it is in research,
design, production or delivery of products and services. Every engineering course offers a
defined percentage of inputs in sciences, engineering and humanities to make every engineer as a
total professional. Engineers after their academic pursuits learn more and more on the job and
keep on excelling over a period of time. This has been the scenario for over last few decades.
Just B.Tech, not adequate?It has been increasingly realized that the engineers need not take so
much time to excel and they can be made ready to deliver given more inputs on role playing,
management games, case studies, interactive learning methodologies, presentations, orientation
to the world class best practices. Given the management dynamics, if one says one has finished a
course and hence they are ready to perform, this argument may not be a tenable one. Take any
academic course, the course gives the student the ability to learn, competency to decide on
critical issues and the capacity to deliver against the tight targets. Engineering courses train
students more on engineering related issues and less on management related issues. If an
engineer is trained on management related issues also instead of being left to their own
individual capacity to deliver better, then he will emerge as a wholesome professional. What
makes an engineer to excel into an all round professional is management education. In other
words, engineers have unlimited opportunities to excel through MBA.
Conceptual and Application Skills, the need of the hour What we want to day are the
engineers with both abilities and competencies to apply engineering principles and skills in
organizing and directing people and projects. In other words, we need those who can directly
supervise the work of engineers while performing engineering functions. Engineering degrees
deliver the conceptual and application skills of engineering. It is the management degree that
imparts skills in organizing and directing people and projects.
1

Engineering is a Terminal Degree Every engineering college pass out is in dilemmato get
into to technology stream or management stream for further education. One has to decide this
based on his/her vision and what (s)he wants to see her/himself. In fact the engineering degree is
designed to be a terminal degree and this implies that you need not do any course after the degree
course. What all is required to perform and excel is already being taught at the undergraduate
course. However, as the Post Graduation has become common for every one to possess, it is a
dream for parents to get the best for their child before they retire and they firmly believe that
higher education confers better career prospects. While this cannot be totally ruled out, there are
cases such as Dhirubai Ambani who did not have any formal education or Bill Gates who is a
school drop out and still they excelled. In other words to excel what is required is loads of
common sense, ability to understand environment, capacity to work hard with a vision and
mission. While these are difficult to be imbibed, business schools use of case study pedagogy
and interactive learning methodologies to prepare one ready to handle every eventuality or crisis.
M.Tech or MBA? You want to be technology guru or leader, obviously go for M.Tech or you
want yourself to be a go getter, get work done through people, better you go for MBA.
Where to study? There are institutions at different levels imparting MBA or equivalent degrees.
One option is to take up GMAT and choose a foreign university based on your GMAT Rank.
Most of the foreign universities look for two or three years of work experience which is desirable
to understand and appreciate the complexity and dynamics of management issues taught at these
business schools through case study approach.
PGDM/MBA from IIMs/IITs/NITs PGDM is one variant of MBA offered by IIMs based on
Common Admission Test (CAT) Score. While the top three IIMs (Ahmedabad, Bangalore and
Calcutta) are premier institutions, other IIMs are evolving into reasonably good brands to reckon
with. Top Notch institutions such as Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and National
Institutes of Technology (NITs) also have started Schools of Management to offer MBA.
Norsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies(http://www.nmims.edu/), Symbiosis
International University (http://www.siu.edu.in/), Birla institue of Management and Technology
(http://www.bimtech.ac.in/), Faculty of Management Studies (FMS), Delhi and many other such
renowned NAAC Accredited institutions demonstrated how best value can be added to the
graduates through MBA irrespective of the specializations pursued. Most of these institutions
have 100%placements offered by topnotch companies in India and abroad.
The current trend is that the management graduates prefer to set up their own business enterprise
and in this process they sacrifice international placements also.
University MBAs Universities also offer MBA and for different reasons, MBA graduates from
these universities have not been received well in the industry circles. Many state governments
conduct common entrance tests (CETs) and offer admission to MBA based on the ranks secured
in the CET. While premier institutions focus on a detailed admission criteria including group
discussion and personal interview, universities do not consider this route and with the result, the
candidates with poor exposure to soft skills gain admission and finally fail to perform on par
with their counterparts from premier institutions. Some candidates after taking admission to
2

MBA in the university system, focus on improving their soft skills, interactive learning
methodologies and thus excel and this percentage is relatively low. Even the evaluation
mechanism is also considered as a reason why MBAs from university system is less preferred
when compared to the premier institutions where continuous evaluation is the basis for judging
the merit of the candidate.
There are many other institutions recognized by All India Council of Technical Education
(AICTE), New Delhi and these are empowered to award PGDM degrees to all those who
successfully complete the two year course. The admission is offered by these institutions based
scores in CAT/AIMAs MAT.
MBA Correspondence Courses Many universities such as Indira Gandhi National Open
University (IGNOU) have been offering MBA in the distance mode through correspondence
course. Fresh graduates are not advised to go for MBA in the distance mode for the simple
reason that they cannot understand, appreciate and internalize the management concepts because
they do not have prior work experience. Those who have reasonably good number of years of
experience say 10 years and above can go for such courses as their ability to relate the
management concepts to their work environment is relatively much better.
Salaries for Fresh MBAs If a fresh engineering graduate takes up a job immediately after his
engineering, he will be placed any where around Rs.20,000 to Rs.30,000 per month. If the same
person takes up MBA after his engineering and goes for job with MBA qualification, it is quite
likely that he gets placed with a package of Rs.50,000 to Rs.60,000 per month. Yes, it all
depends upon which institution you have graduated from and with what background. MBAs with
Engineering qualification with two years of work experience stand to gain much higher than the
freshers. Their ability to face interviews and relate the management concepts to their work
experience is much superior and this helps them to compete with others much comfortably.
Sectoral MBAs There are institutions offering sectoral MBAs also in Health Care, Tourism and
Hospitality Management, Agri-Business, Banking, Insurance, Retailing, Logistics and Supply
Chain Management, Forest Management etc. If you have experience, sectoral MBA will add lot
of value to your profile. There is danger that the opportunities for placements get restricted in
case of a fresher.
Which Elective? MBA is a vanilla and the elective offered is the top on the ice cream.
Marketing, Human Resources, Finance, Operations, Information Technology and systems are
some of the popular electives offered all over.
Which elective is suitable for you, all depends up on your personality and your traits. You need
to understand yourself before you opt for an elective. If you do not know how to assess yourself,
ask your friends or teachers to evaluate you.
In fact, all the core subjects are taught in the first year of study of MBA. In the second year, you
go for specialization. If you like Accounting and Financial management, your natural choice can
be finance stream. Similarly if you appreciate what you have learnt in Marketing management
you studied in the first year, you can go for marketing specialization.
3

Personality

Test

You

can

better analyse your personality traits. FIRO-B Test

) may come handy here for you to analyse your personality
and how you are perform in a group.
(

Marketing Elective If you are a go getter, interested in meeting people, talking to others,
always interested to be on toes and moving, better for you is Marketing specialization. Those
who are into marketing find large opportunities to make lot of money. Marketing research, emarketing, integrated marketing communications, public relations, Digital marketing, sales
promotion, direct selling, Marketing Analytics, etailing and retailing are some of the niche areas
in marketing. Females are mostly preferred in marketing research, marketing analytics, sales
promotion, advertising etc. Every organization requires tens of sales/marketing professionals.
Marketing is considered as ever green specialization and this way, opportunities for MBA
marketing graduates are larger. Engineering with marketing specialization is much preferred
choice.
Human Resources (HR) If you are a rule minded, interested to making rules and
procedures,you can go for HR elective. As HR professional, your job is to establish HR systems,
processes and procedures and execute the same. You are into many roles right from manpower
planning, recruitment and head hunting, selection, training and development, performance
appraisal, negotiation, wage and salary administration, dispute resolution, HR Analytics,
performance management system to strategic HR. The number of HR openings will be relatively
less when compared to marketing.
Finance Elective If you are comfortable in dealing with numbers and figures, analysis and
interpretation, you can go for finance. Every organization requires accounting and finance
professionals, but in less numbers, to take care of their finances. Treasury operations, valuation,
insurance, banking, Security analysis, portfolio management, foreign exchange operations, Cost
management, Accounting, Finance are some of the prominent areas where MBA finance find
lucrative positions. But they have to compete with Chartered Accountants and Cost and Works
Accountants. Engineering are good at logic and numbers and they are likely to excel if they take
up finance as elective.
Information Technology(IT)/Systems Elective This is one more area of specialization which
has been in prominence for the last two decades. There are cases where all students took up only
IT as specialization in couple of batches because they were getting placements immediately after
their course and IT was really in boom. IT and IT-enabled services offer great for careers and see
the conditions in the IT sector before you make a choice. In fact IT has become an underlying
current in every sector or specialization. Cloud computing, IT Analytics, Artificial intelligence,
Decision support systems, Intelligent agent and web applications, Intelligent business computing,
Pattern recognition, Reasoning and expert systems, Soft computing, are some of the advance
areas in IT and check up the syllabus offered for IT specialization before you choose this
elective. If you are good at IT, you are demand the salary you wish to have. You can take up
work from a foreign location on outsourcing basis and executive the same and thus emerge as an
entrepreneur.
4

Operations and Logistics Elective This is yet another exciting elective one can think of.
Logistics industry never sleeps.24/7 it works and thus the logistics specialists. They are paid well
and they have good career growth too. Manufacturing companies require MBA with operations
specialization to plan, supervise and control the production processes. If you are from a location
which is a hub for manufacturing or service, better you go for operations specialization. Supply
Chain Management is part of logistics and with emergence of third party logistics and fourth
party logistics, MBAs with logistics specialization are in demand.
No link between UG and PG? With advent of IT and Computers and more career prospects in
IT field, it has been customary that total focus is on what you learn in PG, almost forgetting what
you studied in UG. This is not desirable. Those who leverage what is studied in undergraduate
level through the management insights, will gain at the graduate level. Never delink yourself
with what you have studied at undergraduate level.
You can be CEO You have to understand yourself first before you choose an elective. Every
specialization requires different traits of personality and as you progress in career, all these traits
converge into leadership trait. If you are a good leader with tech-savy, flair for numbers, good
interpersonal skills and good hold on your markets, you are likely to be the CEO of your
enterprise in a span of 10 to 12 years for a mid-size organisation. It may take max 15 years if it
is a large organization. This is not unrealistic in todays context of organizations with lean and
flat structure.
Some useful websites for MBA preparation and additional information If you are interested
to apply for Indian School of Business see the website of ISB (www.isb.edu). Similarly every
institution offering MBA gives the details of notification in its website. However, here are some
weblinks for various MBA preparation sites and exam dates you can
visit.. http://www.mbarendezvous.com/ , http://www.pagalguy.com/