If you are someone who wants to pursue an MBA, and are in the preparation stage of MBA entrance exams or waiting for your MBA colleges to call you, know some things before pursuing the degree.
MBA is a comprehensive degree that teaches you the ins and outs of the business side of things. But is that really possible in 2 years? Well MBA makes it possible, because when you go there, it’s actually a roller coaster ride. Long lectures which can go till late night, surprise quizzes, pre reads for tomorrow’s lectures, case competitions, online courses really prepare you well for the real world journey. That said, practical exposure will come only once you go for your full time job after the MBA. What MBA does is it prepares you well for that journey.
But why I am writing this is not to tell you the pros or the cons of MBA. I want all of you to know certain skills before going for the degree. See when you enter your MBA college, your CV gets frozen within a month or so. You barely have time to decide on the CV pointers. What most students do is they mention certain certifications and courses in their CV and submit it, and later complete them. There’s no harm if you actually complete them, but with the packed schedule one has at an MBA college, it becomes very difficult to actually complete all of them, especially if you mentioned many courses that are still in progress.
So, start now. Start with the very basic courses. They will give you an idea about different MBA fields, and will also help you choose your specialization. Given below is a list of some very basic skills one should know to give them a head start before going for this degree.
- Excel Skills
First up is Excel. Excel skills are basically about data entry and its organisation. First you should be aware of some basic formulas like SUM, AVERAGE, COUNT, MIN, MAX. Once you are comfortable with those, move on to advanced functions like VLOOKUP, HLOOKUP, XLOOKUP, INDEX etc.
For this, you can find plenty of tutorials on You tube but yeah if you are looking for a certificate, you can check some Udemy courses.
- PowerPoint Skills
In MBA and even after that specially if you are in consulting roles, powerpoint will be your most used tool. Because you constantly present ideas there , and it’s the best way to structure your thoughts.
So instead of using direct templates, start making presentations on MS powerpoint. For it, again you can check You tube. You will find plenty of options there.
- Basic Statistics
Now next up is basic stats skills. Knowing basic statistics is super helpful for MBA students, and this is true not just for marketing or finance but this is something you will need in almost every MBA specialisation such as operations, business analytics, and even strategy. Actually mean, median & mode, they help you summarize and describe data, which is actually a requirement for any business field.
For it you can just check whatever textbooks you used in your 11th & 12th, because you have already studied that, so it will just refresh your memory. For those who did not have Maths or Stats back then, you can check NCERT class 11, which you will get for free online.
- Basics of Economics and Finance
Next up is the Basics of Economics and Finance. You should at least be aware of basic terminologies of microeconomics, certain market structures, macroeconomics and certain policies which decide the shape of businesses. You can get to know these from some crash course of economics on YouTube.
- Digital Marketing (for Marketing Enthusiasts)
Last recommendation is for marketing enthusiasts. Go for a Digital Marketing course on Udemy or Coursera, because in today’s world companies want to rank higher on Google, i.e. they are spending in SEOs and SEMS which is nothing but search engine optimisations and search engine marketing. They are utilising tools such as Hubspot, Zoho, Salesforce which are basically for Marketing Automation & CRMs. Hence it is really crucial to be prepared for these things in advance.
That’s all for this particular blog. The aim of this blog is just to spread awareness among students that the degree alone won’t land you in a good place after an MBA. There are certain skills you should have along with the degree. So start upskilling yourself from today.
HAPPY LEARNING!
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