MBA

A quite frequent question we hear or have experienced all the time is what next after my degree? In this article we are looking at business degrees in particular and exploring our options.

Once you’ve completed or are nearing completion of your bachelors degree or even your masters degree in business, it is natural to turn your thoughts to your next course of action. So what are your options.

1. Start Working -

   Straightforward choice, pretty much what you probably set out to do when you joined college for that management degree in the first place. If this is still your preferred goal, then start getting active and interacting with your college  placement cell. Nothing can beat landing your first post graduation job while you are still in college. Business schools take pride in their on campus placement initiatives and you should look to take advantage of this as much as possible.

2. Teaching -

   Slowly but surely teaching is becoming a popular option among many business graduates. We get many questions asking us our thoughts and ideas around teaching as a profession for a business degree graduate.  An example is below (name withheld for privacy).

   “I have a bachelors degree in Business Administration, but I I want to be a teacher. Should I go back to school for an education degree? Or would it be easier/faster to go back to school to get my masters to teach in a technical college/vocation school? What are my options for employment?“

   Personally you should look at a teaching career only if it is something you are inclined to and not get into it because of paucity of jobs or other personal reasons. However I quite agree that sometimes you have very little choice and earning a living becomes a priority and teaching can be a rewarding career even if you pursue it for a short while. Here are some of the things you need to become a business or management teacher

   First and foremost is education. A Bachelor of Science with a Business Major or a Bachelor of Science in Business with an education component. Usually though, teaching at a College or University level will require you to have a Masters in Business Administration or in some cases even a Ph.D in a field such as Marketing might be the standard.

   If you are looking to teach at a high school level then you need to ensure that you are state licensed. Each state has varying requirements and we plan on listing each state requirements shortly to help you get better prepared. To be state licensed you will need to appear and clear the required certification exam. (Example- Texas Classroom teacher requirements)

3. Start your own Business

   A popular choice these days, more and more business graduates are following their dream of starting their own company. Many students coming out of business school have very little interest in joining or going back to the workplace. Instead they would rather start something on their own and with venture capital easy to come by coupled with the rise of angel funding and super angels, we are in some sort of a start up boom at the moment.

4. Study further

   Finally, you could look into further studies to improve your qualifications for that dream job. This choice is really dependent on what your preferred career plans are. If you are looking to become a teacher and would like to teach at a University level, then yes, study further, do your masters because without which your chances of landing a teaching assignment is very slim. On the other hand if you are looking to start earning immediately then finding a job becomes your number 1 priority.

I probably would not want to be graduating anywhere in the world right now, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t jobs. You just have to find them a bit more aggressively.

College graduates taking that initial step toward utilizing that new degree should visit the many different job fairs that are held across the nation on a fairly regular basis.

Why? Because they are free, and they are actually looking for recruits. Many of then the very human resources folks whom would see you are there, and you can make a great initial impression. All companies, even in this economy, have to renew their workforce. There are jobs, you have to go get them.

Job fairs vary from profession to profession, but most offer the job seeker the opportunity to speak with representatives and recruiters from various companies looking for qualified individuals to join their organization. Some companies conduct the application and interview process on the spot, which is a great way for the job seeker to get his or her foot in the door a lot faster. Job fairs afford the career professional to also interview the perspective employers to learn a bit about the company and what the requirements of the position are, to create a base of information that will come in handy when choosing between multiple employment offers.

Health care job fairs are aggressively held especially for hard to fill jobs. Nurses, nurse practitioners, physicians, physicians’ assistants, are difficult to find. The health care industry is growing daily. Job fairs for health care professionals seeking new opportunities the chance to browse around at the different health care delivery systems, how they are different and yet the same. Since this country is entering into what could become a health care crisis, new graduate nurses especially, as well as residents and interns are looking at the number of employment opportunities available to them in a number of locations. Job fairs are a great place to compare benefits, sign on bonuses, and relocation and travel packages offered by competing agencies and health care delivery systems. Nurses can also complete continuing education units (CEUs) toward license renewal at health professional job fairs by completing a class or lecture.

If you are not so picky about what your career will be, but want to help people then it is really a reliable and beneficial technique to target health care, and other caring professions. They need folks all the time.

Another way to do the job search in health care specifically is to contact the local hospitals and care facilities and see if they are conducting their own fairs internally. Often larger facilities and corporations have their own, but they are poorly advertised so not everyone can find them.

Better, try google and type in “job fair insert your city here” and use the quotes and without quotes. The quotes make google return the listings that have exactly that key phrase. And should return lots of results if you live in a large city.

Then, prepare your resume, dress properly, and go. Remember, act like you work for each person you speak to. Pretend each hello and request for materials is an interview. It’s a way of thinking that makes you confident, and you never know, the person hiring might be staring you in the eye.

The job hunt is a numbers game, but just do everything you can to increase the numbers both in quality and quantity.
Hope this was helpful.

Best of Luck

Costing even more than Harvard (well, by fifty bucks at this writing), Wharton gives you an MBA to rival the best in the world.
Wharton as it is known among people in the know, is one of the oldest exigent schools we have.

Check the ranking of business schools here. Wharton is number 3, but that is only US News.

Established in 1881 as one of world’s first business schools for solely that purpose. it exists in conjunction with the other schools and colleges of the University of Pennsylvania. Wharton offers a comprehensive education on all levels, with focal concentrations too

The 300 member faculty has an 8:1 student ratio. But you have to get in first.

The highly selective admissions process is Wharton is typical, demanding well rounded candidates with not just good scores on standardized tests. Robust prerequisites for admissions are the norm. Focus on the individual, and the potential contribution. Not the numbers next to the name. This is a strength of Wharton as a school.

Knowledge@Wharton is published by the recently established publishing house Wharton School Publishing. You can visit it here Knowledge@Wharton.