Work, MBA, or Something Else? What to do After Graduation?

Finally, you must be at that stage where you’re getting done with your graduation and looking at the various prospects that the future holds for you. As important a decision it is, to choose your graduation subjects - it’s even more important and daunting to know what to do after being graduated.

The question might have different answers for different people; but generally speaking, the answers fall into two broad categories - getting a job, or getting a postgraduate degree.

What are you planning to do? If you know the answer, great! In case you’re still thinking, allow us to help you make up your mind.

Getting a Job

One can never really ask you to simply ‘not’ get a job. How do you answer the question, “Should I get a job” with a straight negative? The answer is, you can’t. The skill development and learning that you get on the field is unlike anything else you’ll ever have. Therefore, the only thing you can, or in this case we can, is to give you a better option instead.

Before we discuss that ‘better option’, let’s first see what possible cons could you encounter with getting an employed rather than studying further after graduation. One is, you might find yourself a bit out of depth in the work environment with just a graduate degree in hands. You might get you skills enhanced, once you work; but you would need a certain expertise and competence of your own to first establish a standing at your workplace, which graduation fails to provide most of the times.

That is also why companies usually prefer postgraduates work for them. When it comes to skill development too, we have amongst us post graduate colleges that include best schools of business, science, and other areas of education. Getting a higher education from such places inevitably gives you an upper hand.

Every year, we see engineering graduates, more than any other kind, deemed unemployable by most of the companies out there. And the biggest reason is, they don’t possess enough skills that would do justice to the marks that their certificate shows. The most widely seen state in mind of the newly appointed graduates is that of confusion. And what business likes a bunch of confused people working for them?

With post-graduation, therefore, comes the rescue. Higher education costs more, and it makes you spend more money - but the time and money is almost always worth it. Therefore, without trying to sound discouraging, we would really like to stress the importance of further education over getting a job.

Get a Postgraduate Degree

As we just said, higher studies do hold a possible key to a brighter future, rather than choosing any kind of employment. The question that arises next, is - what course should one go for?

The answer lies in your interest - what field are you interested in studying further? The most common way would be choosing the same or a related field of study, as your graduation. A lot of BScs, BComs, BCAs, and such are followed by MScs, MComs, and MCAs, etc. There’s, of course, no problem there. Not really a problem, but definitely a better way to go about it.

Instead of letting your graduation subject decide your future path, why not complement that knowledge with a degree in management? While subject-oriented post-graduation would give you a comprehensive knowledge of that subject, an MBA will provide for a comprehensive set of tools to give you a wider perspective on everything.

Any specialization that you pick - Finance, Marketing, HR, etc. - the best school of business would be the one that acclimatizes you with a wide range of disciplines, through real-life business cases. The best school of business would be the one that gives you a brilliant exposure, in terms of not just studies, but your peers, faculty members, alumni, and such. Getting an MBA is never just about getting a degree - it’s always an experience in itself.

With changing times, one can also observe a change in the nature of work being done. The work roles have changed from how they were in the past. We today have positions such as Mobile App Developers, Social Media Managers, SEO Specialists, and so on. Creativity, in general, has put itself in the driver seat, and we’re on a journey that has never been undertaken by anyone in the past. To get ourselves acquainted with today’s world, and the way it works, we need to build ourselves a wide perspective. It’s the kind of perspective that you inadvertently get as a part of your curriculum at the best schools of business out there.

Do not give it more thought than it needs, and make a decision to apply to a good b-school out there. It will prove to be a great decision.