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Now we’ve turned the corner into the new year and 2020 is well under way, how many of us have made resolutions and let them fall by the wayside already?
Your thoughts may have turned to changing your career or looking for a new job. To do that may require going back into the education system to retrain. It doesn’t matter what your age or previous qualifications, going back to school to study can seem daunting.
However, sometimes it can help to have a solid list of positive reasons to do so and to spur you on. Here are ten reasons to go back to business school and why you should put it top of your agenda this coming year.
Going back to business school
Deciding to join an MBA programme is something many people think about, then get cold feet over, or decide to do on the spur of the moment and never look back. Of those who do enrol, very few regret the decision to study and the opportunities it opened up to them.
Students who apply to these courses often have a desire to change their life for the better. Some of them may already have a career plan or goals in place. Others don’t, but that doesn’t lessen their desire to succeed.
If you’re weighing up your options but are still undecided then it’s often worth sitting down with a piece of blank paper and a pen and making a list of the pros and cons of going ahead.
Many people today feel that spending money on education isn’t worth the risk but participating in an MBA course means that many companies across the globe are more likely than ever to hire someone with the right skill set. Business leaders consider people with the right qualifications a safe bet. MBA courses offer practical and hands on experience to anyone who takes them and can make employment after graduation much easier. Still not convinced, here are ten more reasons.
Re-energise your career
Think how many corporate doors will be opened if you achieve your qualification and get those three letters after your name.
Even in a world where little is certain in terms of employment, a solid qualification like this can lead to many more open doors than closed ones.
The desire to have staff with MBAs now has a much further outreach than ever before. Businesses that traditionally didn’t require such qualifications are now hiring people who have them. Think about more creative industries like PR firms, advertising companies and marketing businesses. They’ve all seen significant increases in the numbers of people with MBAs joining their ranks and adding value to their companies.
An MBA can make you more business savvy
It’s never going to be an inexpensive option, but often it can provide students with the opportunity to access lots of free business advice from professionals, from other class mates and from on campus.
Participating in an MBA class can often mean you’re in touch with a wider and broader range of business knowledge than you could ever hope to find in one boardroom meeting and can lead you to connect with some of the best business minds in the world. The opportunities it can offer are endless and can afford lifetime connections with professionals.
Completely rebrand your career
What sector are you working in now? Do you feel it’s somewhere you’re going to stay until you retire, or would you like to see what else is out there for you?
If you’ve been having doubts as to your chosen line of work then an MBA will help you clarify what it is you want to do and turn that into your dream. If you’ve always worked in the medical profession for instance, but suddenly felt that the hours were too long, the work too stressful and you were no longer having a good work/life balance then an MBA will offer you the chance to gain new skills to train as a manager or as a business owner in your own right.
If you still wanted to stay within the field you were in, an MBA might open a pathway to exploring management within that field. Similarly, those who are engaged in careers such as PR, Marketing or IT could offer a chance to totally rebrand your career and start from scratch, whilst still using the valuable skills you have previously learned.
Time to think calmly and rationally
As an adult it’s often hard to stop and find time to think rationally and carefully about what you’re doing with your life. Taking the time out to study an MBA can give you an opportunity to focus on the bigger issues of business and with little other disruption, such as worrying about finding other work as you may find yourself on decent placements that can sometimes become full time jobs afterwards.
Increase your personal outreach
Once you begin a course of this nature you’ll constantly be in touch with other ambitious and dedicated people who could eventually become valued colleagues and friends, so it’s always worth looking out for potential connections to make and keep.
These people will also have their own core network of trusted colleagues who you can be put in touch with and get access to, to further enhance your experiences.
A full time Suffolk MBA course will afford you some amazing and once in a lifetime opportunities to make enduring and life enhancing connections.
Want to learn how management really works?
An MBA is for you! Working and studying in this arena will teach you how to manage workloads, to look after people and find out how some of the most challenging people fit in as part of a team (and you will come across some interesting characters – that’s what life is all about). The key is learning to manage them and manage your own expectations. If you can do both, you’ll succeed and succeed well.
Creative challenges
You might not think that an MBA would give you any chance to enhance and improve your creativity, but it will. You’ll often be called upon to find new solutions to old problems, or to think outside the box to resolve issues and this can involve ingenuity and creativity you didn’t know you had.
Learning from your fellow students and business mentors will add an extra layer of confidence and knowledge to your skill set too. Real leaders are often praised for their innovations and for their creativity. An MBA will bring the same out in you and give you the ability to think laterally and creatively when needed.
The difference to your pay check
Business school graduates can often look forward to a healthy pay check increase after they have completed their courses. In fact, it’s estimated that some graduates can see an increase of up to sixty percent on their previous earnings.
If you decide that you’d like to move to a different country to work after you’ve completed your studies you can often expect that salary and your standard of living to be higher.
Gaining an MBA means you’re already on the road to a better standard of employment and conversely a higher standard of living. You’ll often learn a decent set of practical business skills that can be taken forward and refreshed as time and business models change. You’ll learn how to adapt in fast paced environments and how to grow as an individual too.
Opportunities for further advancement
Often an MBA degree will mean you can not only get a good job after graduation, but it also means that you’ll be able to advance much quicker too.
In many business fields across the globe it’s impossible to advance very far without gaining an MBA, thus the many people that don’t acquire them are unlikely to ever become CEOs, whereas those that do can eventually move onto running a company or becoming CEO of their own. People see an MBA as proof that you’re intelligent and are good at assimilating information and developing strategies. It will open doors to bigger and better jobs over time.
Strategizing and problem solving
There is a great prestige that comes with gaining an MBA. However, with that prestige comes the knowledge that people in business will see you as a solid problem solver and strategist.
You’ll be the one who is expected to sit down and work out how to solve the problems that arise in the day to day running of a business and how to manage employee issues.
It will, over time help to augment and improve your skill set and it’s true that you learn from your mistakes. You have to be prepared to make a few in order to learn and grow. It’s how you bounce back from them that matters. Over time, the more problems you solve and the more strategies you develop the more you will grow as a person, and not just as someone who works ‘in business’ but personally too. It’s sometimes worth looking to different business problems in order to try and solve the day to day problems that crop up in our lives outside work. An MBA can make you an adept problem solver in all areas of your life.