MBA Courses: Virtual clouds are raining real
The writer is Dr. Savita Mohan-Director-GNIOT MBA Institute
Greater Noida
The buzz around E-Commerce is continuously increasing in India for almost last a decade. Leave aside regular online shopping; the adaptation of various other online purchases including movie tickets, travel plans, bus, trains & airlines tickets, hotel bookings, insurance policies, and discount deals, etc. is attracting many start-up entrepreneurial ventures. The success of Flipkart, Ebay, Amazon, Makemytrip and matrimonial sites has played a big role is changing market scenario. According to eMarketer – a research source for worldwide business to consumer (B2C) marketing, e-commerce sales will soon increase by 20.1% and may reach up to $1,500trillion. The popular social platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn have also contributed a lot towards uplifting social commerce and digital marketing.
Emergence of so many social platforms and e-commerce companies is sure to come up with various job opportunities. The shifting sands from brick & mortar to virtual clouds are demanding management resources with specialised skills and domain knowledge for a plethora of job positions.
Career Progression
Students look for jobs & careers, whereas companies look for SKILLED resources. The demand and supply gap is primarily due to mismatch between skilled and non-skilled work force coming out of institutes. Students who can map this slight difference are not only certain to have well-paying jobs but they can also attract angel investors for their own venture funding.
In general, a fresher’s journey starts as a trainee, and gradually moves towards responsibility taking positions. The positions then grow from executive levels, to senior executives, team leads, managers, unit heads, associate vice presidents, vice presidents, and can scale up to CXO levels. The responsibilities grow in tandem with job positions and pay checks.
Job Responsibility
After graduating a management course, when you enter a corporate organisation, the learning begins horizontally and you grow vertically irrespective of various operational functions or departments that you may be in. The tip of the iceberg in an E-commerce venture is an online IT portal allowing people to buy or sell products or services. However, the larger arena invisible to the outside world is huge in terms of managing assets, stock units, warehousing, supply chain, distribution networks, vendors, marketing, finance, HR and so on. Job responsibilities in general are to manage these operational functions well. For those who look to excel rapidly will need to identify process and efficiency improvement opportunities and bring in innovations to stay a step ahead of competition.
Skills required
Applying knowledge is important than knowledge itself. Identifying continuous process improvement opportunities, or Kaizen as Japanese call, are very crucial. Documents, spread sheets, or presentations are taken for granted; you need to have observations and analytical skills too. Your pressure handling efficiency is usually noticed in the way you handle a crisis situation. Communication skills both written and oral need to be at par. Handling a reporting structure or communicating with a colleague is an art.
Eligibility for MBA intake
For taking admission in MBA regular mode, student needs to be at least a graduate from any stream of Commerce, Art or Science, from a recognized college or University. Student having good percentile in national level Management Aptitude Tests such as MAT, CAT, CMAT, XMAT, GMAT are considered by Regular MBA colleges. After considering the percentile, the intake procedure is followed by group discussions and personal interviews. It would be good to start an MBA entrance preparation with focus on English – grammar, comprehension, reading and writing – and Mathematics.
Selection of colleges for Admission
Selection criteria should consider a vital set of aspects such as authorizations, affiliations, fees structure, placements, specializations offered, reputation of college, additional certifications, foreign exposure facilities, industry link up, exchange programmes, faculty experience and infrastructure. New methodologies like interactive classrooms, case methodology, class participation, student exchange programmes, guest lectures by industry specialist, and live projects during the course are some of the new upcoming trends.