But what really serves as a boost is the quality of peer learning which happens when people with diversity in terms of professional background, come together. Generally, an MBA class is populated with students with a science or a technological background. Not much can come out in terms of business discussion if the clutter were not broken by the experienced lot. Their insights and more importantly, their approaches can be gleaned by the newbies and can serve as footholds if the lectures become too difficult to comprehend. Also, since industry veterans have already worked in teams and might also have led a few in their organizations, they are automatically expected to gel well in their respective project groups that get formed during the MBA journey.
Now let me talk about another important aspect where prior work experience assumes a major role – and that is, placements. Due to the paucity of space, I shall only talk about jobs in the Marketing domain and the other sectors can be fodder for a debate some other time! Be it Summer Internship interviews or Final Placements, a common question that most experienced people have to face is – “So you have already worked for X years. Do you think that you would be able to fit well in a Marketing role?”. This question is actually a disguised trigger for all the strategic and tactical knowledge earned thus far, to come into play. The onus is on the candidate to explain and convince the recruiter that having worked previously has not moulded his mind to follow a fixed or a set approach, and that creativity and open-mindedness is still his forte. On the contrary, whatever he has learned so far can be a wonderful complement to what the organization expects of him. To the benefit of the company, he would not require too much hand-holding either at least as far as adhering to common corporate etiquette was concerned.
Hence, it can be concluded that having worked somewhere prior to joining a B-school can be both a boon and a bane, depending on the context which comes up. But truth be told, it is never a hindrance to achieving a person’s goals and objectives. Yes, one thing that might bother an experienced individual is that a student who had enrolled in the programme fresh out of an undergraduate institution and is few years younger to him, is able to walk away along with him with the same job and the same compensation package in the same company. But if he can tune his ego down, passionately follow what he believes in, and focus on the ends - age would just be a number in his career.
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