A masters in business administration holds the potential to leverage careers and bring home fat pay packets. A study indicates that MBA students who worked in finance and consulting outperformed their peers in other functional areas, especially in the information technology sector.
The study by iimjobs.com, a job portal for MBAs from IIMs and premier business schools, reveals in its findings that salaries in finance tend to rise faster than in other sectors.
The average salary for a finance MBA with 5-7 years of experience, reveals the survey, was Rs 18.5 lakh (Rs 1.85 million), about 20 per cent higher than their batchmates in the IT industry. While the difference between salaries in finance and consulting is not significant early in the career, it increases for people with over 5-6 years of experience.
"The survey was conducted to understand trends in growth of MBA salaries after they've graduated from business schools. We've observed that salaries in finance tend to rise faster than in any other function and salaries in IT seemed to lag those in finance, consulting or marketing.
"Interestingly, variance was also observed to be much higher in finance. The difference in salaries between MBAs from same batch working in the IT industry was observed to be much lower. This means top performers in finance do much better than top performers in sales and marketing, systems or consulting, even though the difference in average performers is not that much," Tarun Matta, founder of iimjobs.com, told Business Standard.
The survey was conducted during April 7-15, 2009 with over 3,800 MBA graduates from the top 15 business schools like the Indian Institutes of Management, Indian School of Business, Xavier Labour Relations Institute, Faculty of Management Studies, Management Development Institute, S P Jain Institute of Management and Research, Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies and Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies to name a few.
"Those in IT get an opportunity to travel the world and earn in dollars/pounds, making up for the lesser salaries while in India," said a respondent who has been working with a large IT MNC since the last five years.
The portal, says Matta, did not collect any individually identifiable information to maintain privacy and confidentiality during this exercise.
