Source: The Sunday Times
by Linda Daly
15 February 2015
Get ahead of the crowd
with an MBA
“There will only ever be a relatively small number of people who do it because of that investment in time and money,” said Horgan. “I don’t think the market will ever be flooded with MBAs, so if you want to set yourself apart from other people in the jobs market an MBA will do that.”
A survey from the Financial Times, released in January, shows that 31% of the world’s largest listed companies have an MBA graduate at the helm, and 104 chief executives from FT500 companies have gone through the top business schools in the FT Global MBA rankings.
In October 2014, Harvard Business Review found that 29 of the world’s top business leaders had MBAs.
Horgan, who completed an MBA with the Smurfit School at UCD in 2007, said the unique aspect of doing the MBA is that you are sitting in a classroom of people with many years’ top level experience of business. MBA students can come from a wide range of backgrounds and industries.
HR and recruitment consultant Paul Mullan said that while MBAs will get you to the interview table. there are other important factors in a hiring decision that go beyond a qualification and specific work experience.
Horgan agreed. “You can’t just sit there and wait for it to happen,” he said. “It’s rigorous and hard work, and you will only get out of it what you put into it. You have to believe in networking. You have to believe that mixing with and chatting to people will pay a dividend in the end, and the MBA is a great vehicle for that.”
Some universities have strict criteria for accepting people on to their MBA course. Trinity Business School, for example, won’t admit anyone under the age of 25 and applicants must have a minimum of three years’ experience and undergo a rigorous application process, which includes taking the graduate management admissions test scores, face-to-face interviews and essay applications.
Michael Flynn, MBA programme director at Trinity Business School — one of the key sponsors at Career Zoo on February 21 — said placing a minimum age requirement on the entrance into the MBA is an important element of its success.
“There are some MBA programmes that take people straight out of college, but I think they are misnamed. There are two types of post-graduate business degrees, a pre-experience and post-experience degree. A pre-experience degree is an MSc programme, normally in a functional area like marketing or finance.
“An MBA is not that animal. It is a post-experience programme, and the more experience you recruit into the classroom, the richer and more diverse the class conversations, debates, case study analysis will be. Everyone’s better off by having a good pool of experience in the classroom.”
Trinity’s MBA programmes recently ranked in the top 10 in western Europe. The Eduniversal Best Masters rankings, released in January, ranked the school’s full-time course ninth, and its part-time course sixth in Europe.
Participants in the Trinity MBA programme have direct interaction with senior executives across a range of industries, from high-potential start-ups and SMEs to bluechip multinational companies through a range of projects.
“Increasingly MBAs are seen as a way of developing senior managers and leaders in organisations,” said Flynn. “You get this eclectic group of people in a classroom, all of whom are high performers. They then invest that experience and background into the class.”
MBAs are an expensive business. Trinity Business School and UCD charge just under €30,000 for the full-time MBA, while the part-time option costs €15,000 per year.
Dublin City University’s MBA is part-time and comes in at €25,000 for two years. Doing the MBA at University of Limerick’s Kemmy Business School will cost just over €27,000 for the two-year programme, while NUI Galway’s JE Cairnes School of Business and Economics has a two-year part-time course for €27,700.
Dublin Institute of Technology’s is among the cheapest of the MBA courses available in Ireland, costing €18,000 for a two-year part-time course.
MBA students can claim tax relief at the standard rate of income tax (20%) for courses that qualify.
Flynn said the cost of MBAs in Ireland is reasonable. “That €29,500 for our course is good value in an international context. For the ranking we have it’s probably one of the best-value MBAs in Europe. Many of our peers charge up to €70,000 to €90,000. In America you wouldn’t get a similar programme for less than $120,000 [€106,000].”
MBAs present benefits when it comes to negotiating salaries, said Mullan. “It’s a huge financial investment but if you utilise this to its max you will get a good return on your investment. Also, getting an MBA can put a bump on to your earning potential.”
As a networking tool, the MBA can be extremely useful, Horgan said. “You’re put in groups with high-calibre people, you spend an amazingly rigorous period of five or six months with them as you all eat and sleep the MBA.
“That builds up a fantastic bond with these people.”
Master’s got me job
WHEN Declan O’Connor, 31, returned to Ireland from Australia after four years, he wanted to broaden his career opportunities in Ireland. So he applied for the full-time MBA programme at Trinity College Business School, and started the programme in 2013.
The Limerick man already had a civil engineering undergraduate degree from NUI Galway.
“As an engineer you can have a very focused, limited outlook, whereas when you do an MBA it opens you up to business and you meet a lot of great people from different backgrounds,” said O’Connor.
“It was a good way to come back, take a year out and work on something I always wanted to do.”
There were 35 people in O’Connor’s class, ranging in age from 25 to 55.
“I had been away so didn’t have a good network in Ireland,” he said “This established fantastic contacts for me, both within Ireland and globally.”
Within a couple of months of completing the MBA O’Connor gained employment. He works in Dublin with ESB Asset Development as a projects director.
O’Connor said having the MBA was instrumental in getting him the position.
