Having finished their IT degree, many professionals immediately enter the workforce - After a few years, however, a growing amount of these individuals with a technical background are finding themselves at a career crossroads. The best example for this are the countless thousands of IT specialists that have entered the workforce at the end of the 20th century. Now that their resumes boast a few years of work experience these people are increasingly asking themselves what the next logical step in their career planning should be. For many, the answer is to pursue a MBA degree in order to improve their value on the job market.

Climbing the Career Ladder One Step at a Time
In these times of rapid change, companies are on the constant lookout persons that are willing to adopt to these changes. A technology degree alone is usually not flexible enough to rise up the corporate ladder. Some form of postgraduate education is necessary at most corporations to be considered for a promotion into executive ranks.

In order to move up the corporate ladder it is essential for most candidates to possess a basic understanding of managing both financial and human resources. This is exactly the reason why a growing number of people apply for degrees like the MBA each and every year. Over the past years, the number of applicants at the major business schools has grown dramatically which has resulted in more competition for the top schools. The Common Admission Test (CAT 2008) is one of the ways Indian business schools cope with this massive stream of applicants. According to recently released figures, more than 230,000 Indians took the test in order to claim one of the 1500 highly-sought places at a major business school.

A few decades ago, the business schools looked totally different than it does today and an MBA was something novel not every school was offering. Today, the situation looks the opposite way. Competition amongst applicants for MBA programmes is fierce as more and more people apply for access to the top business schools. Given that the number of programmes has literally exploded over the past few years, big corporations increasingly evaluate your MBA degree by the business school you graduated from.

The likes of Harvard Business School, Wharton and INSEAD are some of the names that not only make the eyes of a human resources executive sparkle but also guarantee starting salaries of $100.000 per year and more. This is one of the factors that attracts and lures thousands of IT specialists to these big names.