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Anjali Prayag

Bangalore , April 7

DOES an engineer need an MBA? Does a child need nutritional supplements for growth? Are these two questions related? Both are ongoing debates with more than a dozen explanations for a `No' or a `Yes'.

If the increasing presence of IT companies at management school campuses during recruitment is anything to go by, then engineers with management tags have not spent two years on the campus in vain. And there are recruitment statistics to support this: At this year's campus placements in the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, Chennai-based Cognizant Technology Solutions was the biggest recruiter: making 30 offers, 24 of which were accepted.

Mr Prateek Mehra from the graduating batch of IIM-B, who has accepted an offer as Senior Business Analyst from Cognizant, says he did the management course to broaden his horizon. At Tata Interactive Systems, his employer before the two-year stint at IIM-B, project managers were 2-3 levels above him. "It would have perhaps taken me two-three years to reach that level, but what I'm looking at now is future growth which will be exponential." In his opinion, without a management degree, his career growth engine would have slowed down at some point, perhaps stopped too. And the salary: now substantially higher than before, he admitted.

Mr Gautam Sinha, CEO of TVA Infotech, a Bangalore-based IT recruitment firm, says an MBA in IT means you end up getting a business role faster. "There is definitely a push up in the salary and of course, lots of foreign assignments thrown in."

Mr Vinod Chikkareddy, also from the graduating batch at IIM-B, has been offered a role in the enterprise selling division of Microsoft India. Before joining IIM-B two years ago, he worked as a developer for a large enterprise software firm. "And no, I don't think I could've got this offer without my B-school education, given that my profile at Microsoft requires a very good understanding of marketing."

Mr Chikkareddy says he joined IIM-B with a specific focus on understanding the technology sector. During the two years at business school, he tried to develop an overall perspective on the role of technology in business, and how it fits in with other disciplines: marketing, operations, finance, etc. "And at the end of two years, I was fully ready for a role on the business side of technology."

IT companies have recognised and offer specific and distinct career paths to engineers and engineer-MBAs.

Says Ms Sarika Pradhan, Manager, Talent Engagement and Development, Wipro Technologies, "We offer different career paths to the two groups of people. Engineer-MBAs get into sales roles straightaway. They get into senior executive positions."

According to her, an MBA from a premier business school could carry a salary difference of 40-50 per cent in their favour. Wipro takes about 5,000-6,000 engineers and 150-200 MBAs every year.

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