Top Ways in Which Business Courses Can Boost Your Career

Organization, planning and analysis of business activities are essential skills for today’s workforce. Irrespective of your domain of expertise, knowing the intricacies of how a business works is the need of the hour. This is why, after graduation from various fields, students all over India prefer MBA as their foremost choice of higher education.  Whether you are a job seeker or a job creator, doing a course in business will highly benefit your career and help you expand your knowledge in the field of business. Taking a vocational business course, or even pursuing a bachelor’s or master’s degree in the same can open up new avenues of work. In this article, we have listed down the top ways in which a business course can boost your career. 

1. Developing Better Team Skills

Every person needs to be able to work in a team; sometimes, even lead the team. When a group of people brainstorm and work together, there are bound to be conflicts. And these conflicts require unbiased and quick resolution. To accomplish the common goal, it is important to keep aside one’s ego and better understand others’ perspectives. A good business course teaches how to enhance one’s teamwork skills. It helps to identify the common areas of conflict, handle different personalities, and most importantly, work together as a team.  

1. Problem Solving

  Problem-solving entails both domain-specific problems and business-related problems. It challenges you on each step of the decision-making process. Therefore, you need to have a ready to implement the problem-solving model.    A good business course has specific modules designed to build your problem-solving capabilities. Popular case studies along with the steps that can be taken in those specific situations showcase an optimal way to deal with real-world business problems. Such training helps develop your analytical skills and most importantly prepares you to be an agile problem solver.    

1. Upgrade Your Career

  One of the biggest advantages of taking business courses is the plethora of opportunities that follow them. All businesses require efficient managers who are well-versed to handle various operations of a business. Whether it’s drafting dynamic marketing campaigns or managing the financial data of a business, all of these skills are a part of the extensive curriculum of a business program. Business courses offer a world of opportunities to the students and prepare them to become efficient managers.    Being a part of a reputed business program allows you to network with professionals from diversified backgrounds. You get to interact with various industry experts and leaders and get to learn from their valuable experiences. If you plan on embarking on an entrepreneurial venture, such networking opportunities can change the game for you. You can get first-hand experience of how top companies work and use your learnings to build a successful business of your own. On and all, an MBA or a business course can make you stand out from the crowd.  

1. Improvement in Technological Skills

  Most business courses have modules that teach you how to work with spreadsheets, the different financial projections, understand different statistical analysis models, and perform market research. Learning these essential skills can give a boost to your career. Your skills will outshine those of your peers and you will be able to add value to your workplace. These skills also cover the prerequisites of establishing small businesses. Having a clear understanding of operating, understanding and implementing such technologies increases the efficiency of a small business and therefore, adds to the business profits.   

1. International Exposure

  Acknowledging the rising demand for business skills, many universities across the world offer different undergraduate and postgraduate programs. If you get the opportunity to study in countries like the USA and Australia, you will be closer to major business hubs like New York City and Melbourne. Exposure in the form of internships, projects, and case study competitions can help you get hands-on experience in real world problem solving.  Besides, the business programs provided by the Indian Universities are some of the most sought after programs in the world. Here is a list of the top 10 business schools in India:

• Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad
• Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore
• Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta
• Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow
• Vinod Gupta School of Management, IIT Kharagpur
• Indian Institute of Management, Kozhikode
• Indian Institute of Management, Indore
• Department of Management Studies, IIT Delhi
• XLRI Xavier School of Management
• Management Development Institute, Gurgaon

To get admissions into these B-Schools, an aspirant needs to clear their respective entrance examinations, which generally start from November. Some of the most well-known entrance exams to prepare for, are:

• CAT (Common Aptitude Test)= The score of CAT is accepted by all the IIMs, FMS Delhi, MDI Gurgaon, and most other business schools in India.
• XAT= The XAT score is accepted by XLRI Jamshedpur, XIM Bhubaneshwar, IMT Ghaziabad, MICA  Ahmedabad, etc.
• IIFT= The IIFT score is accepted by IIFT Delhi, IPS Business School Jaipur, IIFT Kolkata, IFIM Business School Bangalore, etc.
• SNAP= SNAP scores are accepted by SIBM Pune, SCMHRD Pune, SIIB Pune, SICSR Pune, etc.
• NMAT= NMAT scores are accepted by NMIMS University, K J Somaiya Institute of Management, Xavier University Bhubaneswar, IFMR Graduate School of Business at KREA University, VIT University, etc.

To make courses more accessible to the learners, many universities and companies have also partnered with some of the best online platforms. So if you are looking for an online business course, here is a list of the most popular courses available.

• Business Strategy from Wharton: Competitive Advantage [Platform: edX]
• SBA- Business Legal Requirements [Platform: SBA]
• MIT- Introduction to Financial and Managerial Accounting [Platform: MIT OpenCourseware]
• Harvard- Leading with Finance [Platform: Harvard Business School Online]
• University of Maryland- Fundamentals of Digital Marketing [Platform: edX]
• Harvard- From Trust to Promise to Contract [Platform: edX]

Before enrolling into a business course, please make sure to keep the following points in mind:

• Look into the course curriculum and faculty information. Make sure the course caters to your learning requirements. 
• In a business course, look for a module on case studies. They help you develop your problem-solving skills as we had discussed above. 
• If you are targeting a specific role, look for courses in those respective specializations. 
• Check the online reviews and read about others’ experiences with the course and how the course has helped their career.