Last week, at the forum "MBA, how far is it from enterprises?" held by Huibo Research Institute and Beijing Orient Huibo Human Capital Company, etc., Huibo Research Institute announced the "Report on the Current Situation of Chinese MBAs". The research report shows that currently in the job market, due to the problems existing in the employment salary, employment position, scale of employment enterprises, and nature of enterprises for MBA graduates, it reflects that MBAs have an absolute advantage but not a relative one. At the same time, the surveyed enterprises expressed that among the employees with MBA degrees who are being used or are currently being used, only one in a hundred has excellent work performance.
First Dissatisfaction:
MBA management skills need urgent exercise
Enterprises value two aspects of MBA's ability quality. At the highest level, which is senior management talent, enterprises mainly focus on five items: international perspective, analytical decision-making ability, professional ethics, strategic thinking, and execution power. More than half of the enterprises position MBAs as senior management personnel. The second level is middle management talent, which mainly requires work experience, business skills, and communication coordination ability. Three to four out of ten enterprises tend to use MBAs in the role of department heads.
The abilities and qualities of MBAs, apart from strategic thinking, also include communication and coordination skills, innovation awareness, teamwork, learning ability, and analytical decision-making ability. These are the five most focused-on abilities and qualities when MBA talents are in their growth phase and undergoing potential enhancement and conversion, said Chen Xiaoqian, the director of Huibo Research Institute.
Luo Yuanfu from Huanbin International Group expressed that MBA graduates are not mature enough in terms of lacking management artistry. Some do not even understand how to manage a team. Meanwhile, many MBA graduates expose the inability to well understand the boss's intentions, unwillingness to take the lead, and inability to endure委屈in actual use. And these are what a mature management talent lacks the most. Therefore, he suggested that newly graduated MBA students should preferably engage in 3 to 5 years of market sales work in enterprises or markets because sales work can cultivate their abilities to communicate with people, consider others' perspectives, and more. After these habits are formed, they can then return to enterprises to engage in management and planning work, becoming more mature.
Second Dissatisfaction:
Poor execution restrains MBA growth
Enterprises have a very concentrated understanding of MBA shortcomings. Practical spirit and execution power have become the bottleneck restraining MBA growth. Business skills, stress tolerance, and teamwork are also core issues where enterprises are dissatisfied with MBAs. This greatly reflects that MBA's practical operation ability has become the biggest concern for enterprises. MBA's self-awareness of deficiencies shows a diversified trend, widely distributed, but overall, the phenomenon of inaccurate grasp of enterprise needs is widespread. They pay more attention to macroscopic control abilities rather than microscopic practical operation abilities. Thus, how to integrate advanced management concepts into the actual needs of enterprises and enhance their practical operation abilities has become the biggest challenge facing MBAs.
Xu Chunyan from Zhonghe Tiandi's human resources department believed that MBAs are largely a helping profession that requires the mental preparation to endure委屈because many leaders you serve may be high school graduates. You need to be able to self-regulate when serving them. Besides, nowadays, enterprises rarely look at the brand of the graduation institution when promoting MBAs. They mainly look at your expertise, but if you only specialize in one field, the proportion of getting hired is not large. Instead, enterprises need those who can combine multidisciplinary knowledge, especially those who can integrate arts and sciences.
Luo Yuanfu expressed that among the MBAs we hire, there are quite a few from domestic and international prestigious schools, but overall, we feel that the execution power of current MBA graduates in the market is too poor. Some people do not even understand basic cash flow statements, financial statements, and management tools. However, if you are a qualified MBA graduate, after the enterprise hires you, your execution power becomes exactly what the boss values the most, and it is also an important factor for increasing your future salary. But currently, the fatal weakness of MBA graduates lies precisely in poor execution ability.
Third Dissatisfaction:
MBA annual salary expectations are too high
There is still a significant gap between the salaries enterprises offer to MBAs and the expected starting salaries of MBAs. Especially in the mid-range of salaries, there is a large disparity between the 40% of enterprises offering salaries below 80,000 yuan and the 40% of MBAs hoping for salaries above 150,000 yuan. It is suggested that MBAs should adjust their mindset when job hunting, choose appropriate salary ranges based on their actual situations, and not expect too much, affecting their ultimate career choice.
The differentiation of MBA salaries by enterprises is becoming increasingly evident, indicating that the quality polarization of MBA graduates is relatively serious. The person in charge of human resources at Hanhai Group expressed: Many prestigious school MBAs feel that since they are from Tsinghua or returned from abroad, they directly ask for an annual salary of 500,000 to 800,000 yuan when negotiating salaries. However, for any enterprise, they absolutely will not give you money for nothing. If you can create a value of 1 million yuan for the enterprise, giving you a 500,000 yuan annual salary should not be a problem. If you create 200,000 yuan for the enterprise but still want a 200,000 yuan annual salary from the boss, there is no such foolish boss, and naturally, your request cannot be met.
Yang, a teacher at Nankai University responsible for MBA graduate employment services, expressed that MBA students indeed have the phenomenon of overestimating themselves, which is also one of the reasons why many people are willing to abandon their original jobs to pursue an MBA. However, given China's current economic situation, the opportunities for MBA graduates to work in the world's top 500 companies are few, while numerous domestic small and medium-sized enterprises urgently need these graduates to join and help solve the current challenges they face.