Driven by market needs, the online Wake Forest MBA helps you gain the skills employers seek most. And you don’t have to wait until graduation to start seeing results—you can apply the knowledge you gain in the MBA program to impact your career from day one.
MBA Career Outcomes
What Can You Do with an MBA?
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Accelerate Your Career Growth
The Skills That Matter to Employers—Now Through 2025
According to the Graduate Management Admission Council, employers are increasingly looking for a combination of technical expertise plus interpersonal and intrapersonal skills. Earning your Wake Forest MBA online can help you gain the “trifecta” of desired qualities that employers value¹:
- Practical skills such as project management, operations management, business analysis, and marketing.
- Strategic thinking and soft skills like communication, teamwork, resilience, and adaptability.
- Leadership expertise that translates to any industry and shows employers that you have the skills and knowledge to be an effective, respected leader.
When corporate recruiters weighed in on how skill demand will shift in the next five years, they predicted that managing strategy and innovation; managing tools and technology; and interpersonal skills would experience the greatest increased demand.
Skill Demand Five Years in the Future
Corporate recruiters’ opinion on how demand will change for specific skills five years from now²:
| Skill | Growing Demand | Stable Demand |
|---|---|---|
| Managing strategy and innovation | 67% | 37% |
| Managing tools and technology | 60% | 38% |
| Interpersonal skills | 57% | 42% |
| Learning/motivation/leadership | 56% | 43% |
| Knowledge of tech/product design/production | 56% | 42% |
| Strategic/system skills | 55% | 45% |
| Generative thinking | 46% | 52% |
| Managing decision-making processes | 45% | 54% |
| Interpersonal orientation | 44% | 55% |
Career Advancement Opportunities
Earning your MBA can elevate your career and prepare you for leadership and senior management roles in organizations that rely on purpose-driven leadership backed by strategic, data-driven decision-making. Per the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC), the median starting salary for MBA graduates working at U.S. companies reached an all-time high in 2019.³
Graduate Outcomes
According to a global survey by the GMAC:
- 2 out of 3 MBA graduates say they earned more promotions than their peers without an MBA.4
- 87% of graduate business school alumni gained skills that advanced their career.5
A Good Time to Be in Management
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median annual wage for management occupations is the highest wage of all the major occupational groups.6
Employment of management occupations is projected to grow faster than the average for all occupations through most of this decade, which will result in about 706,900 new jobs.
Top Career Goals of MBA Graduates
A recent survey by the GMAC found that prospective MBA students are increasingly earning the degree because they want to enhance their current career path. Top career advancement goals for prospective MBA students include:7
| Career Goal | Percentage |
|---|---|
| Manage people | 42% |
| Manage projects | 40% |
| Raise/salary increase | 40% |
| Senior-level position | 39% |
| Job with international travel | 35% |
| Executive-level position | 34% |
| Job with a different company | 28% |
| CEO of a company | 23% |
| Promotion | 20% |
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