MBA Career Outcomes

What Can You Do with an MBA?

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Accelerate Your Career Growth

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.

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%

Open Doors with a Wake Forest MBA Online.

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NOTES AND CONDITIONS - PLEASE READ

1 Source: https://www.mba.com/articles-and-announcements/articles/mba/why-employers-love-business-masters-graduates

2 Source: https://www.mba.com/articles-and-announcements/articles/attending-business-school/skills-employers-will-want-in-a-post-covid-world

3 Source: https://blog.gmac.com/gmac-advisor/starting-salaries-for-mba-talent-at-us-companies-hit-new-high

4 Source: https://www.gmac.com/market-intelligence-and-research/market-research/2018-alumni-perspectives-survey

5 Source: https://www.gmac.com/-/media/files/gmac/research/measuring-program-roi/b-school-alumni-employment-report-february-2018.pdf

6 Source: https://www.bls.gov/ooh/management/home.htm

7 Source: https://www.gmac.com/-/media/files/gmac/research/prospective-student-data/career-aspirations_mbacom-prospective-students-survey-2019.pdf