One of the questions that I am often asked and is most relevant at this point in time given that some of you might be looking at re-taking the CAT after an underwhelming CAT last year and others might be desperate to crack this year’s CAT.
- is it wise to quit my job to prepare for the CAT?
- will quitting my job have a negative impact on my profile?
- how can I prepare if I am working 12 hours a day, 6 days a week?
These are questions that many aspirants ask themselves since there is a huge premium on acquiring a degree from a prestigious college and for many, an MBA is the last big shot that they can take to get a big brand name on to their resume.
There might be other reasons as well ranging from a mind-numbingly monotonous IT job to a horrible boss, to the existential dread — what will become of me and my life if I am stuck in my current situation forever.
Also, there are many who have faced this situation this before as well when they had set their eyes for the first time on getting two more “I“s than what God brought them into the world with — the IITs.
For most of my colleagues, the answer is a simple NO. But I think under certain circumstances quitting your job might be the best option in front of you with the proviso that you quit at the right time and do more than just prep for the CAT.
If you quit, be prepared to face the music in every single interview
Before anything else please understand that if you quit, in every single interview that you face you will have to answer the question — Why did you quit your job?
This question is bound to be followed by others such as
- surely you did it just to prepare for the CAT!
- so it means you are not good at multi-tasking?
- more than half of our students have work-ex, do you mean to say that all of them had easy jobs that allowed them to put their feet up?
Forget at the interview stage, some institutes such as IIM-A ask this question in the FORM they send out to candidates they shortlist for the WAT-PI round — Do you have any breaks in your professional career? If YES, then please explain?
But you can rest assured that these questions have been successfully tackled by aspirants in the past and in IIM interviews at that.
But what is important is that you quit at the right time, plan your break to take up activities that enhance your profile and achieve things that will help you make a great pitch in the interview.
How will quitting affect your profile in terms of getting into an IIM?
First, let us look at the effect of quitting your job on your chances of getting a shortlist from a quantitative perspective.
There are colleges such as IIM-B and many others that give a weightage to work experience in the shortlisting process. In such cases, you will lose out on valuable points and will hence have to score higher on the test to get the shortlist than if you had stuck on in your job. So yes, there is a clear quantitative effect.
If you have two or more years of work-ex and the rest of your profile — X, XII, Grad Marks — is good you can on average score 0.5 – 0.75 percentile points lower than someone with no or low work-ex. But remember that this is only in the case of institutes that give a weightage to work-ex.
This quantitative effect as you will see will be negligible in the case of people with more than 30-36 months years of work experience since the points for work-ex are not directly proportional to the amount of work-ex in that they are capped after a point. To know more about IIM selection criteria you can read this post — The IIM Selection Criteria: Will I get a call from the IIMs?
The other way of looking at this question is from a qualitative perspective — in terms of how panelists will view you in the interview. Panelists more often than not feel that all MBA aspirants hate engineering and run after an MBA to make more money. So when they see candidates who have left what is on paper a promising professional opportunity, they tend to look at him/her in an unfavorable light and will expect them to justify the same.
How will quitting affect your profile in terms of the roles offered at top b-schools?
IIMs and other top-schools slot candidates into two categories for placements — regular and lateral.
Lateral placements are for people with a certain amount of work experience for roles that are above entry-level management roles. What is that certain amount of work experience?
It differs from college to college. Some base it on the absolute number of months such as 20, 22 or 24, others decide based on the average work-ex in the batch. Either way it usually falls into the 20-24 range.
Also, it is important to note that for some domains and firms having work-ex is a must-have and hence recruiters look purely at lateral candidates. What are the domains where relevant work-experience is a pre-requisite?
OPERATIONS roles, for example, most definitely go to people who have experience in shop-floor, product design, logistics, supply chain management etc. So engineers working in operations will do well to finish working for two years before entertaining thoughts of quitting.
IT CONSULTING roles for example again typically go to those with 2 plus years of experience in software.
Recruiters from new sectors such as e-commerce from firms such as Amazon also tend to look at candidates with a certain amount of work experience, usually IT or Analytics or technology.
General management firms such as Tata Administrative Services(TAS) and the Aditya Birla Group (ABG) also prefer people with work experience but they also take in freshers.
Roles in Marketing do not need work experience, with Marketing recruiters having a very strong preference for freshers or only those with very relevant work experience sales, marketing analytics, the same applies to HR as well.
For Finance your graduation discipline, the brand of the college you graduated from, and professional certifications such as CA, CFA, FRM matter way more than work experience. So if you are a Commerce Grad from a top-tier graduation college looking to build a career in Finance, work experience is not a must unless it is relevant.
For Consulting roles, the brand names on your resume matter more than anything else. It is not whether you have work-ex or not but firstly the brand value of the organization you worked with that matters more. IITian and NITian freshers with a strong academic profile stand a very high chance of getting shortlisted. Those from other colleges of national repute with stellar resumes in terms of academic and extra-curricular achievements also get shortlists.
Overall just to put things in perspective, about 30-40 percent of students in top b-schools are freshers.
How many months of work-ex makes it safe to quit?
So by now, it will be clear that quitting will not affect your chances if you do it after finishing 2 years of working, I would say around 24 months is maybe the ideal amount of work experience to have to go into an Indian b-school.
If you already have 3 years of experience and a relatively weak resume it makes sense to quit your job, prepare for CAT, and build your profile.
In what cases does quitting before 24 months make sense?
The only reason to quit before 24 months is if you are very clear that you want an industry and domain shift. So if you are an engineer from one of the core departments working in IT and you want to do an MBA to get away from not just IT services but also technology then it makes sense to quit your job before 24 months of experience.
The more work experience you accumulate in your industry the more likely you are to get roles within than industry or domain.
What is the best time to quit to prepare for CAT?
The simple answer is that if all you want to do is quit and prepare for 8 to 10 hours a day, you will not need more than 3 months. So working backward, your break should not start before 1-August.
It might seem as if I am speaking about aspirants who are already at a particular level, say 85 percentile. It might seem that if you are someone who is very out of touch with Math, you will need more time. But these arguments assume that you will have done no prep till August, which is not the case. Even if we consider these concerns legitimate since you know yourself better than I ever will, given that I know the CAT better than you ever will, your break should not start earlier than 1-June.
So at most your break will need to start 6 months before the CAT, not before that (unless there are some extenuating personal or professional circumstances).
What you should be doing if you quit before August
If after going through the post so far, you have made up your mind to start your break for CAT prep by June this year then you should do more than just prepare for the CAT. Else as discussed above, interviewers will have a great time turning you over on both sides on a red-hot grill.
In all the cases where my students have successfully made it to a top b-school despite a break of 8 to 10 months by the time they faced their interviews, the students had taken up things to improve their skills and profile.
What are the things they took up?
- Those who wanted to improve their communication & public speaking skills joined Toastmasters, cleared a few levels and got to hold a few positions of responsibility at Toastmasters.
- Those who wanted to get some diversity into their profile worked with start-ups for Teach For India or a while.
- Those who wanted to add some academic weight to their resume took up certification programs in their area of interest on Coursera.
- Those who lacked any social work-related activities on their resume took up working with an NGO
You need not limit yourself to this; you can take up anything that you have a strong interest in — learning a dance form or languages or singing or photography — as long as you invest quality time and have something to show for it.
For a more detailed insight on how you can improve your profile to align it to your chosen domain post-MBA, you should read — How to build your profile
Too much of anything, even CAT Prep can be harmful
Apart from resume building these activities also ensure that you do not become obsessed with the CAT and pile up the pressure on yourself leading to test-day.
They offer a good break from CAT Prep in terms of taking your mind off the test and also helping you peak at the right time.
Peaking at the right time is very important because if you are doing nothing but doing CAT prep for 8 or more hours a day, you will peak in about 3 months time and come test-day you will have exhausted yourself.
This is the reason why sometimes teams that do not start off well in a tournament such as World Cups manage to get their act together over a period of time and peak in the final (Australia in the 1999 Cricket World Cup) whereas teams that seem to be hot favorites crash out.
I have tried to be as extensive as possible in terms of covering all the things that you need to consider before taking a call to quit. Even so, I am sure that each one of you might have unique backgrounds and aspirations making it tough for you to take a call. Feel free to post your queries regarding quitting in the comments section and I will answer them.
The CAT Writer 
By August 2024 I’ll have 12-13 months of experience, would it help my profile if I quit my current job and join my father’s new business to help in growing the business?
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Hi Akshat,
As long you have appointment letters, salary slips and proper work-ex in your father’s business, it will be helpful since a family business is like any other business only the scale is small.
But with none of these and only broad talking points the panel will figure that you were prepping for CAT and not doing else.
Hope this clarifies,
All the best!
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Hello Sir,
Thanks for your guidance, sir I have not quit my job going by your advice but working for 9-10 I have come to a conclusion that I have to change my domain from my current one.
If I continue this job I’ll accumulate experience in a domain in which I don’t plan on working, shall I continue or quit a month or two before CAT to boost my prep?
Thank you again for the advice and please guide me with this problem too.
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Hi Akshat,
One or two months before the exam might be leaving it a bit too late. I would suggest quitting so that you have a clear runway from 1 August.
Regards,
Tony
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Hi Tony,
I am an incharge of an outlet of CCD, it’s my first job. By August, I would have a total of 1 year of experience and would have been promoted to the role of Assistant manager of the outlet. If I quit at that time, would that be the right decision and also would the manager title will affect any difference on my profile at the time of PI for colleges?
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Hi Shailesh,
Well, the fact is that one more year would mean a few more points for work-ex and while the title of manager itself will not get you any extra points, you can build a good story and have a nice interview.
There will be very few people will your profile and thus there is a good chance that you will stand out.
All in all, there are pluses to continuing but no minuses to quitting.
Hope this clarifies,
All the best!
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Hello Sir. I had very good GIs with SPJIMR. The panel looked happy with my answers and I was personally satisfied with my answers. However, I am rejected from their IM program and waitlisted at an impossible to convert (261) number for their BM program. I am not even sure why. My MDI Gurgaon interview, surprisingly, asked the same questions that was asked to me in SPJIMR GIs, so I am not sure of even converting MDI now.
I scored 97.11 OA percentile this year. Acads are 89/93/81 (tier 3 engg college)and I had 23 months of work ex in CAT 23 form and 26 months of work ex in SPJIMR form. I work in a project management role in one of the most famous product based company (not a technical role) . Does it make sense for me to give another CAT attempt? In CAT 24 form, I will have around 35 months of work ex , however, I am not sure if recruiters in college placements want folks with ~4 years of work ex Pre B school admissions.
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Hi Sandeep,
Given the sheer volume, the IM program might have the most competition of all the streams at SPJIMR. Everything seems to point to the fact that you should have made it but after a point there is no reason to know why they rejected you.
Do not downplay your chances at other schools based on one school. In life, at time we have no option but to stay even (like a balance that is not tilting over to either side — since we do not have any information whatsoever.
Incase you will need another attempt do not really worry about the work-ex. You will still have under 48 months of work-ex and you should be able to get a decent bouquet of roles. If it were more than 55 months, I would have surely suggested GMAT and 1-year programs.
All the best for the MDI result.
Stay even!
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Hello sir, I graduated from NIT Jamshedpur in 2023 from a core branch, joined an analytics firm, and recently got laid off due to project unavailability (workex 8 months). I am looking for a new job. But at the same time, I am preparing for CAT.
I am not sure whether I will be able to find a job in the upcoming months due to bad market conditions. I have decided to devote the next 3 months to find a job. If I won’t, I will go with my CAT preparation fully. Is this strategy advisable? Further, I want to pursue general management, supply chain roles post MBA.
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Hi Vivek,
I would suggest that you keep looking for a job and go full throttle on the CAT Prep since both will not take up your whole day.
I would not suggest completely stopping the search after three months but to keep looking with may be reduced intensity.
If something really good comes along that will be great on your resume take it up, else focus on CAT Prep.
You can go back to a full-fledged job search once the CAT is over. It does not hurt to be working when you for the interview.
It is a free market. Firms lay off and hire people based on what is optimal for them. The same applies to individuals as well.
Hope this helps,
All the best!
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Hello sir, I am currently working as Assistant Manager, Operations Excellence in a chemical Industry with a work experience of 21 Months. I am unable to focus on CAT preparation due to fatigueness post work at times, which is hindering my consistency. Hence, I am looking to quit Job for full fledged preparation. What do you suggest?
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Hi Manidhar,
As I mentioned in the post, you can quit once you cross 24 months of work-ex. It should not create any problems for you.
Hope this helps,
All the best!
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Hey my name is Akshay Pandey I have recently graduated from symbiosis pune after completion of my graduation I have joined a full time job and after 5 months I left the job and did freelancing n all so will it be counted as work-ex and write now I am just preparing for the CAT and doing free lance so is it a smart move or should I join a full time job??
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hello sir,
I gave cat in 2023 and i scored really bad but i want to continue and aiming for top20 b schools with 80/80/65 and no work ex, just 3 months of internship , so how much i have to score to get into top bschool mostly IIM’s and should i continue for cat or not?
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Hi Sir,
I completed 8 months working in finance field. And now I have Work-from-Home. Also this is my re-attempt. So do I need to quit my job while preparing for CAT?
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Hi Himani,
There is no reason to quit your job if you can work and prep for CAT at the same time.
All the best!
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Hello sir,
I’m having 8 years of experience, BTech and MTech from DTU, is it the right choice to go for full time MBA via CAT. I’m not sure about the executive program, if I join the full time 2 year program, will it be difficult for me to get placed?
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Hi Shubham,
In your case it makes no sense to take up a 2-year program since your profile will be an outlier. It will be a buffet where you are not allowed to eat almost all the dishes on offer.
I would suggest taking the GMAT and applying to the premier 1-year programs without a doubt.
Hope this clarifies,
All the best!
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Hello Sir, I appeared for CAT last year and scored 97.52 overall with ~94/96/94 as sectionals I did my Chemical Eng from an NIT (GEM with acads as 9/8/8). I work in a Big4 firm in IT Consulting and although I can manage about 3-4 hours of study in chunks of 1-2 hours in the morning and night, work is hectic to the point that I think about it while studying. My current project role, although less impactful can allow me to talk about multiple things due to the social nature of it but less value adding profile wise. Also, not studying at a stretch hinders my ability to properly understand and improve on the concepts as I have an idea of what to improve but it takes me time to ingrain a concept and solve questions on that. Sir, should I leave my job ? I can continue if needed but just want to improve and perform much better than last time.
You mentioned that, one can leave after 2 years, could you please elaborate on that ? And if I leave should I pick up something for the next few months of just focus on CAT.
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Hi Aakash,
The reason for two years is that campuses have lateral placements and two years ensures you qualify for that. Also, in the admissions process with 2 years you will pick up valuable points.
I have had students who have quit and made it to old IIMs and Big 4 after. So it will not be a problem.
But take up one other thing apart from CAT prep that will help with profile building.
Hope this clarifies,
All the best!
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hey, I’m a B pharmacy graduate with relatively 2 years of work experience in Regulatory affairs and I’ve also quit 1 job in 1 yr 2 months and left the other in 10 months.. because all I want to do is prepare for CAT and change my stream, I have to practice quants because it’s not my strength. I don’t know if this was a right decision and sometimes I can’t stop overthinking. Please guide.
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Hi Jagruti,
It is okay since you have more than 20 months of work-ex.
Just focus on your prep now and get the best score you can.
Also, apply to a decent set of colleges and take more than one exam: CAT, NMAT, XAT, SNAP.
Hope this helps.
All the best!
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