How to Kickstart Your Career in General Management

A management degree and work experience can go a long way if you are looking to build a career in management. However, to further your career and climb your way into higher management positions, an accelerated general management programme will help greatly. 

While there can be no real substitute for such a comprehensive and intense course, here are a few tips to help kickstart your career in general management:

• Explore courses in general management

A well-planned and curated general management course will help greatly in advancing your career in general management. Such courses provide learners with unparalleled insights about the subject, with inputs from accomplished personnel from upper management positions. 

Certification from reputed institutes can fast-track one’s career in general management. The Accelerated General Management Programme of IIM Ahmedabad is one such certification course that can help in accelerating one’s career in general management.

•  Start networking

Leadership skills form an essential part of general management and networking is the key for developing leadership skills. Talking and networking with other people will help you find a different perspective to look at problems and come up with innovative ideas and solutions to solve them.

Reaching out to managers, supervisors or mentors in your organisation or other organisations will help in understanding and acquiring key problem-solving skills. 

Another way of increasing your network is enrolling for a general management course. The leadership styles differ from person to person and getting in touch with different people will help you form your own successful leadership approach. 

Your willingness to learn and open-mindedness will help you understand and acquire leadership and problem-solving skills, and will provide you with a competitive edge over others. 

• Work on transferable skills

Transferable skills are skills that are useful in different jobs and industries. Such skills are not confined to any particular job level or industry. These skills stay with an individual throughout their life. Transferable skills include leadership skills, creativity, communication skills, analytical thinking, and time management, among others.

Working on transferable skills refers to honing such skills and applying them to various unique scenarios. As a step towards kickstarting your career in general management, managers can refine their transferable skills, and learn new skills to survive in the field for long.

• Get workplace experience

The skills that can be acquired practically cannot be honed theoretically and that’s why getting workplace experience can be beneficial to all those aspiring managers. Workplace experience will help boost your experience level even more and will enable you to learn new skills, and increase your network.

If you are fresher planning to pursue a career in general management, apart from enrolling yourself in a general management course, look for internships that offer the opportunity to redefine and add a whole new range of experience.

Conclusion

If you are planning to kickstart your career in general management or if you are a lower-level manager and want to hustle to get into top-level management, Accelerated General Management Programme is all you need to claim that position you deserve. 

The Accelerated General Management Programme at IIM Ahmedabad will help you take your management career a notch higher. The programme will help broaden your business perspective and lay a strong foundation for managerial techniques to enhance your business management skills.

FAQs

1. Why is the Accelerated General Management Programme important?

An Accelerated General Management Programme is important and essential for you to widen your perspective as a manager to deal with real-life management problems effectively, or to kickstart a successful career in management.  

2. What skills do you need to be a good manager?

Leadership skills, interpersonal skills, decision-making skills, conceptual skills and technical skills in the field you are working in are the top skills needed to be a good manager. Each of these skills helps managers stay afloat in the current competitive market scenario.  

3. What is the next position after general manager?

General managers are further promoted to deputy managing directors, managing directors and chief executive officers (CEOs). The hierarchy also varies from industry to industry. The next position after the general manager is usually the apex of the management level in most industries. 

4. What are the 4 types of managers?

The four types of managers are top-level managers (CEO, CFO), middle managers (managing directors, chief managing directors), first-line managers, and team leaders.