There’s no shortage of career opportunities in today's rapidly changing world. They range from exciting new career areas to more traditional categories that demand new skill sets to succeed. When deciding the next steps to take in your career, navigating the abundance of choice and ensuring your skills will keep you ahead of the curve can be tough. With so much information, it’s hard to find the signal through the noise.
But your career is our job. Our ongoing conversations with companies and analysis of the labor market have informed the way we’ve organized our Master in Management. It’s why we’ve broken the program down into several career pathways that will give you the edge you need to succeed in the workplace of tomorrow.
The entire program is tailored to your unique ambitions, strengths and gaps. No two people are the same, and neither are any two career paths. First, we’ll help you plan your career. We’ll give you the tools to learn more about yourself and your options. We’ll guide you in choosing a career pathway that’s well-matched to your goals and skills. Then, we’ll help you pursue your plans. We’ll curate an educational experience to give you the exact set of skills you’ll need to achieve your professional goals. Throughout the program, you will evolve. And we’ll be here to ensure the journey always fits your changing needs.
Imagine a world where you have a trusted guide to help you navigate the complex landscape of career choices, identify your true passions, and empower you to pursue the right pathway. The Career Discovery Accelerator is precisely that guide—a catalyst for your personal and professional growth. It is a unique program within your Master in Management for discovering your options and planning for what’s next. It will help you make a well-informed decision about what pathway to pursue by choosing your degree Concentration, and/or identifying the types of jobs you want to target.
It is divided into three transformative phases, each designed to empower you with invaluable insights and actionable strategies:
Drive growth with the power of communication.
Do you have a passion for communication and want to gain insight into the best way to tell an organization’s story? This pathway will hone your mindset, behavior and digital skills, arming you with the tools, technology and techniques to make your narratives even more persuasive. Whether you’re creative, analytical, a big-picture thinker or natural master of the sale, this pathway unlocks ways to profoundly understand both your audience and organization. It opens the door to many exciting career trajectories that tend to emphasize business growth and the value of branding. You can pursue this pathway in the Master in Management by choosing the concentration in Branding, Marketing & Sales.
The new world of sales is big and exciting. Careers in this area focus on sales strategy, sales force management, sales ops, digital nurturing, sales analytics, sales tech and B2B development.
Roles in this area are about brand strategy and brand building, go-to-market strategy and execution, omnichannel marketing, marketing communication and 360º marketing.
This rapidly growing career area focuses on performance analytics and tech to drive marketing decisions in generating leads, acquiring customers, understanding channel effectiveness and targeting messaging and products to different customers.
This area is about using qualitative and quantitative methods to find insights about customer attitudes, preferences, purchasing behavior, satisfaction and market trends.
Roles in this area focus on the strategy, management and production of content, media and creativity to drive the branding, marketing and sales activities of a business.
With sustainability never having been more important, organizations are realizing that environmental, social and governance (ESG) concerns are everyone’s responsibility. And they are placing sustainability at the heart of their business, requiring all their employees to play their part. With this Certificate, you’ll learn how to incorporate a sustainability point of view across all business activities and functions, and be prepared to tackle the social, economic and environmental challenges of today’s world in any organization.
We've partnered up with AWS Academy to provide our students with access to enroll in Amazon Web Services Academy courses, such as Cloud Foundations and Data Analytics. These courses open the door to AWS Certifications, giving you yet another opportunity to ensure you stay ahead of the curve and unlock your potential.
Sales and Business Development are becoming one of the fastest growing fields and sales skills are needed to make businesses grow, to pitch and win new clients, to better engage with internal and external stakeholders, to sell ideas internally, to develop new markets and to stay one step ahead of competitors. This certificate will give you SalesForce fundamentals to succeed in any commercial role.
Become an expert in transformation to boost organizational relevance.
In the business world, the pace of change has never been faster. That means companies must constantly evolve to stay relevant. Are you passionate about innovating in order to design and implement change that delivers real value? This pathway will give you the analytical, visionary and management skills you’ll need to formulate, plan and execute major organizational transformations. It will help nurture a mindset that identifies ideal strategies and excels at putting those strategies into practice. Given change is demanded across the public, private and civil society sectors, this pathway puts you on track to choose from a huge range of opportunities. You can pursue this pathway in the Master in Management by choosing the concentration in Strategic Management.
Roles in this career area involve formulating, planning and implementing business strategy via transformation and integration projects. This could apply to any function or area of a company’s value chain from market entry and exit decisions, to product and service portfolio strategy, to operations strategy and optimization. Professionals in this area work in corporate strategy departments, corporate innovation units, venture-building units and as consultants in management consulting firms and firms specialized in strategy consulting and industry analysis.
Professionals in this area focus on every company’s most strategic asset—people. It’s about developing and managing the implementation of strategies for hiring, engaging, training and developing talent. It’s also about designing organizational structures, building an organizational culture, and implementing employee-centric systems and initiatives that drive well-being, engagement and performance. Roles in this area are in talent departments, HR departments, learning & development units and corporate universities. Professionals in this area also work in the talent and organization groups within management consulting firms and firms specialized in talent and organizational consulting and training.
With sustainability never having been more important, organizations are realizing that environmental, social and governance (ESG) concerns are everyone’s responsibility. And they are placing sustainability at the heart of their business, requiring all their employees to play their part. With this Certificate, you’ll learn how to incorporate a sustainability point of view across all business activities and functions, and be prepared to tackle the social, economic and environmental challenges of today’s world in any organization.
We've partnered up with AWS Academy to provide our students with access to enroll in Amazon Web Services Academy courses, such as Cloud Foundations and Data Analytics. These courses open the door to AWS Certifications, giving you yet another opportunity to ensure you stay ahead of the curve and unlock your potential.
Gain the knowledge needed to make high-stakes financial decisions.
Business, economic development and everyday life are all fueled by finance, but it takes deep expertise to understand how to make the financial system work in your favor. This career pathway, designed by leading finance and management professionals, will arm you with the knowledge, analytical and people skills needed to succeed in this competitive and high-reward field. If you’re interested in a challenging and fast-paced career and want to learn how to apply knowledge about finance and investments in the real world, this may be the pathway for you. You can pursue this pathway in the Master in Management by choosing the concentration in Finance & Investments.
Roles in this area focus on identifying and securing privatization, merger and acquisition deals, managing and investing monetary funds, and buying and selling financial products for clients. Professionals working in this field drive corporate restructurings, carry out private placement of capital, provide debt and equity advisory services, and manage funds such as mutual, pension or hedge funds.
Roles in this area about managing portfolios of assets that are not publicly traded, such as startups that show potential for long-term growth, small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), real estate and other alternative classes of assets.
Professionals in this area manage portfolios of assets to increase wealth over time by acquiring, maintaining and trading investments that have the potential to grow in value. Global Markets, Sales & Trading refers to the division for making markets in stocks, bonds and derivatives, also referred to as the Markets or Securities Division, depending on the bank. This career area also involves professionals who do the research that informs investment and portfolio management decisions.
Roles in this area are about the integration of new technologies into the services offered by financial companies in order to improve experience delivery to consumers of financial services. FinTech is deeply reshaping the financial services industry, with technologies in transaction processing, wealth management, cryptocurrencies, and the use of blockchain and related technologies that are enabling the decentralization of aspects of the financial system (DeFi).
Professionals working in this area focus on the collection, analysis and use of corporate financial data to understand business performance and drive decision-making. Roles in this area involve developing policies and processes for managing financial resources and operating efficiently within an organization, mitigating financial risks, and complying with fiduciary duties, corporate governance, and due diligence requirements.
Financial planning and control is a combination of strategies which supports the entire financial management process for an organization. The process begins at financial planning, many times in the form of cash flow and forecasting balance sheet, and continues with compliance analysis or even with forensic analysis that combines criminal investigation skills with financial auditing skills to identify criminal financial activity coming from within or outside an organization.
Roles in this area focus on investment with the intention of generating positive environmental, social and governance impacts alongside financial returns.
Sustainable finance is defined as investment decisions that take into account the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors of an economic activity or project that targets companies or industries that produce social or environmental benefits. Roles in this area include impact investing and philanthropic investing.
With sustainability never having been more important, organizations are realizing that environmental, social and governance (ESG) concerns are everyone’s responsibility. And they are placing sustainability at the heart of their business, requiring all their employees to play their part. With this Certificate, you’ll learn how to incorporate a sustainability point of view across all business activities and functions, and be prepared to tackle the social, economic and environmental challenges of today’s world in any organization.
As technology becomes increasingly critical, so do professionals who know how to use it.
Are you interested in using technology to boost organizational efficiency? Staying on top of the most powerful technological trends? Learning how to transform data into insights? This pathway will give you a profound understanding of the technology that can elevate performance across any area of a company’s business and operations. It will give you precisely what you need to spearhead digital strategies, digital transformations and to make data-driven decisions. As there is almost a universal need for expertise in this sector, this pathway unlocks a wide variety of rewarding career opportunities. You can pursue this pathway in the Master in Management by choosing the concentration in Digital Business & Analytics.
Modern business is built on a foundation of digital technologies and data—and innovations that these enable. Roles in this area focus on formulating enterprise-, business-, and product-level tech strategies that drive innovation and improved performance. It’s also about leading the successful implementation of these strategies via digital transformation projects. Digital strategists and transformers work both inside of companies in technology and innovation units, as well as in general and specialized consulting firms.
This career area involves roles focused on the use of data as a strategic asset to drive business decision-making, value creation and competitive advantage. It’s about formulating data strategy as well as leading projects to implement data tools and produce data-driven business insights. Professionals in this area work across the value chain of a company, from its supply chain through to its digital sales and marketing operations.
Operations are critical processes that underlie every aspect of a business, including supply chain, manufacturing, HR and talent, finance and accounting, procurement, marketing, sales, and distribution. Roles in this area focus on driving innovation and efficiency via process automation, robotization, optimization and process (re)design. Professionals in this area work in innovation and operations departments inside companies, as well as in general and specialized consulting firms.
With sustainability never having been more important, organizations are realizing that environmental, social and governance (ESG) concerns are everyone’s responsibility. And they are placing sustainability at the heart of their business, requiring all their employees to play their part. With this Certificate, you’ll learn how to incorporate a sustainability point of view across all business activities and functions, and be prepared to tackle the social, economic and environmental challenges of today’s world in any organization.
We've partnered up with AWS Academy to provide our students with access to enroll in Amazon Web Services Academy courses, such as Cloud Foundations and Data Analytics. These courses open the door to AWS Certifications, giving you yet another opportunity to ensure you stay ahead of the curve and unlock your potential.
Feed your entrepreneurial spirit and create something new.
If the motto “no risk, no reward” rings true, if you’re passionate about disruption and want to blaze your own trail in this world, this pathway gives you what you need to become a successful entrepreneur. It instills the entrepreneurial mindset and the practical skills required to achieve your goals and purpose, whether that’s launching your own business, revitalizing the growth of a scale-up or joining a corporate venture-building unit. If this sounds appealing, see for yourself why the Financial Times ranks IE Business School as Europe’s best program for entrepreneurship teaching (2022). You can pursue this pathway in the Master in Management by choosing the concentration in Entrepreneurship & Corporate Innovation
Do you have an idea, a team (or both) and are thinking about launching a company? This is a tough, high-risk career pursuit and not for the faint of heart. It’s about studying your potential market and customers, refining your idea, forging plans that will inevitably need to change, building a team that can survive, raising funds, and getting it off the ground. You’ll most likely have to self-finance for some time, or try to make this happen in parallel with a full- or part-time job.
Being an entrepreneur via a startup isn’t the only way to get into the game. If you're interested in the electricity of being involved in something young, vibrant and even wild—but you also like the idea of stability and a consistent paycheck—then you might consider the world of scale-ups. These are early-stage companies that have traction, have secured funding, and are starting to ramp up their growth. The founders and funders are looking for talent who can make big contributions to helping them scale. If you have a lot of grit and an entrepreneurial spirit—but don’t want to start a company yourself—then targeting a scale-up might be a good option for you in the next steps of your career.
Individual entrepreneurs aren’t the only people who generate innovative ideas and build businesses. Increasingly, big companies do it too. Leveraging their assets, know-how and talent, corporations are starting to become adept at sensing opportunities and capturing them. This happens in two primary ways: innovation units within companies identify opportunities to drive new products, services and business models, or make changes to existing ones, and work within the existing corporate structure to turn these ideas into reality: “venture building” units within companies are spinning out startups to bring innovations to reality outside the company as new ventures.
With sustainability never having been more important, organizations are realizing that environmental, social and governance (ESG) concerns are everyone’s responsibility. And they are placing sustainability at the heart of their business, requiring all their employees to play their part. With this Certificate, you’ll learn how to incorporate a sustainability point of view across all business activities and functions, and be prepared to tackle the social, economic and environmental challenges of today’s world in any organization.
Gain the big-picture knowledge needed to understand an increasingly complex world.
Are you driven to understand what’s happening in the world from an economic point of view? How the interplay between the political, social, environmental and financial spheres shapes broader economic trends? In today’s increasingly uncertain and interconnected world, organizations need professionals with this big-picture knowledge to anticipate what will come next. This pathway unlocks a wide variety of career opportunities that tend to center on the macro aspects of management, strategy and decision-making. You can pursue this pathway in the Master in Management by choosing the concentration.
These are roles that involve business, economic and non-economic analysis oriented towards trend-tracking and foresight, strategy (formulation, planning and development), financial forecasting and planning, and global business research.
Roles involving the management of projects and operations for NGOs, multilaterals and other organizations that develop, launch and deliver developmental programs and services to key stakeholders.
These are business roles that involve forging and managing international alliances (corporate, NGO, governmental), trade agreements, and other activities that promote a company’s business or an organization’s operations on a global stage.
With sustainability never having been more important, organizations are realizing that environmental, social and governance (ESG) concerns are everyone’s responsibility. And they are placing sustainability at the heart of their business, requiring all their employees to play their part. With this Certificate, you’ll learn how to incorporate a sustainability point of view across all business activities and functions, and be prepared to tackle the social, economic and environmental challenges of today’s world in any organization.
Where will our Master in Management take you? Gain exclusive, up-to-date insights and explore the career paths our alumni are taking after graduation to help you plan your next career move.
We want to see you achieve all of your career goals. That’s why the services offered are available from the moment you enroll, throughout the program and even after graduation. Our Pre-Programs aim to support you from the very first moment of your self-discovery process, expedite your labor-market readiness and help you take full advantage of your professional potential. Throughout the program, we offer you impactful advising, learning resources and development tools that will help you manage and reach your professional goals. Our employer relations team works tirelessly to generate recruitment opportunities for our community. So, along with your commitment and hard work, we will support every step of your journey towards the next best you.
Here’s how it works:
With so many choices and so much information, choosing a career path can be overwhelming. And it’s totally fine if you still don’t know what you want to do. If you are unsure of which career path is right for you, the Master in Management program is designed to help you explore your options and make smart decisions. The program includes a Career Discovery Program, which offers a range of workshops, group advising sessions, and other resources to help you learn about the different career pathways and how they align with your goals and skills. Our team will work with you to help you choose a career pathway that is well-matched to your ambitions, strengths, and experience, and will provide you with the tools and support you need to pursue your career goals. Throughout the program, we will help you adjust your plans as your needs and interests evolve.
The Career Discovery Program is a fundamental component of the Master in Management program. It is designed to help you explore the different career pathways and find the one that's right for you. You'll attend workshops that introduce you to different careers and jobs within each pathway, and we'll help you understand how these jobs match your ambitions, strengths, and experience. Even if you’re still confused about what to do next, the program contains self-exploration workshops to help you crystalize your career goals and aspirations.
As you continue on your career discovery journey, you'll have access to group advising sessions and a wealth of tools and resources to help you explore different career pathways. You'll also hear from industry leaders and alumni who can provide valuable insights and advice on the careers that interest you. If you want to find meaning and purpose in your professional life, we offer expertly designed workshops to help you define, refine, and align your purpose with your career goals. Our aim? To help you determine where you're going in your career and make the best choices about your pathway, electives, employability booster modules, and other program options.
During the Master in Management, you will be focused on learning the management essentials and will have multiple opportunities to be involved with companies throughout the year. Our Talent and Careers team will accompany you throughout your journey toward your professional goals. As students have a busy schedule during the academic year with classes, group meetings and campus life, students cannot complete an internship or work while they study.
The Master in Management will help you develop the skills and knowledge to get into multiple industries and professional areas. As you will customize your program through concentrations and electives, this will help you develop the skills needed for the industry you are interested in.
The Talent and Careers Department can help you in numerous ways, including building your professional strategy, career education, general and specialized advice, recruiter relations and leveraging technology for career success.
From the beginning of your Master in Management, the Talent and Careers team will organize sessions to kick off your career success journey and give insights into the different services, resources and tools available during the program to get you closer to your professional goal.