Should I do the certification courses like NCFM while doing my MBA?

There is a lot of wishful thinking that goes on in the name of placement. The reality is based on demand and supply.

For example, some one asked me yesterday whether they should do NSE’s Certification in Financial Markets (NCFM) modules. The objective is to get into brokerage and investment banking.

My answer was as follows:

1. Salaries and jobs are determined by the demand of the recruiters and supply of the right MBAs. More about the MBA market can be found in Chapter 5 (MBA for sale – what salary will I get) of my book, “What recruiters want?”
2. Investment Banking and Brokerage is attractive to MBAs, therefore this is an overcrowded market with a lot of sellers.
3. There are a limited number of well-paying brokerage houses and investment banking firms. There are others, which are more discount shops with low margins and therefore with low fixed salaries and high variable, performance based salaries.
4. If the impact of the European crisis spills over to India, the stock market would be down and hiring will freeze.
5. If everyone has NCFM certification, then it becomes a basic requirement (hygiene factor) and not a nice-to-have factor (motivator) for hiring.
6. If you do join a brokerage firm, the chances that you will actually be doing trading or company evaluation and research is minimal, given that all Tier-1 B-School graduates too want to do the same job.
7. You will probably, and specially in a bad market, be asked to get more customers for the brokerage house. At best, you will be asked to create market analysis / research documents and sell them. For that you do not need the NCFM modules.
8. Nitesh Mittal (a reader) pointed out that there are other options – for example, be a certified financial planner. (http://www.fpsbindia.org/)
9. Sunil Dath (another reader) pointed out that there is a third option – to do a Diploma in Banking and Finance (www.iibf.org.in)