Value Proposition Course Kickoff: Insights from Hiring Managers
- blogs
- 5 min read
By Arnould Joseph – Product Marketing Manager
A few weeks ago, Nikhil Kamath dropped a grenade on the internet:
“If you’re 25 and going to an MBA college today, you must be some kind of idiot.”
Brutal. Unfiltered. And it instantly split the room into two camps: the ones who cheered because they believed MBAs are a scam, and the ones who felt personally attacked.
But let’s be real: He wasn’t calling students stupid. He was calling out the old model of an MBA – the one where you memorize theories from the 1990s, flip PowerPoints for grades, graduate with a shiny degree photo… and zero practical skills to survive in an actual job.
So, is doing an MBA stupid?
Doing the wrong MBA, maybe yes. Doing a modern, skill-driven, real-world MBA, absolutely not.
The real question isn’t:
“Should I do an MBA?”
It’s:
“Will this MBA actually make me useful in the room?”
Welcome to 2025, where hiring managers don’t care about degrees. They care about outcomes, portfolios, and capability.
Why MBAs Get So Much Hate Today?
Because honestly… a lot of them deserve it.
- Too much theory, zero execution
- Case studies that never leave the classroom
- Fancy frameworks, no execution
- Zero exposure to real decision-making
- Students graduate with notes instead of skills
And every hiring manager has seen this pattern so many times that the eye-roll is automatic.
A senior product manager from Swiggy Instamart, Ankur, put it plainly during a session with IPL’s MBA in Technology Management students:
“We don’t care if you’ve done 10 certifications. We care whether you’ve talked to real users and solved real problems.”
That’s the reality. A degree doesn’t differentiate you anymore – skills do.
What Hiring Managers Actually Look For in Product Managers?
Straight from Ankur’s mouth (who has spent close to a decade building products inside Instamart and hiring PMs):
- Customer Empathy
Can you talk to users, understand pain points, and uncover insights? PMs literally cold-call customers to understand problems like UPI failure issues.
- Value Proposition Thinking
There are hundreds of possible solutions to every problem. Can you pick the right one? The feasible one? The one that actually matters?
- Collaboration & Communication
PMs don’t code, don’t design, and don’t market. They align people who do. If you can’t communicate vision clearly, nothing moves.
- MVP Mindset
Don’t build everything. Build the smallest thing that works. Instamart’s payments page? It launched day one with just cash + UPI. Everything else came later, after testing and learning.
- Resilience
PMs get rejected every single day – by engineers, by business teams, by customers. You need the ability to get punched and stand up again.
- Outcome Ownership
Not “I built a feature,” but “this increased conversions by 11%.” That’s the product game.
“But I Don’t Know Tech. Can I Still Become a PM?”
Ankur’s answer was refreshingly honest:
“I’ve never written a single line of code in 6 years as a PM.”
Tech knowledge helps, sure. But what matters much more is:
- Structured thinking
- Ability to learn fast
- Curiosity
- Problem-solving
- Asking good questions
The skillset is learnable. The mindset is non-negotiable.
The 70% Rule – Where Great PMs Actually Win
Subodh, a Senior PM at Schneider Electric and faculty at the Institute of Product Leadership, put it beautifully:
“Great PMs spend 70% of their time understanding the problem.”
Mediocre PMs rush to ship features. Great PMs obsess over why the problem exists, who feels it, and how painful it really is.
They experiment. They build MVPs. They run hypothesis tests. They fail fast. They iterate.
The magic isn’t in ideas. The magic is in learning loops.
Where a Modern MBA Actually Makes Sense?
This is where we challenge the narrative.
The world doesn’t need another degree. The world needs proof of work.
Some programs today flip the traditional MBA model completely – not theory-first, but portfolio-first.
Instead of:
- Writing reports about companies, you talk to customers.
- Memorizing framework names, you apply frameworks
- Solving fictional cases, you build real products
That’s why the Technology MBA in Product Management at the Institute of Product Leadership isn’t built like a traditional classroom program – it’s built like a real product.
From day one, before any course even begins, students sit with actual hiring managers to understand what the industry expects. Not abstract theory or textbook terminology. The real gaps. The real messy reality of product work.
And the curriculum isn’t something that was written once and left untouched. It’s co-created and continuously shaped by experts who lead product and technology teams across Fortune 500 companies and global tech giants, including members of the Techno-Business Leadership Council (TBLC), who help ensure everything students learn reflects current market reality. Because if the market changes every three months, your curriculum should too.
So instead of just teaching frameworks, the program makes you use them through:
- Talking to real customers
- Mapping insights using the Value Proposition Canvas and Jobs-to-Be-Done
- Running hypothesis-driven MVP experiments
- Participating in skillathons evaluated by industry leaders
- Working on capstone projects, solving real product problems
- Building portfolio artefacts that you can actually show a hiring manager
Because in product management, slides don’t get you hired. Proof of work does.
So… Is Doing an MBA Stupid?
Doing an MBA that only gives you a certificate? Maybe.
But doing an MBA that:
- Makes you talk to customers
- Builds your product thinking
- Forces you to experiment and iterate
- Helps you graduate with a portfolio instead of a PDF degree photo
- Aligns with what hiring managers actually want
That’s not stupid at all.
That’s smart. That’s intentional. That’s the future.
The real question isn’t:
“MBA or no MBA?”
The real question is:
“Will this MBA make me useful the day I walk into the interview room?”
If the answer is yes, you’re not an idiot. You’re ahead.
If you’re exploring an MBA seriously, just make sure you’re choosing the version of MBA that builds skills, confidence, and outcomes instead of slides and slogans.
And in that case, you’ll never regret it.
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