Experience is definitely one of the most important factors in a recruiting process. Actually, enough work-experience is also a requirement for all good MBA programs.

The MBA is the certification that you have also learned all the important tools that are necessary for a management position. Of course, through years of experience, through self-documentation, failures and successes you might have learned what others learn during 1 or 2-year MBA programs. And, of course, one can become the CEO of a Fortune 500 company without an MBA, or even without complete studies (see Mr. Gates).

In the end, it all depends on the person. For a person which is less entrepreneur and not planning to start his/her own business but to apply to a large company, I would definitely recommend doing an MBA.

The HR departments get hundreds of applications a day, many of them are automatically selected by using database searches, so for certain jobs, CVs not containing "MBA" might not even pass the first recruiting step. We're living in a global world with thousands of applications, from everywere and world ruled by technology, where people are often preselected by a computer.

On the other hand, MBA without experience, is also not the ideal candidate which companies want, maybe for an entry-level management position or traineeship.

So, as always, balance is the solution, but it is recommendable to first have the experience before deciding upon the strategy of an enterprise or the faith of hundreds of employees.