[ZT]Business Week: A Heady Job Market for MBAs

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A Heady Job Market for MBAs

After some lackluster years, 2005 B-school grads are fielding multiple offers -- and the outlook remains upbeat, recruitment experts say

Helga Vanthournout, a 2005 graduate of the International Institute of Management Development in Lausanne, Switzerland, was pleasantly surprised by her success in the job market this past year. The 31-year-old, with five years of experience in business-software and high-tech manufacturing, received five job offers within a month of graduation.

After much deliberation, Vanthournout accepted a job in the Switzerland office of McKinsey & Co., the New York-based management consulting firm. Vanthournout says employers used to overlook her because of a somewhat choppy list of work experience, but her MBA and a solid job market afforded her more options than she ever imagined.

Graduates of the top-tier MBA programs in North America and Europe entered a significantly stronger MBA job market in 2005 than did those in 2004. The economy is mounting a steady comeback, and things are looking brighter than they have in a long while.

Although most experts agree that MBAs probably will never again see the highs of the late '90s, many students, recruiters, and administrators at the top schools expect growth to continue well into 2006 and beyond. And that means current MBA candidates can anticipate more job opportunities and higher salaries when they graduate.

RECRUITERS RETURN.  There are many reasons for this change in climate. For starters, companies are feeling more confident in the current state of the economy. Fifty-five percent of the 1,700 corporate recruiters surveyed this year by the Graduate Management Admissions Council, the organization that administers the GMAT test, felt the economy was weak -- one-third fewer than in the previous year. GMAC also found that companies across every sector planned to visit an average of about one more school in 2005 than they did in 2004.

Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management experienced a jump in on-campus activity in the last year. On-campus recruitment in fall 2005 increased by 20% to 25% year-over-year, estimates Roxanne Hori, Kellogg's director of career placement.

By all accounts, top consulting firms and investment banks, the perennial MBA recruiters, have returned to campus in full force after shying away during the economic downturn. ESADE Business School in Barcelona has seen the number of consulting firms and investment banks on campus increase by 50%. McKinsey hired around 90 INSEAD graduates in both 2004 and 2005, up from 56 in 2002. At the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, McKinsey hired 57 graduates in 2005, up from 48 the previous year and just 24 in 2002.

CORPORATE COMPETITION.  It's no surprise that many schools enjoyed strong -- and, in some cases, all-time-high -- job placement. At London Business School, 96% of 2005 grads had accepted full-time jobs within three months of graduation, an 11% increase over 2004 and a record for the school. Three months after graduation, 100% of job seekers at IESE Business School at the University of Navarra in Spain, had found jobs.

In fact, the difference from one year to the next leaves an impression. For example, at the University of Western Ontario's Richard Ivey School of Business, 94% of job seekers in 2005 had an offer within three months of graduation, compared to 68% in 2004.

Among recruiters, the competition for talent is heating up (see BW Online, 10/27/2005, "Recruiters Are Slugging It Out"). Caitlin McLaughlin, manager of global campus recruiting for Citigroup (C ), says the on-campus recruiting scene this fall was even more competitive than last year.

Even if Citigroup extended an offer, it had to compete with between two and five other offers, sometimes from the company's direct competitors, says McLaughlin. The high-flyers of tech, like Amazon.com (AMZN ), eBay (EBAY ), and Google (GOOG ), are also trying to lure MBAs by offering perks for employees, such as Google's one free day a week to pursue individual projects, says Steve Pollock, president of WetFeet, a San Francisco-based company that offers research and services for both employers and job seekers.

"BULL MARKET."  One obvious strategy companies are using to land top candidates is offering better compensation packages. At the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, the average starting salary was $98,000, up from $91,210 just a year ago and $85,000 in 2000, says Julie Morton, the director of career services. "The bottom line here is that right now the job market is robust," says Morton.

Unlike their counterparts of the recent past, today's MBA graduates have choices. "People who have decided to focus on industry, function, or location seem to have options," says Vishal Rao, a second-year student at Harvard Business School. In 2005, 57% of MBA grads had multiple offers, vs. 52% in 2004 and just 34% in 2002, according to the most recent Student Recruitment Report, published by WetFeet. The group also found that MBAs received an average of 2 offers each, up 10% from last year.

Experts expect employment to continue on this path for at least the next two MBA classes. "Unofficially, companies like DaimlerChrysler (DCX ), McKinsey, Goldman Sachs (GS ), and others are telling us that they see strong hiring through 2008 as well," says Samer Hamadeh, co-founder and CEO of Vault, a New York-based company that provides industry information to job seekers. "For someone graduating in May, 2007, it [will be] a bull market for jobs."

OPTIMISM PREVAILS.  What's different this time around? "Capital is flowing in all directions," says Jackie Wilbur, career-services director at MIT Sloan School of Management. "It just seems more sustainable [now]."

She's not the only one who's hopeful. All the good news has MBA candidates optimistic. About 83% of MBA students surveyed by WetFeet predicted next year's job market will be even better than 2005's. With more job offers and higher salaries, MBA graduates should have some difficult, but enviable, decisions to make for some time to come.

[此贴子已经被作者于2006-1-5 9:30:31编辑过]