TakeAway: There is no doubt that the hiring environment is less than ideal for MBAs … all MBAs.
However, there is hope. Companies appear to be hiring but students must be a little more flexible and patient than in the past.
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Excerpted from BusinessWeek, “MBAs Confront a Savage Job Market,” By Anne VanderMey, October 29, 2009
Adam Rosenberg did everything right. He got into a good school. He landed a great internship. He was even vice-president of two MBA clubs and a graduate teaching fellow. But when it came time for companies to hire this year, the 2009 graduate … was surprised to find out how little it all mattered …
He’s not alone … MBA students have found themselves facing what schools say is the worst hiring season they’ve ever seen.
According to the latest data … 16.5% of job-seeking students from the top 30 MBA programs did not get even one offer … three months after graduation. Last year that was true of just 5% of students. And … starting pay was down … For many programs, it marked the first time since the tech bubble burst that salaries didn’t increase. Signing bonuses, too, fell both in value and quantity …
One factor that made this recession different was that it hit MBA students where it hurt the most, with thousands of high-paying finance jobs going up in smoke …
The most successful schools this year were able to direct students who were shut out of investment banking and consulting into different industries … Rather than holding on to their hopes of working on Wall Street, students looked at their other skill sets …
A few sectors have been able to pick up some of the slack. Health care, energy, government, and nonprofit hiring are holding up particularly well …
Much of the hiring happened months later than normal. Many companies shifted from hiring on an academic schedule, which requires the stability to sign on new employees almost half a year before they show up to work, to hiring on an as-needed basis—often making offers much later in the year …
Early signs this year don’t point to a swift recovery for the class of 2010. Some believe the coming months will be even worse. That means many students will end up taking jobs they might not otherwise have considered or returning to industries they came to business school to get out of. That could be both good and bad news for this recession’s new grads.
Some students will discover jobs in new fields, try entrepreneurship, or travel to new countries. Instead of gravitating to a few companies that dominate recruiting, many schools say students are going to boutique firms or startups where they might be the only MBA hire that year … Students are opening their minds to new things …
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Full Article
http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/content/oct2009/bs20091029_862211.htm
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The Homa Files 
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