Tag Archives : Jobs

One thing that many business school students underestimate is just how quickly the recruiting process ramps up when school starts. Depending on your school, you might find yourself attending company information sessions and interacting with recruiters during your first week of class! Will you be ready?

Wondering how you can maximize the benefit of your MBA investment? Prospective and current MBA students are increasingly concerned with how they can distinguish themselves among their peers in an increasingly competitive post-MBA job market. According to a recent survey of over 250 current MBA students and graduates, the overwhelming majority of respondents noted that “networking” was the number one way that they could improve their job prospects and career search success. While it is certainly important for prospective MBAs to choose a program that fits their learning objectives and professional interests, current MBAs advise prospective students to take into consideration the strength of each program’s networking opportunities.

After what has seemed like years of asking “Thing are bound to get better, right?” the job market is finally, undoubtedly warming up for business school graduates. Earlier this week the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) released a pair of annual international surveys that show that the Class of 2011 is having an easier time landing jobs than grads of recent years, and that employers are bullish on their future hiring plans.

Today the Graduate Management Admission Council issued a release declaring the MBA job market to be on the mend, with 2010 average compensation levels for gradates from the last decade rising above levels seen in 2007. Last year the median base salary for surveyed alumni was greater than $94,500, a gain of more than $5,000 per year compared to pre-recession base salary levels in 2007.

More grads seemed to land jobs, too: 93% of those surveyed said that they were employed, compared to just 90% of the recent grads who were surveyed in 2009 (although it’s still a tick lower than the 95% of alumni who reported being employed in 2007). So, is it safe to come out from our bunkers and declare the job market robust again?

Last week news spread around the blogosphere and some major media sites that the American Bar Association (ABA) had put out an official statement urging students to carefully consider the return on investment when thinking about attending law school. Sounds like a smart, responsible thing for the ABA to do, given the number of recent JD grads still looking for work and some of the negative attention that law schools have received in recent years for not being upfront enough with prospective students about their post-graduation job prospects.

The only catch, as Above the Law pointed out last week, the ABA actually published that document back in November, 2009. Maybe it took a while for the message to sink in?

Could the job market finally be thawing for MBA graduates? It is at least a little bit, according to new survey results that the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) released last week. Eighty-eight percent of the grads who responded to the survey reported being employed after graduation, compared to 84% of survey respondents in 2009. The salary picture also improved: 2010 graduates reported a median starting salary of $78,820 (U.S.), up from $75,000 for those who graduated in 2009.

Recently the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) released its annual report analyzing admissions trends at business schools around the world. Interestingly, while most of us tend to associate a weak economy with ever-rising applicant numbers, that trend seems to have sputtered out for the current recession.

The blogging world has been abuzz over the “Unemployed JD” scandal that broke out this week. In case you missed it, a blogger named Ethan Haines who runs a blog dedicated to crusading for better transparency on the part of law school when it comes to employment data, actually turned out to be Denver-based Zenovia Evans, an employed 28-year-old graduate of Cooley Law School in Michigan.

Despite an employment environment that remains stubborn, new MBA grads are growing more confident about the economy, according to a new survey released by GMAC this week. Somewhat surprisingly, this increase in optimism actually comes despite a drop in the percentage of grads who have jobs compared to last year.

Last week the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) announced the results of a new employer survey that suggests that while the job market for MBA grads is still rough, we may finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. The reason for the optimism? The percentage of employers planning to hire MBA is up this year compared with 2009, although the number of new hires per company is expected to decline slightly.

Recently the Yale Daily News ran an article about how the Yale SOM alumni network has matured to the point where current students benefit from the wide variety of Yale alumni across industries. This is notable since the school has only been around since 1976 — making it a spring chicken compared to most top MBA programs.

In a recent Reuters article, MIT Sloan students had a rather optimistic outlook on the job market, considering how gloomy it has been for the past couple of years. As they returned from their annual “Tech Treck” job trips, in which they visit employers all over the United States, students expressed that they think the worst of the bad job market is behind us.

In an article on Forbes.com yesterday, Deb Weinstein reports that jobless grads are increasingly turning to grad school as a backup option in the face of dismal job prospects, even though some of their possible post-school job prospects are also disappearing.

Last week BusinessWeek ran an article titled “MBAs Confront a Savage Job Market,” which painted a pretty rough picture for many grads of top MBA programs. At some top business schools, as many as 20% of grads were still unemployed three months after graduation. Furthermore, according to BusinessWeek, 16.5% of job-seeking students from the top 30 MBA programs did not get even one offer within three months of graduation (compared to 5% for the Class of 2008).