2011 will bring good news for students seeking to enter consulting, financial services and IT, report both, the news agency Reuters and BusinessWeek.
Consulting was one of the hardest-hit recruiting areas for MBA hiring last year, according to a poll of 89 business schools conducted by the MBA Career Services Council (CSC). Expecting the worst after an epic downturn in the market for MBA talent, many students developed a "Plan B" that new research suggests will end up being the road not taken. New MBA hiring picked up slightly in 2010 and is likely to increase again this year, with the traditional MBA magnet fields of financial services and consulting expected to make comebacks, according to the most recent MBA CSC data.
Also on the rebound is the job market for techies with an MBA. Students from Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School recently took their annual "tech trek," testing out the demand for summer internships for the class of 2011 and full-time jobs for this year's graduates. They came back with evidence that high-technology, start-up and alternative energy companies will hire more actively this year. What they found on their trip to Boston, Silicon Valley and Seattle gave them reason for optimism; tech outfits are finally seeing demand pick up, energy companies are pushing to develop renewable fuels and together the two sectors could lead the way out of a job market morass.
Evidence of a rebound is everywhere. Seventy percent of business schools surveyed by the CSC in December said full-time MBA job postings were up. The Graduate Management Admission Council, the organization that publishes the GMAT, polled 210 employers in November, and 64 percent said they plan to hire new MBAs in 2011.
The class of 2011 MBAs are also likely to face less job competition than their 2010 counterparts, who were competing against 2009 graduates for a smaller pool of entry-level MBA positions, says Elena Bajic, chief executive of Ivy Exec, a recruiting company focused on MBA job placement.
When it comes to pay, though, this year's class may not see too much of an advantage compared with 2010 grads. 69 percent of employers polled by GMAC said they do not plan to increase starting salaries of new MBA hires over last year. 4 percent said they would decrease salaries vs. six percent the prior year.
Campus recruiting in consulting and financial services improved the most over last fall. About 65 percent of schools surveyed by the CSC reported an increase in recruiting by consulting firms, while nearly 60 percent reported an increase in financial services recruiting. And Sloan is optimistic for the high-tech sector as well.
"Our MBAs are unbowed, and they came back with a lot of gusto," said Sloan adviser Paul Denning, who has made the trek to California for several years. "The general consensus is that things are better, particularly in Silicon Valley." Last year, Denning said, even tech giant Google, "was really not hiring. Everything had contracted after the financial market collapse." Now, green shoots are popping up. "It seems that most of the companies we're speaking to are looking to hire. They're keeping us in mind," said Mike Norelli, 26, who graduates in June.
http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/content/jan2011/bs20110121_225354.htm
http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/01/28/us-economy-jobs-mit-idUSTRE60R1OZ20100128
https://www.mbacsc.org/?s=media&tab=announcements&mode=form&id=37745acfb3c19a56ad11194bdff9cd86