Job Outlook for MBA Grads Shows Signs of Recovery

NORMAN, Okla.
The job market for this year's crop of MBA graduates is showing signs of improvement, according to the MBA Career Services Council (MBACSC).
Data from a survey of 56 business school career centers conducted by the MBACSC, an association of university MBA career services professionals, demonstrates that current recruiting for summer internships is noticeably higher than last fall's bleak recruitment period for graduating students.
"This study echoes comments made last year by corporate recruiters expecting to refill their talent pipelines with summer interns," says Ken Keeley, director of Carnegie Mellon University's Career Opportunities Center, which serves the school's MBA students.  "Our prediction is that the trend will continue into the next recruitment season in the fall of 2002."
Mel Penn, president of the MBACSC and corporate relations executive at the University of Oklahoma Price College of Business, added, "MBA students should be encouraged by this information. While the study confirmed anecdotal speculations that current recruiting (winter/spring) is down from last year, the decrease is not as dramatic as it was from the fall 2000 to the fall 2001."
According to the study, 39 percent of the schools indicated that current on-campus recruiting was down "25 percent or more" compared to the 59 percent that reported the same decrease for fall 2001.
The study also confirms that consulting and financial service searches were significantly affected in fall 2001. Eighty-seven percent of the schools reported that recruiting by consulting firms was down at least 25 percent while 52 percent indicated that financial service recruiting was down at least 25 percent. And while manufacturing firms have been affected, current recruiting efforts by manufacturers have increased compared to fall 2001. For example, last fall, 32 percent of the schools indicated that manufacturer recruiting was down 25 percent or more. For the spring, only one quarter of those polled were down by the same margin.
Fifty-six of 185 member schools completed this survey. Thirty-nine percent of the participants were from private schools, and 39 percent were at schools ranked in a top 25 listing within the past two years. For more information, please visit the MBACSC Web site at <www.mbacsc.org>.