A study of management and professional employment conducted by the international recruitment specialist Antal International shows signs of recovery in the wider job market. Its quarterly "Global Snapshot" of hiring trends, based on 9,600 employers across 55 countries, found that hiring levels for MBAs were up from 54 percent in the middle of 2010 to 57 percent by the end of the year, a modest but encouraging rise.
In addition, the most recent Corporate Recruiters Survey, carried out by the Graduate Management Admissions Council (GMAC) and the MBA Career Services Council, found that of almost 2,000 participating companies worldwide, 55 percent were planning to hire MBAs, a 5 percent increase from 2009. The most resilient industries for MBA graduates were healthcare and pharmaceutical, with 80 percent planning to recruit, and consulting, where 73 percent intend to hire MBA graduates.
One of the biggest reasons for the improvement in the MBA job market is the proactive approach taken by business school careers departments who have learned from the experience of the post-9/11 downturn of 2001 and 2002. By forging links with a wide range of potential employers, tapping into their alumni networks and ensuring that new graduates are properly trained in presentation and interview techniques, business schools have stayed on top of their game.
Leon Richards, recruitment director of the UK’s Warwick Business School, says: "Even at the peak of the economic crisis, when jobs were few and far between, we persuaded employers to maintain their relationships with us, and that’s really paid off since the market started to improve."
Students at the European School of Management and Technology (ESMT) in Germany have also benefitted from strong links with employers. As many as 91 percent of the class of 2009 found a job within three months of graduating, with over half joining one of the 25 companies that founded the school in 2002.
Arzu Akoymak, a chemistry major from Boğaziçi University in İstanbul, completed her full-time MBA at the ESMT in 2010 and found ESMT’s connections with industry-leading companies essential to gaining the practical skills she needed to land a job at General Electric in İstanbul after graduating.
She says: "The companies that founded ESMT make the school much more connected to the real world. Practice projects for the sponsoring companies provided us with great opportunities to apply theory to the real challenges of the business world."
Erdoğan Yücelten, who studied at Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School in Belgium, was immediately offered a role as head of marketing for Studio Modern, an e-commerce fashion company with offices in Turkey, Slovenia and Italy.
Yücelten attributes this solely to the broader business understanding he gained during his MBA course. He says, "The MBA opened my eyes to the many different business perspectives that I simply wasn’t exposed to before."
He adds: "I never would have found this job without doing my MBA program. I think if I’d applied to the company in Turkey before my MBA, they wouldn’t have been interested."
İlker Çetin, a senior investment officer at the World Bank affiliate International Finance Corporation (IFC) in İstanbul, got his MBA at McGill University’s Desautels Faculty of Management in Canada. He also found the practical aspects of the course prepared him well for the workplace. He says that "the course emulated real-life business situations and really fostered an environment of teamwork and collaboration."
With employers in the post-crash world demanding increasingly high standards from potential hires, schools have been adjusting the focus of their courses to prepare their MBA graduates more fully for the realities of the new working world. Professor Bernard Garrette, associate dean at one of Europe’s top schools, HEC Paris, says, "We recognize that in this climate new MBAs need to hit the ground running, and consequently we have worked to make our leadership development program as directly relevant as possible." He adds, "As a result we’ve actually seen our graduates find more senior management positions than usual with markedly higher reward packages."
So what’s the key to a great career post-MBA? Picking the most relevant course, the most proactive school and making the most of the connections made during the program seem to be the main components of the magic formula. Whatever the secret, all signs indicate that MBAs are definitely back in the game.
