MBA recruiting, especially in traditional sectors such as financial services and consulting, took a significant hit in 2009, but career service directors are calling for growth in total job opportunities in 2010. This according to the MBA Career Services Council (CSC), a global professional association of management education career service directors and MBA employers, which last week released the findings of its fall 2009 survey of career service directors.
The CSC survey, which polled career directors at AACSB accredited business schools in the United States and Europe, showed that 79 percent of business schools saw a decline in on-campus recruiting for full-time MBA jobs last year, matching exactly the percentage of respondents who reported a decline the year before.
Job postings, though, showed signs of rebound. While 48 percent of survey respondents reported a decline in full-time MBA job postings in 2009, this represents an improvement over 2008, when 70 percent reported a decline, the CSC reported. And in brighter news, 34 percent of respondents reported an increase in job postings during fall 2009.
And while recruiting was down significantly in traditional sectors, other sectors saw increased activity last year. More than 20 percent of career service directors surveyed reported increases in recruitment activity in energy/petroleum, government, healthcare services, pharma/biotech and high technology; 20 percent also reported decreased recruiting activity in sectors such as consulting, banking, private equity and real estate.
As to the future, the majority of respondents were optimistic about recovery, with 60 percent predicting an increase in overall market opportunities in the year ahead, the CSC reported. “All of us in the MBA Career Services offices at business schools across the world are hopeful,” Kip Harrell, CSC president and career services vice president at Thunderbird School of Global Management, said in a statement. “We know that graduate employment is a lagging economic indicator and as the economy picks up, so will MBA hiring,” he added.
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