Wall Street banks have been shedding jobs at a steady clip this fall, but the skittish economic outlook isn’t having an impact on MBA hiring, which is only getting rosier, according to a new corporate recruiters survey released by the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) today. Hiring expectations for next year are on the upswing, with nearly three-quarters of employers, or 74 percent, intending to hire at least one MBA in 2012, up from 58 percent in 2011, according to the survey, which polled 229 employers from 216 companies worldwide.
Adding to the healthy job outlook, recruiters said they plan to hire at similar or increased levels in 2012. For example, 22 percent of recruiters said they planned to hire more MBA graduates next year; that’s nearly four times the number in 2011, when only six percent said they intended to up their MBA hires. Last year, recruiters’ hiring expectations lined up with an “extremely high level of accuracy” when it came to actual hiring, so if current trends continue the class of 2012 can “look forward to entering a markedly improved job market next year upon graduation,” the report notes.
“There is a sense that the demand for business talent is competitive, not just in the sense of students competing for jobs, but in terms of employers who want to secure the quality talent they are looking for,” said Michelle Sparkman Renz, GMAC’s director of research communications, at a press conference today.
Despite the increased hiring projections, the majority of companies, or 65 percent, plan to keep base salaries at similar levels to 2011, though 32 percent indicated that they would up compensation for their new MBA hires.
Read the full article: MBA Hiring Outlook Optimistic for 2012