Some M.B.A. Graduates Are Struggling to Find a Job
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Here's your Money Briefing for Friday, January 19th. I'm J.R. Whalen for The Wall Street Journal. It's not unusual for MBA students to graduate with one or more lucrative job offers that can be part of a path to success in corporate America. But many who graduated three months ago are struggling to land their first post-MBA job.
Companies, when they can be selective, are prioritizing people who have direct experience in the role or in the industry that they're trying to recruit for.
We'll talk to Wall Street Journal careers reporter Lindsay Ellis after the break.
Some MBA graduates entering the job market are having a hard time landing a position three months after graduating. Wall Street Journal careers reporter Lindsay Ellis joins me. Lindsay, we saw MBA hiring pick up during the pandemic.
Why are up to 20% of top MBA grads still job hunting three months after graduation?
How much has it dropped off since?
So at some schools, the share of students who are still looking for work has doubled from the pandemic to now. Schools basically report how many students still don't have jobs three months out. That's kind of the baseline juncture. At Harvard Business School, about 20% of MBAs looking for a job didn't have one three months after graduation this year. That's up from 8% in 2021. At Stanford, those stats are, you know, it was 9% in 2021, rising to 18% this year. And at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's business school, the share rose from 5% in 2021 to 13% in 2023.
Wow, that's a big jump. In what fields are MBA grads finding the most difficulty finding jobs?
Tech is a really big one. So these recent grads, many of them started school in 2021 and they had a very smooth internship search in their first year in school as tech companies were hiring a ton. They came back to school in the fall of 2022 to a very different environment. Many companies were slowing down recruiting and ultimately laid off thousands of workers. If you zoom out a little bit, there are three big industries that typically recruit MBAs from top schools. Tech is one of them. Consulting and finance are the two others. And all three of those areas have faced slowdowns in the last decade. year or so, which has made it really challenging for the recent graduates and even MBA students now who are looking for jobs in those areas.
How is the criteria for what they're looking for in candidates fueling this challenge that the graduates are finding?
A lot of schools told me that they've noticed companies hiring more conservatively. Typically, when a recruiter or a hiring manager will come to an MBA campus looking for students to recruit, they are driven not necessarily by what they did before the MBA, but but their potential to grow into the role after graduation. And it seems as if that companies, when they can be selective, are prioritizing people who have direct experience in the role or in the industry that they're trying to recruit for. And from my interviews with recent graduates, that's very much lined up. Many of the people who I talk to have really struggled on this front are career switchers. They had a very different professional experience before school than what they wanted to do after.
I talked to a teacher who wanted to go into real estate asset management and a lawyer who wanted to go into business, and even an Olympian who wanted to break into tech. So that attempt to pivot has been much more challenging because of this more conservative environment.
How are the grads dealing financially with this extended job search period?
Yeah, it's been a very tough stretch for a lot of people. You know, I've talked to people who are couch surfing with friends, cat sitting for neighbors and friends, and cutting gym memberships and even selling their own clothes and jewelry online to make ends meet. Many of them are casting a very wide net right now, including for jobs in the industry that they were in before the MBA program. Some of them are pursuing certifications and fellowships to make their application stronger. Other people are kind of networking wherever they can, even in professional organizations in cities where they don't live, you know, to make contacts, shake hands and try and improve their chances.
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