Researching the MBA Job and Career Prospects of a Business School

Seeking a career in finance after your MBA program? In that case, which business schools have the best MBA career prospects for the financial industry should be of paramount concern when deciding which programs to apply to. The same goes with many other sectors – MBA careers in retail, careers in telecoms, even education, manufacturing, and technology.

As a result, it can be an extremely savvy move to put the time into researching a school’s relationship with recruiters and employers prior to applying.

Business school employment reports: Revealing MBA job opportunities

“Major business schools produce employment reports that list their biggest recruiters,” says Fiona Sandford, director of degree programs and career services, London Business School. “Applicants should certainly consult these, and should check that the sector they hope to work in is well represented with the top firms in that area.”

Consulting these lists is perhaps the key message though, as while employment reports can certainly give applicants an idea of the sectors that a particular school’s program might afford them the option of entering, there are a considerable amount of variables that come into play other than a school’s perceived brand among employers.

“My advice would be to focus less on which employers specifically recruit on campus in any given year and pay more attention to the types of positions accepted by MBA interns and graduates from programs of interest,” explains Sheryle Dirks, associate dean for career management at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business.

“In the difficult economy of the recent past, the traditional models of on-campus recruiting still exist but employers often supplement or replace this activity with alternate channels.”

Discover which companies recruit on each business school’s campus

Nevertheless, for those that are aiming to enter a different sector come graduation, then researching the employment track record is a necessity, according to Leigh Gauthier, director of careers for the full-time MBA at Rotman School of Management in Canada.

“If applicants are completing their MBAs in order to switch careers, it behooves them to take note of who hires on campus to make sure their choice of schools attract the firms, or industries that they are looking to move into upon graduation.”

Derek Walker, director of careers at the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School points to applicant caution when researching which recruiters employ a school’s graduates. After all, MBA graduates from the best business schools are likely to work very hard on securing their first post-MBA role, and sometimes this will be without the school’s help.

“Just because an employer hires students from the school doesn’t mean it visits the school to hire… [For example,] it may post a role and ask students to apply on-line without setting foot on campus.”

Researching MBA recruitment relations in novel ways

A different tactic may be to use freely available tools when doing your research, keeping in mind that a school’s alumni network may help when attempting to get your foot in the door of a particular organization.

“A more revealing approach might be to look at where alumni from a certain school actually work,” says Claire Gaudissart, career development manager for the Global MBA at ESSEC Business School. “A simple search for ESSEC on LinkedIn reveals over 10,000 members with jobs in a range of sectors all over the globe.

“Focusing on a strong alumni network and the real connection you will have with those people as a fellow graduate can be more powerful than relying on hearsay about which companies traditionally recruit from which schools.”

Further, MBA rankings can prove telling in this regard, but not simply because their methodology may or may not give prominence to graduate employment prospects. Instead, employers often look to these lists in order to ascertain which schools produce the most employable graduates.

MBA employers utilizing business school rankings

“Generally speaking, the major recruiters will concentrate solely on the top ranked schools – that’s really why rankings, despite differences over how they are calculated, are considered important,” explains Javier Muñoz, careers services director at IESE Business School in Spain.

“Also think about which countries you wish to be employed in and look into the scope of business school’s careers service for that location.”

This is a sentiment echoed by Nunzio Quacquarelli, managing director of global higher education experts QS Quacquarelli Symonds.

“International MBA recruiting is no longer the domain of a few prestigious US and European companies, in fact it hasn’t been for some time. Each year, in the QS Global 200 Business Schools Report we see a greater number of HR managers in the Asia-Pacific region, Latin America and Middle East are informed about MBA education.”

In fact, the report Quacquarelli refers to, the QS Global 200 Business Schools Report is itself a valuable research tool for MBA applicants looking for schools with the best employment prospects.

“At the heart of the report is the definitive list of 200 business schools from which employers prefer to recruit MBAs, based on details provided to QS by over 3,300 employers who actively recruit MBA graduates.”

“Split regionally, and according to ten core MBA specializations, applicants can utilize the report to ascertain the schools that are most respected by employers in the region they’d prefer to study in, as well as the industry they’d like to work in."