Recruiters are reportedly looking to employ more MBA graduates this spring, building on increased hiring that was made with last year's graduating class, reports the Wall Street Journal.
About 79 percent of businesses intend to hire MBAs from the class of 2012, reveals a Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) survey of more than 800 companies around the world that was released Monday. Surprisingly, this amount is up from 72 percent last year and exceeds the 50 percent that was documented in 2009.
While hiring opportunities for graduate business students continue to be strong, their rate of growth is not equal because the technology and energy industries are outperforming the financial services and even consulting sectors.
Because of new investments going into Silicon Valley, growing technology firms are particularly excited about adding MBA grads to their staff. The number of tech companies planning to hire gone up 22 percent above last year's numbers, according to GMAC. Technology employers are particularly looking for students with quantitative skills who can take user data and applying it towards strategic expansion and marketing efforts.
Zynga Inc. has almost doubled the number of its employees in the past year, increasing MBA hiring by about 25 percent this year. That company has added 24 new product-management and business-development hires and expects to add another 30 by June.
Within their new recruits, seven came from Harvard Business School. They also added four full-time hires and an intern from University of California at Berkeley's Haas School of Business.
However, not all industries are looking for new hires. Businesses in the financial-services industry have decided to take a "wait and see" approach, reveals Scott Rostan, founder of Training the Street Inc. "They're not really sure where market activity is going, so they don't want to be staffing up in anticipation of it," he added.
According to the GMAC survey, the amount of financial-service companies looking to hire MBAs went up just 2 percent this year.
Sandra Hurse, global head of campus recruiting at Goldman Sachs MBA hiring at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. admits that hiring is "basically flat" compared with last year.
In addition, Pittsburgh-based bank PNC Financial Services Group has employed about 20 MBA interns for this summer, primarily in capital markets and internal consulting roles. About 90 percent of those interns are expected to take on full-time jobs at the bank after graduation. Kristi Milczarczyk, PNC's senior recruiting manager for campus recruiting, says that the bank is cautious and admits that they will "always be cautious. However, PNC will be recruiting at seven to 10 schools, compared to just three in 2010.
