Early Signs of Strong MBA Recruitment in 2016

Employers, particularly those in the US, have provided a welcome indication that MBA recruitment will remain strong in 2016 and that MBA internships will be widely available to current students, according to an annual end-of-year poll from GMAC. 

Approximately two-thirds of respondents (68%) to GMAC’s year-end poll for 2015 indicated that hiring business school graduates was a priority in the coming year. With specific reference to MBAs, three-quarters expect to hire graduates this year, and 71% said they had taken on MBAs in 2015.

GMAC: employers know MBAs are ‘valuable assets’

Just under a third of employers with MBA recruitment plans this year expected to be able to take on more new recruits this year than in 2015, while a further 13% had not hired MBAs in 2015 yet anticipated doing so in 2016. Interestingly, MBA hiring plans are strongest among those firms who perceive a year of ‘overcoming challenges’ such as a need to reduce costs or to improve performance and productivity, suggesting that MBAs are often targeted when a firm has a make-or-break project in mind.

“Employer demand for graduate management talent is projected to remain strong in 2016 for MBAs… employers understand that they are valuable assets to their organizations,” said GMAC's executive vice president for school products, Bob Alig.

However, expected hiring in 2016 is noticeably higher among those employers based in the US than those in Europe. Whereas 82% of US employers said they will hire MBAs this year, that number is only 63% among European employers.

Even so, the MBA figures stand some distance clear of the 34% proportion, worldwide, who said they intended to hire master’s in management (MIM) graduates in 2016 – showcasing the difference in value between the two qualifications in the eyes of these employer respondents. Here again, though, there is an important regional distinction to make. In the US, where the pre-experience MIM degree is not so well established, only a quarter of employers said its graduates were in their hiring plans this year, as opposed to 57% of employers in Europe.

The suggestion for MIM prospects, based on GMAC’s findings, appears clear; not only are there more options to study a master’s in management degree in Europe, there are also more employment opportunities on offer to MIM graduates throughout the region, despite the relative health of the US job market that is implied by its more robust MBA recruitment projections. As such, it seems MBA prospects will find far stronger employment opportunities in the US than in Europe. A similar conclusion was drawn by the QS TopMBA.com Jobs & Salary Trends Report 2015/16, a summary of which you can read here.

Company respondents to the poll numbered 179, of which 66% are based in the US, 15% in Europe and 8% in Asia-Pacific. There’s a spread of company sizes included, and indeed industries, with the ‘big three’ in MBA recruitment – finance, consulting and technology – accounting for 49% of responses received.  

Among those companies planning to hire MBAs in 2016, 24% said the difference in salaries on offer, as compared to last year, would be above the rate the inflation, 32% expected salaries to rise in line with inflation and 41% said their offers would remain at 2015 levels.

73% of respondents will offer MBA internships

MBA internships are often a leading source of eventual full-time job offers for MBAs. Among Chicago Booth’s class of 2015, for instance, 45% of graduates secured new employment opportunities this way. Employer intentions to offer MBA internships are therefore something that feed directly into the following year’s hiring patterns. In GMAC’s poll, 73% of employers said they would be making MBA internships available to students in 2016 – a further positive sign for the market in the year ahead.