USA MBA Jobs: Visa Hurdles

View the top North American MBA programs

Work authorization in the USA can be a problem for MBA hopefuls who want to enrol in business schools in the country.

Soaring job placement rates, fat salary data and juicy accounts of former students happily working in the United States after earning an American MBA are the traditional devices American admissions officers use to turn their most promising MBA applicants into enrolled first year students. The message is compelling, and it works, says Dan Beaudry.

According to the annual Open Doors report produced by the Institute of International Education, over 145,000 international students came to the US to study business and management in the 2009/2010 academic year, an increase of 5% from the previous year, and a number that is likely to grow. It’s safe to say that many of these visiting students arrived in the US with the hope that their American diploma would be a ticket into the US job market.

The problem is, finding a quality job in America without US work authorization is not easy and international students expecting to be given a job, or placed by their school at a US-based company after graduation may be in for an unwelcome surprise.

And here is why. A large number of American campus recruiters aren’t interested in recruiting international students. The recent high flow of quality applications from American candidates means that recruiters have very little incentive to spend the time and money required to sponsor work authorization. In fact, to narrow the applicant pool and save costs, many companies have made it a matter of policy not to sponsor work visas, leaving international students out of campus recruitment, and frustrated.

Yet, there are alternatives to traditional campus recruitment. Faced with a growing influx of international students expecting jobs after graduation, and ultimately responsible for maximizing the school’s placement rate, US career services offices have responded with several initiatives, including:

Identifying and attracting companies to campus who are openly willing to sponsor work visas.

Training students to search for jobs outside the campus recruiting process.

Traveling around the world trying to uncover career opportunities in their students’ home countries.

Repatriation

Each of these can be effective. But there’s an emerging fourth option, repatriation, that could be less labor-intensive and more fruitful for career services that has business schools and some international students very excited.

In this model, American multi-nationals recruit at US business schools to fill open positions at company locations outside of the US. With an increased need for managers with global outlook and mobility, and ambitious growth objectives in emerging markets, American employers are finding US-educated foreign nationals an excellent solution to leadership gaps in their offices around the world.

“We want people with a global mindset,” says Jeanie Mabie, global employer branding and university recruitment leader at IBM. “We need to fuel growth in particular countries and that requires strong talent that is geographically mobile.”

IBM’s International Student Hiring Program connects hiring managers from around the world with graduates from US and other Western universities to fill key positions. Just completing its second year, the program has grown 150% since inception.

Objectives are similar for Wheelabrator Technologies, a waste management company headquartered in Hampton, New Hampshire. After forming a joint venture with China-based Shanghai Environmental Group in 2009, Wheelabrator realized that US-educated Chinese nationals could help close the talent and management gaps the company was experiencing in China.

“Our biggest challenge is building bridges between the Wheelabrator culture and our Chinese partner,” says Stephen Hamlet, director of talent management at Wheelabrator. “The waste-to-energy industry is brand new over there.”

Although designed to build talent resources in China, Wheelabrator offers selected interns the chance to work in the US for up to three years, during school and after graduation, prior to returning home. “We think this is a wonderful way to give Chinese professionals US experience in management, and it helps us get more trained managers in China,” says Hamlet.

Experience

In addition to occasionally sponsoring work visas for select MBA and PhD graduates, IBM also offers US work experience to participants in its elite General Manager Leadership Development Program. Two of the three program rotations are often US-based; the third typically bringing the participant back to his or her home country.

One traditional draw to American employment for international students is the allure of a US MBA salary – a useful resource in tackling the sizable debt that can accompany a US diploma. But finding a company willing to pay American salary levels outside of the US can be difficult. Differences in cost of living and internal equity are the key reasons why companies prefer to pay according to local standards.

“We try to be very upfront with students in setting [MBA salary] expectations early,” says Mabie. “People are hired based on the terms and conditions of that country.”

One exception is IBM’s leadership development program mentioned earlier which works to maintain pay consistency as participants rotate through different assignments and geographies.

Stephen Hamlet at Wheelabrator concurs. “There is a difference in compensation between China and the US, and managers need to realize that this is going to happen.”

America has always been the land of opportunity, but a direct path from graduation to US employment can be harder to follow than it might seem from the website of your first choice business school. As you soak up the enticing job placement statistics of your favorite MBA programs, consider that those statistics likely include graduates going into opportunities in their home countries - like those mentioned above - and that students hoping to be ‘placed’ into a US MBA job are often disappointed.

For more information of the career enhancing benefits that an MBA program can bring, QS runs several kinds of events designed to inform those interested in business education how to take the next step. To find out more, and see which cities in North America, Europe, Asia and Latin America the events are hosted at, visit the TopMBA.com events homepage.