Working in the USA

Non-citizens may find the tough visa situation and credit crunch affecting their employment opportunities in the US. However, as Ross Geraghty finds out, an MBA from an American business school still provides the best opportunity for non-US nationals to find the role that they seek states-side.

Julia Bykhovskaia's ambition was to work in one of the world's great markets. She had completed her MBA from NYU Stern and was ready to begin her career in either London or New York. She was armed with intelligence, a world recognised qualification and ambition - but that wasn't enough. As a Russian, Julia still needed to obtain proper work authorization if her dream of working in the US was going to become a reality.

"For me personally, the visa process was quite painful. I had to wait several months before I could start working and am very grateful to my employer that they did not withdraw their job offer because I was waiting for my visa approval. Then I had to delay the start date because of the need to travel outside the US to validate my visa"

Julia is not alone in her experiences. The US, perhaps for obvious reasons, has some of the strictest visa and immigration regulations in the world. It is the number one choice of destination for MBAs because of its mature finance and banking markets. Luba Nikulina, a London Business School alumnus, also from Russia, worked in the UK for two years prior to moving to the US.

"I work in finance and private equity and, frankly, 70 per cent of the market is here in the US. It's a very sophisticated market and a great learning experience."

For Luba, the experience of obtaining a visa wasn't quite as painful as it was for Julia. Her UK company, Watson Wyatt, arranged a two-year visa for her very smoothly. However for those who do not have such an advantage, the process can be a lot trickier.

MBAs hold the upper hand in such negotiations - after all, the US, like everywhere, needs talented managers and leaders - but there are major factors standing in the way of non-nationals getting into the US: visa status, internal competition and the credit crunch.

Generally, when coming to study in the US, students get an F-1 visa (exchange students get a J-1) which allows 12 months of "optional practical training" (OPT) - and the ability to work in a field of study after completion of the program. After that, graduates need employers to sponsor them for an H1-B visa and there is a limit on how many H-1B visas can be issued each year. In 2003, in a move seen by some as designed to protect the American job market and by others, including leading business people from Microsoft, Intel, Motorola and Hewlett-Packard, as immensely counter-productive to their recruitment strategies, President Bush slashed the number of H-1B visas available from 195,000 to 65,000.

Microsoft founder Bill Gates subscribes to the view that the visa situation is driving away the top talent from US shores, "precisely when we need them most," he says.

In his opening remarks before the Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee in March 2007, Gates said, "The terrible shortfall in our visa supply for the highly skilled stems not from security concerns, but from visa policies that have not been updated in over a decade and a half. We live in a different economy now. Simply put: it makes no sense to tell well-trained, highly skilled individuals-many of whom are educated at our top colleges and universities-that the United States does not welcome or value them. For too many foreign students and professionals our immigration policies send precisely this message."

This year it is projected that H-1B visas will be taken up within a month of the allocation becoming available, which presents big problems for some top non-national MBA talent wanting to stay within the country. Currently, unless MBAs want to resort to pot luck, the best policy is to get your overseas company to send you to the US or, to put it bluntly, work somewhere else.

A foreign student looking for a job after their MBA needs to find an American company which will agree to apply for an H1-B visa after the 12-month period ends. For large companies who regularly hire MBA students (think Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, McKinsey, BCG) this is usually not a problem. However it is possible that visas might become a major issue for smaller companies which tend not to  have in-house expertise in hiring foreign nationals and often assume that the process of hiring is overly complicated and thus are reluctant to hire international students.

The winners in this scenario appear to be the European Union and the fast-developing nations (sometimes known as the BRIC nations "Brazil, Russia, India, China)  whose US-trained talent are returning home with their skills.  Despite being pressed to tighten up on immigration overall, the UK, for example, has recognized the need for hiring the best talent and has created innovations such as the Highly Skilled Migrant Program which allows visas to MBA graduates from the top 50 business schools in the world. "We're picking up talent that the US indicates it doesn't want," says one London-based recruiter. "It's baffling but, at the same time, America's loss is our gain."

American companies, with clear exceptions, find non-US MBAs less attractive than American ones so the advice here to aspiring business leaders is try and get in to a top tier business school and then apply for jobs in the country. Having an MBA from a country like India, is going to make it much harder to find work in the US. Julia Byshkovskaia says: "Naturally, foreign students face rigorous competition from American students. Apart from not having visa issues, Americans speak fluent English and, from many employers" perspectives, have more understandable and recognizable US work experience. For example, since two of the most popular traditional post-MBA careers, investment banking and consulting, require constant interaction with clients, less than perfect English can often put an international student at a disadvantage. Having work experience from an unknown company in Russia would not help one's chances of being selected for an interview either."

The credit crunch and potential US recession also has MBAs glancing nervously over their shoulders. It is likely that any slowdown in the US economy will see a tightening of belts in the corporate sector and less to spend on salaries. There could even be a hiring freeze in the more cautious companies. Fewer IPOs and mergers mean fewer jobs for investment bankers and less money becomes available for consultancies. In the last US recession only 50-60 per cent of MBAs had job offers as compared with figures of well over 90 per cent in happier economic times.

Luba  Nikulina says: "The credit crunch is bound to have some effect. I have team mates from LBS who work here in New York and I hear that it's not looking good in investment banks, especially on the trading side. There are a few units in banks that are already firing, and mortgage units are overstaffed. Having said that the US, and New York in particular, always creates opportunities and it's still too early to say."

Projections from the Graduate Management Admissions Council (GMAC) indicate that MBA employment will increase by 18 per cent in 2008. MBA salaries continue to diverge year on year and business schools continue to search for the best talent available. MBA graduates should keep a close eye on developments stateside but it is too early to predict a long-term downward trend just yet.