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MBAs graduate to a brighter forecast

After lull, interviews and offers are up

By Diane E. Lewis, Globe Staff, 6/27/04

After two years of tough economic times, this year's crop of MBA graduates are looking at a positive employment forecast.

Nearly a million jobs have been created over the last three months by the nation's employers. In Massachusetts, companies added 10,000 jobs in May, the highest number of new payroll positions in four years, according to the state Division of Unemployment Assistance.

With the pickup in hiring comes a renewed corporate appetite for skilled managers who can help a company shape and execute strategies to grow the business in a highly competitive environment.

Defense manufacturers, biotech and life science firms, management consultancies, financial service companies, engineering and healthcare companies have all been active on campus, business school officials say. Job interviews -- and offers -- were up from last year, said students and administrators.

"Job postings for 2004 MBA graduates were up 65 percent, and internships were up more than 40 percent," said Jackie Wilbur, director of MBA career development at the Sloan School of Management at MIT. "It is a sign that things may be improving."

At Harvard Business School, MBA graduates are seeing increased opportunities in a variety of sectors, with increased demand in financial services, consulting, and healthcare, said Matt Merrick, managing director of career services. This year, he said, over 90 percent of the class received job offers, up from 88 percent last year.

Some employers jump-started the recruiting process by tapping members of the class of 2004 before their degrees were inked.

Brendan Gaughran, who was awarded an MBA by The McCallum Graduate School of Business at Bentley College last month, said he and his friends were able to pick and choose among job offers. In some cases, he said, firms also hired business school students before they completed their studies and received their degrees.

Gaughran, 31, of Concord, landed a job managing inventory two months ago at Harvey Industries, a nationwide wholesale distributor of specialty goods based in Waltham. The company hired him before he earned his degree. He started work in May, two days after he graduated.

"Things are improving," Gaughran said. "I am seeing it, and so are my friends. I feel fortunate."

Don Brezinski, executive director of corporate relations at Bentley's business school, said job offers increased 13 percent this year to 240, up from 212 in 2003.

"There are more opportunities and they are more responsive in terms of call-back interviews and hiring," he said. "In the past, the numbers were depressed a bit, but the real frustration for a lot of people was that the process was very slow. Companies were saying, 'Let's see what our budget looks like or what the economy does.' Now we are seeing multiple offers."

David Fetherson, director of the MBA Center for Career Development at Babson College, said many companies are looking for graduates with a significant amount of business or entrepreneurial experience. "We are seeing more opportunities," he said.

In April, Babson student Allison Campbell landed a spot in a national sales and marketing training program at General Electric Co. in Pittsfield.

As part of the program, she will spend six months in a sales or marketing unit over the next two years. After completing her training, Campbell will be placed at one of GE's many divisions.

Campbell, a former manager of a Brighton imaging firm, begins work on Monday. She said she got the job after responding to a posting at Babson. She participated in a 30-minute interview, and then took a series of tests. In the past, she said, job hunting required far more "leg work," including repeat interviews.

"In 2001, I was laid off by Sapient and I went through looking for a job," recalled Campbell, 27. "I was like everybody else out there in the tech field and it was very, very hard. Last year was tough, too. But this year, I think it is easier."

While students have more job opportunities to choose from, it's not like the heady years of the dot-com boom. For instance, there has not been a significant boost in compensation for new MBA grads.

Starting salaries range from $70,000 to $100,000 based on experience and industry, according to placement officials.

Many graduates are seizing promising opportunities quickly and accepting offers before graduation, or within a few months after leaving school, said Len Morrison, director of the MBA career center at Northeastern University. He said full-time job offers for the school's MBA graduates increased 50 percent over last year.

"When we looked at how many students had accepted jobs within three months of graduation, we found that more than 70 percent had, up from 60 percent last year," said Morrison.

Economists and researchers who track changes in the job market are optimistic, too. A recent survey of 16,000 US employers by Manpower Inc., the national staffing agency, reported that 43 percent of the Boston employers responding to the poll planned to expand their payrolls between July and September.

Nationally, 20 percent of US companies said they planned to increase hiring in the third quarter.

One is Raytheon Co. The Waltham defense contractor is expected to hire 5,000 new workers by year-end, including 1,000 in Massachusetts. While many of the jobs will go to engineers, spokeswoman Sabrina Steele said MBA graduates with the right combination of skills will also land jobs this year.

Steele said Raytheon has signed a $1 billion contract with the US Navy to build the Cobra Judy, a ship-based missile defense radar system, and is also seeking to expand its presence throughout the country. The company is relying on business school graduates to track financial performance and manufacturing processes.

New hire Erin Scheaffer, 36, of Boston will begin working at the company in July as a senior supply chain source specialist. As such, she will be in charge of developing partnerships between Raytheon and indirect suppliers.

Scheaffer, who just completed a co-op placement at an insurance company, will receive her MBA from Northeastern University in September.

For Scheaffer, the recruiting climate has definitely improved. Two years ago, she was searching for work following a layoff at a South Carolina Web development firm. Scheaffer moved to Boston determined to find work but no one was hiring. She enrolled at NU's Graduate School of Business, with hopes the economy would improve by the time she earned her degree.

Scheaffer got her wish. "Just since December, there has been a tremendous turnaround," she said. "Before, I was interviewing for full-time jobs and I was going to informational interviews that were dead end after dead end. But within the last two months, I've had two calls and one of them was from Raytheon."

MBA graduates who prefer to work for start-ups are also seeing increased demand. For example, Endeca, an Internet search firm in Cambridge, plans to increase its total headcount to 200 by year-end, up from 150 today.

"We are hiring across the board," said spokesman Craig VerColen. "We are hiring MBAs and we are looking at Web developers and computer engineers." He said the company hired three new people to work on the finance team this year, increasing the total number to six.

Greg Fairbanks, 30, of Carlisle, was hired in January. The offer, one of three Fairbanks received, came two months before he got his MBA from Harvard Business School.

Fairbanks, a vertical marketing manager at Endeca, is responsible for monitoring and maintaining government contracts.

Fairbanks said many of his friends have received job offers. In 2002, he said, the economic climate was grim. "People were going back to jobs for less than they made before," said Fairbanks, a US Army reservist who was tapped by the government to serve during the US-Iraqi conflict before he received his MBA.

"For me, being in the reserves was a silver lining because when I came back, the job situation was much better. It's night and day compared to 2002," said Fairbanks. "There are more jobs."

Diane E. Lewis can be reached at .

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