Leverandon wrote:
Am I right to assume that the people who aren't getting jobs straight out of the MBA are largely the people at the bottom 20-30% of their class? If that's the case, none of us GMATclubbers need to worry too much, right? We're all exceptional individuals who won't be in the bottom 20%.
It definitely doesn't work out like that. The key factor is that some people took summer jobs in industries that weren't hit by the end of the summer. What that means is that a lot of people in marketing, consulting and other industries received job offers as normal, and most had until December or so to make a decision. Those who were in finance got job offers at a much lower rate. As a result, some industries had already filled their recruiting targets and were no longer hiring, even though some of the very best candidates were again looking for jobs. Sure, a few jobs opened back up in things like consulting, but acceptance of summer offers were extremely high and thus little second year hiring was needed.
A friend of mine would have his choice of finance jobs in a normal economy, but the hedge fund he was with over the summer is not doing any hiring. He's among the top 10% here for sure, and definitely way more qualified than almost everyone that entered the less competitive industries last summer. I'd definitely hire him over anyone that went into marketing or general management, and most of the people that went into consulting, but he's sill looking for a job. Those who were in finance last summer (some of the best and brightest out there) are competing against a much tougher group (all the others from finance) for a much smaller pool of jobs (because yields were high across the board from the summer).