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miamisocial8
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Academic Job Market for Business PhDs 11 Aug 2014, 15:09
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I am in the process of applying to several business PhD programs and I am trying to get an idea of what the job market is really like.

- What is the job market like for business PhD graduates in marketing, finance, management, and etc.? Is it relatively easy to find jobs?
- What are typical starting salaries for business PhD graduates?
- Should new grads be concerned about the elimination of tenure?
- Which business specialties are in demand (finance, marketing, management, organizational behavior)?
- Are most of these jobs located in certain parts of the country?
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SizeTrader
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Concentration: Finance
GRE 1: Q800 V780
WE:Securities Sales and Trading (Finance: Investment Banking)
GRE 1: Q800 V780
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Academic Job Market for Business PhDs 26 Nov 2014, 23:33
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miamisocial8
I am in the process of applying to several business PhD programs and I am trying to get an idea of what the job market is really like.

- What is the job market like for business PhD graduates in marketing, finance, management, and etc.? Is it relatively easy to find jobs?
- What are typical starting salaries for business PhD graduates?
- Should new grads be concerned about the elimination of tenure?
- Which business specialties are in demand (finance, marketing, management, organizational behavior)?
- Are most of these jobs located in certain parts of the country?
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The market for PhD graduates in finance is very good: I don't know of anyone who hasn't gotten a job in industry, government, or academia. Almost all had jobs months before graduating.

Is it easy to find a job though? Well, yes and no. Finding an industry job is easy: you can interview at any time and lots of firms will be interested. Finding a government job is harder: they tend to interview mostly around the academic job cycle. Finding an academic job is hard: interviews only happen at AFA (early Jan) with flyouts in Jan and Feb. Then, you have to outshine a bunch of other similarly sharp people. That's why the prestige ranking is generally academia > government > industry. That's also why you can usually move from academia to other areas, but rarely back to academia once you leave.

Pay and location? Government pay is OK -- probably barely breaking six figures if your are at the Fed to less elsewhere. You'll be in a big city: likely DC, NYC, DC, Chicago, or... did I mention DC? Academic pay is good ($150k-$200k) at a research university but falls off as you move down to "research 2" universities and teaching schools ($70k-$130k). Location could be anywhere although b-schools tend to be bigger in large cities. Industry pays OK when you start out ($90k-$130k) but can grow to well into six figures -- or millions if you can make money and run a group. However, industry tends to mean NYC area or Chicago with fewer possibilities in Boston, Houston, or SF.

If you get an academic job at a research university, I wouldn't worry about tenure going away. Also, as a b-school prof in that situation, you'll be tempted often enough to leave and start your own firm that tenure isn't why you stay. If you end up at a teaching university... I'd be worried about tenure going away. I know tenure is supposedly going away. But think about this: if tenure goes away, professors are taking on more risk in their employment. For taking on that risk, they will require more compensation (or the market will thin out until salaries rise to compensate for the increased risk). Unfortunately, most universities aren't awash in cash -- so keeping tenure is more fiscally possible than eliminating it and paying higher salaries.

An aside: Why worry if you end up at a teaching school? Because those schools tend to attract people who really want an academic job even if the pay sucks and the teaching load is ridiculous. Those people are what we'd call price takers -- and so the university can push more risk onto those people or lower their salaries and many will take it. That makes those teaching schools more likely to do precisely that.

As for what's in demand, I can't say much beyond finance -- except that know I and colleagues in finance consult while people in management and organizational behavior rarely consult. So that should tell you what the market sees as more valuable.
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