What Corporate Recruiters Say

Each year, the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) conducts a comprehensive, global survey of employers who hire recent MBA graduates and other graduate business students.

In the GMAC® Corporate Recruiters Survey, we ask, among other things, what employers look for in new MBA hires, how they make hiring decisions, what qualities they value most in MBA employees, and what skills and abilities they wish MBAs had.

This article highlights results from our 2008 survey. We hope it will help you understand why employers hire MBA graduates and what they expect from MBAs, so you can make sure you are well prepared when you start to look for post-MBA employment.

Employers place a premium on graduates with MBA and work experience. The vast majority of employers that hire graduating MBA students expect that new MBAs will have some prior work experience and look for candidates with an average of three and a half years of experience. Gaining work experience will increase your chances to get a higher-level position and a better compensation.

While in school, consider internship opportunities. Companies reported that 38% of 2007 MBA graduate hires were interns at their companies. Finance and accounting as well as consulting firms are more likely than companies in other industries to hire their interns. Once you decide on a career path and begin to look for the right school for you, make sure that as part of your school search, you find out if a school offers internship opportunities at companies in your desired field.

Companies select and hire graduating MBAs primarily for their business management knowledge. In addition, employers value:

• communication skills (persuasive, presentation, written)
• technical or quantitative skills
• ability to apply business discipline to any job or function, and
• ability to reach goals

What does this mean for you? While business schools will provide you the fundamentals of the business management knowledge as well as technical or quantitative skills, don’t forget that communication skills are as important to your job prospects as all the other skills you learn in your MBA program. Make sure you develop good leadership and presentation skills; you could have the best budget-management skills, but if you can't communicate well with your colleagues and clients, your skills will be of no use to an employer.

Also, make sure that you pursue jobs in industries and companies where you are confident you will be a good fit. The CultureMatch section of the CareerLeader® online self-assessment will help you determine the industries, jobs, and companies with the right fit for you. 

Why the vast majority of employers are satisfied with their MBA employees and continue hiring MBAs? What could MBAs stand to improve? Here are the top items on the employers' lists:

MBA Strengths

• knowledge quality
• work experience

MBA Weaknesses

• unrealistic job expectations 
• insufficient work experience

Clearly, employers find that MBAs have a sound management knowledge, but they would like to see theoretical foundation enhanced by real-life business experience.
So how do you measure up, pre-MBA? Do you have or ready to develop the skills employers are looking for? What skills and abilities do you wish to develop in an MBA program?

To help you prepare to succeed in the job selection process, we asked employers to tell us what are the main reasons their companies do not hire new MBA grads—the deal-breakers that can derail the hiring process. Two of the top four reasons they cite have to do with the inaccurate assumptions of MBAs:

• no job openings were available
• high entry-level salary demands
• resources allocated to experienced direct-from-industry hires
• unrealistic job role or job level expectations

To avoid the pitfall of unrealistic expectations, make sure that you thoroughly research the careers that interest you, the backgrounds of people who succeed in those fields, and the salaries those people command. Also remember that the school you attend, the location of your intended job, your work experience, and your academic performance, among other factors, can affect your salary and prospects for advancement. Be prepared for those realities before you start interviewing for a job; it'll stand you in good stead to get the job offers you want.

Click here to access the latest GMAC Corporate Recruiters Survey reports.