MBA Job Outlook Dims

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Still, this year's expected salary freeze may be an improvement over the one that followed the 2001 recession, when MBA compensation dropped and then leveled off for several years, says Jackie Wilbur, the career development office director at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In terms of hiring, recruiting, and salary for MIT grads, she says this year's decline is "literally not half as bad." She estimates that about half of the 2009 graduating class already has jobs lined up for graduation, about the the same number as in January 2008. But the assistant dean and director of MBA career services at Columbia Business School, Regina Resnick, notes that a lot can happen in coming months—good and bad. "It's still early yet," she says. "What I've learned is that things can turn quickly one way or the other."

A Different Ball Game

For some recruiters, there may be a silver lining to the downturn. Companies who weren't hit as hard by the recession have access to a group of graduates who are not as discerning about location or signing bonuses as they once were. Additionally, companies that can afford to keep the talent pipeline from running dry will see long-term advantages, says Steve Canale, head of recruiting for General Electric (GE). Although GE's hiring numbers are expected to dip this year, the company will still take on new MBAs, he said. One change is that more MBA hires will come from GE's expanded class of interns—who assimilate faster and have better retention rates. At Deutsche Bank (DB), it's a similar story. Recruiting is "slightly" down, says Kristina Peters, regional head of graduate recruiting for the bank, and most of the 2009 full-time hires are former interns.

What that means is there's even more pressure on students whose internships didn't lead to full-time employment—and there are a lot of them. On campus, career-services directors are finding fewer firms are making the effort to recruit for full-time hires on campus, and more are using job boards and other methods. At the University of California at Los Angeles' Anderson School of Management, in-person recruiting on campus dropped by roughly 24% from last year, said Eric Mokover, associate dean of career initiatives at the school. Meanwhile, full-time job posting—a recruiting method that doesn't require travel—has gone up around 13%. The school also purchased a $12,000 video-conferencing system, making it easier and less expensive for recruiters to connect virtually with potential hires.

So far, Mokover estimates that about a third of UCLA's 2009 MBA class has jobs lined up after graduation. That's significantly down from January 2008, a recurring theme for B-schools this year. The hope is that companies will start making offers once the economy improves, and the numbers will even out, but student's shouldn't count on it. Mokover warns against recession-induced "paralysis," stressing that students can't afford just to wait around for things to get better.

"Don't expect someone else to do it for you," he says. "You need to use every resource you can. From the school, from your undergraduate school, from your family contacts, from your former employer, friends, lovers, animals—whatever. Whatever it takes."

Anne VanderMey is a B-schools writer at BusinessWeek.