MBA Internship Hiring Shows Signs of Life

Summer internship offers are up at top business schools as consulting, banking, and other industries begin tending to their talent pipelines

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By Francesca Di Meglio

Joe Kight, a first-year student at Texas A&M University's Mays Business School (Mays Full-Time MBA Profile), says he knew the slow economic recovery would make for a difficult internship search. That's why he immediately headed to the career center on campus when he arrived at business school. His goal: to find a finance internship by the fall, when most of those firms are known to make offers to summer hires. With alumni contacts in New York in hand, he went to potential employers himself and found out about opportunities he never would have discovered on campus, he says.

A former commercial banker in San Diego, Kight landed a finance internship with Citigroup (C) in January, thanks in part to his previous experience. And he's far from alone. Top schools are reporting that the percentage of first-years with internship offers is up from a year earlier, with some programs seeing increases of 10 percentage points or more. Hiring by consulting firms is driving much of the increase, but banking, consumer packaged goods, and energy all had gains, as companies seek to refill talent pipelines neglected during the economic downturn.

Of the top 30 business schools in Bloomberg Businessweek's 2010 ranking of full-time MBA programs, 12 reported the status of internship hiring, including six that reported big increases.Among them: Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management (Kellogg Full-Time MBA Profile), Carnegie Mellon University's Tepper School of Business (Tepper Full-Time MBA Profile), and Cornell University's Johnson Graduate School of Management (Johnson Full-Time MBA Profile). At the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management (Carlson Full-Time MBA Profile), 57 percent of internship-seeking students have offers, up from 35 percent a year earlier.

Only one program reported a decline in internship hiring, albeit a small one. At Georgia Tech's College of Management (Georgia Tech Full-Time MBA Profile), 57 percent of first-years reported summer job offers, down from 58 percent a year earlier. Many schools declined to supply internship hiring information until the academic year is over.

Cautious Optimism

Despite the generally positive hiring numbers, it is optimism of the cautious variety that rules the day. Career services directors say the playing field has changed dramatically for MBAs since the recession hit in 2008, with everything from how students find internships to what is expected of MBA interns on the job undergoing a profound and permanent shift. They call it the "new normal."

For starters, even though salaries have increased slightly throughout the recession in some industries, the year-over-year advances are not what they used to be, says Jim Dixey, director of graduate business career services at Mays. Three years ago, he says, one student with little experience was offered a position with a $129,000 annual salary, while another student, who considered the same position a year later, was offered $20,000 less. Although there is some money available to MBAs, there are fewer opportunities than before, he says.