The MBA Bull Market Has Legs

Study: More recruiter offers to MBAs, fewer to undergrads. Plus: E-mail names affect hiring; research rankings; Chicago's gift; new deans

by Alison Damast

MBA students continue to be in an enviable position in this year's job market, riding the crest of a two-year uptick in hiring. Recruiters said they plan to increase their hiring of MBA graduates by 18% this year, the second consecutive yearly rise, according to a new report released last week by the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC), an international association of business schools and sponsor of the GMAT. However, the recruiters anticipate trimming the number of jobs aimed at people completing undergraduate degrees this year by more than 7%.

"All of this is good news to a young person studying for an MBA. It means that there is going to be more competition for the same population," said Dave Wilson, president and chief executive officer of GMAC. "With this competition, recruiters are getting more aggressive and creative."

B-school students can expect to make more than their other graduate school counterparts. Recruiters said they plan to offer annual base salaries that are 28% higher than what they will offer to candidates with other types of graduate degrees. MBA students will earn 84% more than people with only an undergraduate education, up nine percentage points from last year.

Employers are leaning toward hiring more MBA students because they are looking for people with managerial and team experience, Wilson said. "If you talk to recruiters, they're looking at people who are good at motivating teams and people who can think strategically," Wilson said. "That's what they conclude they can find in the MBA graduates."

The study relied on responses from 1,382 recruiters, representing 1,029 companies around the world that hire MBAs or others with graduate business educations, and is consistent with an earlier study by the National Association of Colleges and Employers of a sharp rise in MBA hiring in 2007 (see BusinessWeek.com, 12/5/06, "Forecast: MBA Hiring Up Again").

Funky Names Don't Cut It

Speaking of jobs, are you looking for an easy way to get your job application taken out of the running? Then you should keep that "creative" e-mail address that has trailed you since college.

E-mail nicknames like Drunkensquirl@, bacardigirl@, and ifel4u@ are the type of unprofessional monikers that could cause a human resources screener to toss your résumé in the rejected pile, according to a recent study conducted at Ohio University.

"People don't think about it. They have developed this e-mail name in college and it just became their identity," said study author Kevin Tamanini, an industrial and organizational psychology doctoral candidate at Ohio who presented his findings at the Society for Industrial & Organizational Psychology conference in New York on Apr. 29.

Tamanini became interested in the topic after he noticed that more employers were asking job applicants to submit their résumés online, he said. He undertook a study to find out, what, if any, impact an e-mail address can have on attitudes and perception of the applicant during the initial screening process.

To do this, he enlisted the help of 200 undergraduate students at Ohio University who were told to play the role of human resources representatives evaluating an individual for an available position. He asked them to evaluate real e-mail names that he had collected from students and judge them based on criteria such as success, popular fun, and degree of professionalism.

Of the 200 e-mail names evaluated, 99 were considered professional by survey participants, while the remaining 101 were deemed unprofessional. Among the names deemed unprofessional: Bighotdaddy@, gigglez217@, kittykat@, and barbie1999@, as well as the three mentioned earlier.