MBA Jobs: For Some, a Waiting Game

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This year, says Roxanne Hori, assistant dean and director of career management at Kellogg, the delays are more widespread, but they aren't yet as long as they were in 2002, when one Kellogg grad waited 18 months before finally starting his job.

But what if the economy doesn't turn around in the next six months? Hori hopes that companies will learn from their past mistakes and realize that in the short term it's not worth the reputational damage to ultimately rescind these offers, as some did in 2002, and in the long term, it is also detrimental to the success of the company. "From the short-term perspective, there is a branding issue. But more important is the impact internally. When you have a gap year when you don't have much talent coming through, it creates some lapses later on. You don't have a pipeline and that becomes a problem."

How to Hedge Your Bets

For MBAs, deferred start dates—even if the jobs do, ultimately, materialize—are a real hardship, says Maury Hanigan, president of the MBA Scouting Report. Many have mortgages or have uprooted their families to attend business school, so they don't have a spouse with an income to help pay the bills. "They can't just go and play in Europe for six months," Hanigan says. "They're older and they tend to be more established. They tend to have families or at least spouses. And they've got school debt kicking in."

The problem is that searching for a new job after having already accepted one is sometimes viewed as inappropriate, a violation of an unwritten code between employers and employees. Even so, Hanigan says, many MBA grads with delayed start dates are throwing job-hunting etiquette to the wind. "Realistically, I think students are keeping their eyes and ears open for other opportunities, but trying to do it quietly so they don't risk the job they have in hand."

Some who have accepted some form of payment—be it a relocation stipend, signing bonus, or partial compensation—say they feel they have formally committed to starting at a later date. But many say their future employers are encouraging them to take short-term project assignments with other companies to generate income during the interim.

First and foremost, says Kenan-Flagler's Fischer, students should try to be as honest as possible with their future employers so that they don't burn bridges. "The one thing I would tell students more than anything is how you handle yourself in a crisis situation sets the stage for how you're perceived in your career."

But even Fischer admits it's good to have a back-up plan. To give students one, UNC recently partnered with a training firm to give 40 new MBA grads a four-day crash course in credit analysis, analyzing and restructuring a company's debt. "We asked the question, in a bad market how do you take our finance education, which is quite good, and get the rubber to the road?"

Not a bad back-up plan to have because, while some job offers will eventually pan out, other students may ultimately be forced to get creative.

Gerdes is a staff editor for BusinessWeek in New York.

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