The Bull Market Is Back

Companies Are Flocking To Business Schools Again

(U.S. News & World Report)  Memo to M.B.A.'s fretting about finding a job: Relax. After a few years in the doldrums, companies are flocking to business schools in droves again, and the job market is looking rosy. "We're to the point where there are more opportunities than students at many campuses," says Jackie Wilbur, director of the career development office at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management. "There are very few sectors that are not hiring."

All of the leading indicators of a bullish job market are up: According to one study conducted last year, 93 percent of schools reported an increase in recruiting activity. Through December, corporate recruiters downloaded 33 percent more online resumes than they had in the same period last year. Last fall, it wasn't uncommon for students to be balancing four or five offers — which is likely to boost placement numbers. The icing on the cake: Base salaries for M.B.A.'s continue to climb. With signing and year-end bonuses, the average compensation package for B-school grads is closing in on $100,000. Here are some of the hottest industries on the prowl for M.B.A.'s.

Consulting

When David Garrison graduated from Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business in 2003, there were consulting companies on campus, but they didn't seem all that engaged — and, worse, many weren't hiring. "To be blunt, I think a lot of firms were just maintaining relationships," he says.

In the past two years, that's changed. "If you had to name one industry that jumped the most, it was consulting," says Julie Morton, associate dean of M.B.A. career services at the University of Chicago. At Tuck, a whopping 50 consulting firms were recruiting M.B.A.'s last fall. The big names are back, of course — Bain, McKinsey, and Boston Consulting Group — which, when the economy is roaring, can swallow dozens of grads from one school alone. (At the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School last year, McKinsey hired 57 grads.) But smaller, boutique firms are also in the game, looking for students with a niche — in retail, say, biotechnology, or engineering. Katzenbach Partners, where Garrison, 31, is now a senior associate, is looking to hire between 10 and 20 M.B.A.'s this year. And Garrison, who does recruiting for his new company, is happy to report that the hiring climate has improved. "There's a sense that people will have options," he says. Consulting firms continue to pay top dollar for students with hard analytical skills who also have an eye for long-term strategy and organization. Base salary plus bonuses for first-year associates at many firms can top $150,000.

Financial Services

It's hard to say which is better for would-be financiers: the fact that investment banks are recruiting again on many campuses — or that the biggest Wall Street banks, feeling the heat from private equity firms and hedge funds, have bumped their base salaries from $85,000 to $95,000. "This is a much more hopeful year," says Janet Raiffa, who comanages campus recruiting for Goldman Sachs. Banks were missing in action for much of 2002 and 2003. But, Raiffa says, "a lot of the hysteria coming out of the dot-com era has died down." This year, her firm is looking to hire 200-plus M.B.A.'s — 15 percent more than last year. And while most of those hires will be in investment banking, there are other hot spots as well. Many banks, for example, are beginning to expand their private wealth management divisions, anticipating a bullish investment market as baby boomers retire. "It's a growing business," says Raiffa. Be advised, though, if you have banking on the brain: Especially on Wall Street, banks hire predominantly from their own intern programs — 90 percent of Citigroup's hires tend to come from their summer class. So if you're thinking banking, think about it during your first year — not your second.

High Tech

It's hard to turn a corner these days without stumbling across a story about the explosive growth of Google, eBay, and Yahoo! — the new darlings of Silicon Valley. And yes, all three were on campuses last fall. But they're not the only tech companies on the prowl again for M.B.A.'s. Santa Clara University's Leavey School of Business saw a 30 percent jump in the number of tech firms on campus last fall compared with 2004 — a diverse group ranging from Siemens Medical and Genentech to Oracle and Electronic Arts. Microsoft hired 15 M.B.A.'s from Wharton in 2005, and Amazon was on campus again in the fall. This isn't just a case of a few companies testing the waters, either. When it comes to bottom-line hiring numbers, many schools are reporting that technology, after a three-year hiatus, is back in their top five industries again. "It's never going to be as strong as it once was," says AnaKarina White, director of career management at Leavey. "But it has been better." As the market picks up, look for tech to rise again.

Real Estate

After a slump in the mid-'90s, real-estate firms are back in the hunt for M.B.A.'s eager to dive into one of the biggest housing and commercial real-estate booms in history. Take Trammell Crow, a global real-estate-services company based in Dallas: The firm stopped visiting business schools entirely in the late '80s, when the market slumped. But in 1999, as business picked up, it started actively recruiting M.B.A.'s again. Since then, the firm has hired 37 B-school grads — and this year, it has plans to hire as many as 10 more.

"We're growing again, and we felt like bringing really smart, young, aggressive people into our company was the right thing to do," says Diane Paddison, the company's chief operating officer of global services. One of the perks of joining a company in a booming industry: "You do have a chance to move into a critical position," says Paddison. "The roles [new hires] play are having a huge impact on the company."

And these aren't your father's hard-hats-on-dusty-job-sites gigs. Trammell Crow, Tishman Speyer, and AvalonBay Communities — all of which were recruiting M.B.A.'s last fall — are global financial services companies as well as real-estate developers. Today's real-estate M.B.A.'s have opportunities to do everything from helping investment groups acquire real-estate assets to working as brokers on Wall Street to the more traditional roles of entitling land, putting together a project plan, and managing construction contractors. Until the bubble pops, anyway, this business just keeps looking better: Trammell Crow is projecting growth of 20 percent year over year. "The company's doing very well," says Paddison. This may be a good time to jump on board.