Hiring numbers during economic meltdown indicative of the best Business schools

It’s a well known fact that business schools students who graduated in 2009 took the brunt of the financial crisis head on. However, a much less talked about topic has been how significant the financial crisis has been for various business schools. At ZoomInterviews we believe that students’ success in landing a job in a more challenging economic environment reflects, to some degree, the quality of the schools these students hail from.  For aspiring MBA applicants, it may be useful to take a closer look at this information, to understand how a school’s brand aides students in a turbulent job market, and how schools have responded differently to boost their hiring numbers during this difficult time.

US business schools


We can see that in 7 of 15 top US business schools more than 20% of the class of 2009 students were not able to secure full-time employment within three months of graduation. This is sure to give even the most enthusiastic MBA applicants a moment of pause, particularly given the substantial financial and time investment required to go to business school.  If your dream is to go into investment banking or consulting and the job market makes obtaining that dream exceedingly difficult you may have to re-evaluate whether this is the right time to return to school. The average percentage of students that found employment within three months of graduation decreased in the 15 top US business schools from 93% for students who graduated in 2006 to 79% for those who graduated in 2009.

The most impacted schools were UCLA (Anderson), Emory (Goizueta), Columbia Business School and UPenn (Wharton).

European business schools


Interestingly, European business schools were less impacted by the crisis and employment situation.  More surprisingly, some of them even improved their employment numbers.  Only in 3 of the top 15 European business schools were more than 20% of students not able to secure employment within three months post-graduation. It’s also worthwhile to note that the average percentage of students that found jobs within three months of graduation was significantly higher in Europe (85%) relatively to the US (79%).

While there may be various reasons explaining bigger impact on some schools than on others (e.g. location, focus on financial industry, size of the class) we would advise applicants to further acquaint themselves with the employment statistics of their targeted schools in order to better understand their employment prospects and probability to graduate without a job in a more difficult economy.

In addition we would encourage applicants to ask admissions representatives about specific steps which their schools’ career services departments implemented to support their students during the downturn.  Career services’ response to the crumbling job market will reveal much about the departments commitment to their students’ success in the job search and the level of resources available to fulfill that commitment.  All applicants should evaluate this carefully before they make their enrollment decisions.