MBA Employment and Salaries move up as recession fades: Alumni Survey

The most recent Alumni Perspectives Survey from the Graduate Management Admissions Council ® or GMAC ® has shown that MBA graduates witnessed a rise in both employability and salaries in 2010 as the severe recession of the preceding years began to release its grip worldwide.

Conducted in September 2010, the survey drew responses from close to 3500 business school graduates who earned their degrees between 2000 and 2010.

A vast majority, 93 percent, of all respondents to this year's survey reported being employed (as compared with 90 percent who responded similarly in 2009); 88 percent of the class of 2010 already had jobs upon graduation.

Around 12 percent of graduates from the class of 2010 indicated that their starting annual base salary exceeded their expectations and more than half (58%) said their salary expectations were met. The same 70 percent also reported receiving two job offers on average. However, alumni whose expectations were not met reported single job offers.

The median salary reported by class of 2010 respondents who began a new job after graduation was US$78,820. Overall, the median base salary for business school alumni in the survey topped US$94,500 in 2010-well above the pre-recession level of US$89,000 recorded in 2007.

The GMAT survey seems to bear out the findings of another recent survey by the MBA Career Services Council among business schools, a good majority of which reported that full time MBA job postings are up following the rebound in the global economy. The Fall 2010 Recruiting Trends Survey conducted by the Council in December 2010 showed that on-campus recruiting opportunities increased for most schools worldwide, leading to great optimism in the expectations of career services professionals, a majority of whom predict continued growth in total job opportunities in 2011.