Those who think an MBA is just about a job in banking or consultancy, think again. Two of the most high profile recruiters for MBAs at the top US schools this year are rival games companies Electronic Arts, creators of the Sims characters, and Zynga, which runs the Farmville game on Facebook.

For EA, the need for top MBA graduates is fuelled by the company’s changing role from a packaged goods company to a digital company, says Jessica Rawson, who is in charge of university relations. “What is driving us is what our customers are doing”.

So the focus now is on graduates who are skilled in analytics. “It’s being able to take the numbers and create a story and communicate that story,” says Ms Rawson.

The games companies are not alone in valuing the combination of analytics and communications, says Julie Morton, associate dean for career services at Chicago Booth, and one of the schools where EA actively recruits. “I think of it as critical thinking rather than numbers per se,” she adds.

So as jobs on Wall Street wane, the most numerate MBA graduates are finding a welcome home in companies such as Amazon, Facebook, Google and Yahoo, companies for which data analytics are critical to the business. Such is the case at Wall Street specialist Columbia Business School in New York, says Gina Resnick, associate dean and managing director of Columbia’s career management centre. “What’s been very exciting has been the changing opportunities and the technology renaissance in New York city.”

Microsoft recruits MBAs for China operations

Chinese MBA graduates are proving increasingly valuable to the world’s multinationals, all eager to establish their businesses in the booming Asian economy.

No more so than at Microsoft, the US software giant, which this year is recruiting between 30 and 35 MBA graduates worldwide to work in its China operations. To begin with, those selected will be inculcated in the Microsoft culture and will spend 18 months in the company in three locations, including the US and Europe.

Microsoft has a strong internship and campus recruitment programme, says Malcolm Bentley, Microsoft regional staffing director in Beijing. Its MBA hire programme is now in its third year. “This is an issue being driven by KT [Kevin Turner, chief operating officer at Microsoft] to enhance future leadership in Microsoft,” adds Mr Bentley.

MBA recruits are selected from a dozen or so top business schools, where, Mr Bentley says, the company has been successful in selecting the right people. These include Peking University and Tsinghua in Beijing, Ceibs and Fudan in Shanghai and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, along with a selection of the more usual suspects: Chicago Booth, Duke, Insead, Kellogg, London Business School and Michigan Ross.

The students are hired for a range of jobs, including technical roles and corporate strategy positions. Not all successful candidates will need to speak Mandarin, but it will always help to learn, says Mr Bentley. “To be honest, to be able to manoeuvre in the more remote parts of China it is essential,” he adds.

All of which means there is a lot of work that goes into selecting the best candidates. “You’ve got to treat these candidates like a top-end executive hire,” says Mr Bentley. “We don’t just hire a bunch of MBAs.”

Though the final statistics for 2012 have not yet been compiled, MBA recruitment in the US appears to be closely tracking that of 2011. According to a survey of global recruiters to be published by the Graduate Management Admissions Council this week, not only are more companies planning to hire recent MBAs this year - up from 72 per cent in 2011 to 79 per cent this year - but they expect to increase the number of new hires from 13 in 2011 to 17 in 2012.

“It (recruitment) is certainly not down, not at all,” says Regina Regazzi, executive director for corporate relations with UCLA Anderson. “It is certainly better than a few years ago.” At Harvard, where MBA students graduate this week, Jana Kierstead, executive director of the MBA programme, is more positive still. “Optimism is in the air. Students are really willing to wait (for the right job) and are determined to pursue their vision.”

Salaries have also rebounded. At Harvard, the bellwether for MBA salaries, the median salary for the Class of 2012 is expected to be $125,000, up from $120,000 in 2012.

But in Europe, the Euro crisis and economic austerity has resulted in recruiter caution, says Fiona Sandford, director for career services at London Business School. “When confidence wobbles, recruiters become more conservative.” In London as in New York, the “bulge banks” have reduced the number of MBAs they hire this year, but asset management firms continue to recruit, says Ms Sandford.Those students who are finding it hardest to find jobs are those who want to change sectors, she says.

A decade ago a third of all graduates from top schools went into finance – largely investment banking – and another third went into consultancy, but these days up to 50 per cent of graduates are finding their first job in other sectors – in consumer goods, pharmaceutical, media, technology and industrial companies, as well as NGOs and charities. Social media strategists are also in demand across all sectors, says Kevin Frey, who runs the full-time MBA programme at the Rotman school in Toronto.

And the way companies recruit is changing too. Games company EA is typical in that it is taking several routes to hiring students: as well as on-campus recruiting, it is posting job adverts for specific roles. Ms Rawson points out that with the market changing rapidly, many of the just-in-time hires are for brand new jobs.

Who goes where

Graduates from NYU Stern, most noted as a finance school, also do well in luxury goods and the media industry. Christian Dior, Estée Lauder and Tiffany have all recruited there this year, along with Disney, LinkedIn and Quidsi, the retailing division of Amazon.

Rocket Internet, the web marketing company, is one of the newest recruiters at NUS Business School in Singapore, along with eBay,
PayPal and LVMH. Impact Investment Shujog, the social enterprise investment company, also recruits there.

In Spain, new recruiters at Iese Business School this year include retailers Uniqlo, Mango and Marks & Spencer, along with car company Audi.

Meanwhile in California, Zynga, the hottest name in online games, was a recruiter at the Haas school at UC Berkeley this year, along with the UK’s BT and Autodesk, the computer-aided design software company.

Novozymes, the Danish biotech company, uses campus recruiting, job postings and its own case competition to select MBAs for its China operations, recruiting at Ceibs in Shanghai.

And proving that luxury is not just a US and European obsession, Louis Vuitton hires at Melbourne Business School in Australia, as do the more traditional banks and consultancies, including Australian banks ANZ and NAB.

Increasingly company hiring patterns reflect the company culture, says Ms Morton, citing the example of Zynga, where representatives from the school interview via videoconferencing. “They (students) sat around the screen and chatted. A lot of students are very comfortable to do interviews via Skype or videoconferencing. That’s very much the norm now.”

Students are behaving differently too. Even at Harvard, the master at on-campus recruiting, almost 50 per cent of students now find a job via a different route. And they are looking to small companies for emplyment. “We’re seeing students looking at more customised, smaller shops, so they can see their impact early on,” according to Ms Kierstead

As well as analytical skills, languages, too, are proving valuable, reports Mr Frey, especially Mandarin and Spanish. “These language skills are really helping our students to get to the top of the interview pile.” Multiple languages and a real sense of working in different cultures are also valuable in China in both local and multinational companies, reports Yvonne Li, MBA director at Ceibs in Shanghai.

Meanwhile a growing number of students are finding jobs in countries other than that in which they study. Harvard reports, for example, that a growing number of its US graduates are taking jobs outside the US.

As for EA, which has studios in the UK and China as well as North America, it is now looking to recruit in Europe and Asia. The company has one obvious attraction, says Ms Rawson. “People have grown up playing these games …It’s a really cool way to come into analytics.”

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