Nearly 96 percent of the full-time Berkeley MBA class of 2012 had received job offers three months after graduation, thanks to economic conditions and personalized career services, according to Berkeley MBA Career Management.
Three months after graduation, 95.9 percent of the class of 2012 had received job offers, compared with 92.0 percent for the class of 2011 at the same time a year earlier.
When they graduated in May, 85.8 percent of the class of 2012 had received offers, significantly higher than the 76.5 percent of 2011 MBA students who had job offers at their graduation.
“The economy has already recovered for MBAs. It never fell as far as it did for the nation overall,” says Lisa Feldman, executive director of MBA Career Management. “I credit this improvement in offers to our fantastic Career Management team.”
This year, the Haas School’s Career Management staff launched a personalization initiative focused on getting to know every single student and his or her unique needs.
“One thing we did was put everyone’s face on the wall. That was part of a broader program to make sure we proactively provide services to every student customized to what we knew about them,” explains Feldman. “Our staff would meet around these pictures and share stories about each student so that we all could contribute to their job searches.”
“As a result, I think more students could succeed in finding their dream jobs,” Feldman adds.
Job acceptance rates also increased year over year. Three months after graduation, 92.7 percent of the class of 2012 had accepted job offers, up from 90.2 percent for the class of 2011.
Similar to last year, consulting, technology, and finance were the leading industries that offered jobs to Berkeley MBA students in 2012. In addition to students who went to work at startups, eight graduates from the class of 2012 founded their own companies.
The starting salary for 2012 graduates averaged $116,045, up 1.5 percent from a year earlier. The mean signing bonus for the class of 2012 totaled $25,467, compared with $22,344 for the class of 2012.