Salaries are on the rise for Berkeley MBA grads, job postings are up for Haas undergrads, and PhD graduates are fanning out to positions around the world as the employment landscape shows signs of improvement in some areas this year.
MBA Employment
From JP Morgan to McKinsey and from Amazon to Zynga, members of the full-time MBA class of 2012 will be working with some of the world's top companies–and at a higher median salary than last year.
Early employment data shows both the mean and median base salary for the class currently trending to exceed last year’s. Eighty-eight percent of the class had received offers by graduation, compared to 87 percent at this time last year.
Thus far, students will be working for 106 organizations in 22 countries. Top hiring firms in consulting include Bain, Boston Consulting Group, Deloitte, LEK Consulting, and McKinsey & Company. In finance, top hirers to date are JP Morgan and Wells Fargo. Top hiring tech firms include Facebook, Google, Microsoft, PayPal, and Zynga. Clorox and Genentech are also among top hiring firms.
"Despite uncertainty in the macroeconomic environment, demand for our MBA students continues to be strong," says Lisa Feldman, executive director of the MBA Career Management Group. "As evident in the number of different organizations hiring our students, our MBAs want to make an impact on the world in diverse ways and have been creative in landing opportunities that allow them to do so."
One student looking forward to making an impact is Sue Young, MBA 12, who has joined Facebook as a product marketing manager. Young, who interned with Facebook last summer, says mock interviews were particularly helpful in her job search. "Companies have a small window to learn who you are and I realized early on the importance of presenting myself and my ideas effectively," she says. "I practiced my interviews with alums, our student career coaches, the Career Services team, and with a network of career consultants–the practice was invaluable." Her best advice to current job seekers: "Don't make your career search a solo endeavor."
MBA Internships
As for the class of 2013, just less than 98 percent of them have reported receiving an offer for a summer internship. Top hiring companies for internships include Amazon, Apple, Autodesk, Bain, Boston Consulting Group, Citi, Deloitte, Dow Chemical, Genentech, Google, Intel, McKinsey, Monitor Group, Opower, and Pacific Gas & Electric.
Undergraduate Employment
For the Haas undergraduate class of 2012, job postings and on-campus interviewing increased this year compared with last year, according to Tom Devlin, director of UC Berkeley's undergraduate Career Center. Employment participation in career fairs, meanwhile, jumped significantly, he says.
Preliminary results of a survey of graduating seniors show that 80 percent of Haas seniors landed jobs and 10 percent are still seeking employment. "This year we have seen a strong return of the big three industries – finance, accounting, and consulting," says Devlin. "That will capture two-thirds of the class."
Another 10 percent of the class report being self-employed, working in post-graduate internships, or going to graduate school.
PhD Employment
Several Haas PhD graduates, of course, are moving on to careers in academia. In the U.S., graduates from the class of 2012 have landed positions at USC, NYU Stern, and Drexel. Three students will be leaving the country–one for a position at the Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, one for a position at the Ivy Business School at University of Western Ontario, and one as a research fellow at the National University of Singapore.
Three other graduates also will be doing post-doc work, at Wharton, Princeton, and Berkeley.
In addition to careers in academia, two PhD graduates will be working for the Securities and Exchange Commission, one graduate will move to Boston to work at the Federal Reserve Bank there, and another student will work for BlackRock.