Full-time Berkeley MBA Results
Employment is up this year for Berkeley MBA graduates, with job offers received by more than 77 percent of the full-time class of 2010 compared with 74 percent of graduates at this time last year.
To date, students are taking jobs at 80 different organizations in thirteen countries, at a median base salary that is even with last year at $110,000. Technology and consulting continue to be significant hiring industries for Berkeley MBA graduates, hiring about 36 percent and 32 percent respectively of the graduates who have accepted jobs.
Abby Scott, executive director of MBA Career Services, also points to energy, especially alternative energy and infrastructure, as a rapidly growing sector, with companies such as Bloom Energy and PG&E among the top employers to date. Scott also notes that other industry sectors such as real estate and investment management began hiring just weeks before graduation, typical for these industries that hire just-in-time.
More than two dozen companies recognized as industry leaders have hired three or more Berkeley-Haas MBAs as full-time employees and/or summer interns, including Apple, Bloom Energy, Deloitte Consulting, Genentech, Google, and McKinsey & Company.
Summer Internships
Members of the full-time MBA class of 2011 are beginning summer internships, with more than 95 percent of the students receiving internship offers by the end of the semester. The students joined 135 different organizations in 15 countries.
In these improving but still challenging times, MBA Career Services supported students in their job searches in several new and innovative ways, including assigning Career Services professionals to track hiring trends of major employers in different global regions and partnering with the university and with the school's experiential learning program, Haas@Work, to develop internship opportunities. For her contribution to these kinds of initiatives, Scott was honored with a Chancellor's Outstanding Staff Award in April.
While Scott notes that “the entire Haas community continues to reach out both internally and externally to help students with career success,” she has also pushed the importance of what Haas calls “the networked job search.” As Scott noted in a May Wall Street Journal article, “Just getting a coffee and exchanging an email with an alumnus isn't enough.” She and her team encouraged this year’s graduates to deeply research a handful of target companies and to drive interactions with those target companies.
One graduate who did just this is Aliza Gutman, MBA 10, who will be joining Detecon Inc., as a senior consultant. “After spring break, I started following up on every job application I submitted by trying to identify someone in my network to whom I could speak about their experience at the company," says Gutman, who knew she wanted to work in mobile telecommunications. "Not every call was exceptional, but I tried to tease out the value, however small, of each call, build on each interaction, and follow up appropriately.”
Undergrad Employment
Tom Devlin, director of UC Berkeley’s undergraduate Career Center, says that though employer activity significantly declined during the fall semester, there was a steady increase in job postings, on-campus interviews, and employers attending career fairs throughout the spring.
“We are already hearing very positive indications from employers about next year,” adds Devlin, who was quoted in a May New York Times article about the uptick.
To help students combat the difficult market, Devlin says the Career Center provided job and internship seekers with the opportunity for mock interviews with a recruiting consultant. “The student evaluations of the service were overwhelmingly enthusiastic, and 236 students took advantage of this opportunity,” says Devlin.
Employers are continuing to place more emphasis on hiring interns as the gateway to full-time offers, according to Devlin, who will become president of the board of the National Association of Colleges and Employers in July. He notes that for the past few years, approximately 85 percent of Haas undergraduate students have indicated they had at least one internship.