Deloitte MBA Hiring Up 50% This Year

Deloitte LLP’s hiring of freshly minted MBA graduates will rise this year by a whopping 50% to 400 in the U.S. alone from 270 last year, according to Deloitte officials. The professional services firm also plans to increase its MBA summer interns by 45% to 200, not including interns in a new Deloitte program aimed at newly admitted applicants to top B-schools who haven’t even become MBA students yet. All these numbers are from the company’s on-campus recruiting program. Actual hires of MBAs are likely to exceed these totals.

The large increase in demand for talent from one of the world’s major hirers of MBAs is being fueled by significant growth in Deloitte’s consulting business. Deloitte, which has an aggressive MBA campus recruiting program, is the second major player to significantly increase its hiring of B-school graduates this year. Boston Consulting Group earlier told Poets&Quants that it would hire 18% more MBAs this year.

“The numbers are completely confirmed,” says Angela Cherry, Deloitte’s national MBA recruiting head. “Looking ahead to our 2012 fiscal year, we are anticipating additional growth on top of that. Right now, a lot of our different businesses have a high demand especially for the expertise an MBA can provide. Business is hot.”

In anticipation of the company’s increased needs, Deloitte launched an innovative program to offer summer internships to students before they even show up on a B-school campus. “Not only are we looking at first- and second-year students, but also newly admitted MBAs,” says Cherry. “We’re trying to create relationships earlier than we have had in the past.”

The “Deloitte Consulting Immersion” program includes a four-week summer internship with Deloitte before they begin their MBA. The new admits also are invited to a three-day summit, held last year in Chicago, to learn more about the consulting business and job networking. Cherry said Deloitte plans to expand the program this summer.

The effort to reach out to newly admitted applicants even before they become students is, in part, a reaction to the increased competition to hire MBAs as the economy has improved. “We’re seeing a lot of other employers back in full swing on campus, and students have multiple offers now,” says Cherry. “A few years ago we might have only seen students with one offer, and a lot were graduating without any offers. Now it’s common for candidates have to have multiple offers and options.”

Cherry said Deloitte used its relationships with several diversity organizations, including MBA JumpStart, Forte, and the Consortium, to market the new immersion program to new admits. “We also partnered with some of our key schools and promoted the opportunity with admission offices,” she adds. The firm also debuted a micro-site to promote the program.

To bring aboard more MBA graduates, Deloitte also slightly increased “by a handful” the number of schools from which it actively recruits. Cherry says Deloitte is now doing campus recruiting at 40 different schools, ranging from Columbia Business School, where the firm hired a dozen MBA grads last year, to Berkeley’s Haas School, where it hired 11 MBAs in 2010. Other top schools that report Deloitte as a major recruiter include Kellogg (14), Michigan (11), Chicago (10), Wharton (7), Dartmouth (6), and Duke (6) (see table below).

Most of the MBAs Deloitte hires will go into Deloitte’s strategy and operations practice, Cherry told Poets&Quants in an interview. “MBAs are providing the types of services and backgrounds that we need to be successful. It’s an excellent source of talent. Because of our success with MBAs in consulting, some of our others businesses which hadn’t actively recruited MBAs have become interested in it as well.” Deloitte’s technology and human capital practices, for example, are increasing their hiring of MBAs, said Cherry.

The company’s increased demand required that it hold more on-campus case study workshops, coffee chats, one-on-one informational sessions, and sponsorships of various student clubs and conferences. The firm has had to interview more MBA candidates and extend more offers to get the 400 full-time MBAs.

In addition to the new immersion program for admits, Deloitte also hosted for the first time a two-day national case study competition this year. The event, held in Miami in January, brought together top MBA talent from 14 business schools. The MBA teams competed for a prize pool of $50,000. “We’re trying some of these new initiatives because we know we need to continue to get the best talent at Deloitte and because MBA recruiting has become very competitive again,” says Cherry. “We’ve had to be more creative.”

See results below for the big MBA recruiters (An asterisk indicates that a company hired at least three MBAs. When a minus sign appears before a 3 and an asterisk it indicates the company hired fewer than three MBAs.):

CONSULTING FIRM HIRES OF 2010 MBAS FROM TOP B-SCHOOLS

 

Firm Chicago Wharton Columbia Kellogg Duke Michigan MIT Berkeley Tuck
McKinsey 24 44 38 32 7 13 15 7 6
BCG 19 43 25 35 8 6 14 5 3
Bain 15 18 17 17 4 5 12 NA 9
Booz & Co. 10 11 16 11 2 6 5 NA NA
Deloitte 10 7 12 14 6 11 3* 11 6
Accenture 4 7 NA 7 3 9 0 NA NA
AT Kearney 7 NA 3 7 NA NA -3* NA NA
Monitor Group NA NA NA 6 NA NA -3* NA NA
Cambridge NA NA NA 4 NA NA 0 NA NA
LEK Consulting NA NA NA 4 NA NA -3* NA NA
Infosys NA NA NA 3 3 NA 3* NA NA
Oliver Wyman NA NA 3 NA NA NA -3* NA NA
ZS Associates NA NA NA NA 3 3 0 NA NA

SOURCE: Career Services reports from schools

 

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