Poets and Quants

Where do Stanford MBAs work and in what industries?

With its wealth of membership data, LinkedIn is now providing a glimpse into this answer. Of course, not all Stanford MBAs are registered with the professional networking site so it’s an obviously incomplete list. Even so, the data provides an interesting window into the most likely employers of Stanford MBAs as well as the most likely industries that attract its graduates.

Source: LinkedIn membership data

If you want to work for a big brand technology company, there’s no question that a Stanford MBA will open the doors. Eight of the top 13 employers are tech firms, led by Google with some 135 Stanford business grads–only a dozen less than No. 1 employer McKinsey & Co. Cisco, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, Apple, Oracle, IBM and Intel are in the mix as are eBay, salesforce.com, Amazon and Facebook.

In fact, many of these high flying firms, including Apple and Facebook, don’t even make the top employers for such schools as Harvard or Wharton.

Once bitten by the Northern California bug, most Stanford grads love to stay in the area. In fact, a high number of them work for Stanford University, which is the number three employer named by LinkedIn members who have Stanford MBAs. After only McKinsey and Google comes Stanford with 131 members.

The number one industry is no surprise at all: It’s finance, with 1,588 LinkedIn members, followed by business development, and consulting. Surprisingly, perhaps, entrepreneurship is the fourth most identified status of LinkedIn members with Stanford MBAs. At Harvard Business School, it’s second after only finance.

Stanford MBAs: Where They Work & What They Do

Source: December 2012 LinkedIn membership data

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