Job Offers Up In Tech & Healthcare

The early pre-graduation job offers to business school students this year from the healthcare industry are a chart-topping 109% above students’ pre-degree income, outdoing mainstream MBA jobs in consulting and finance. In fact, pay increases by technology and manufacturing firms are expected to be larger–in percentage terms–than those in any other fields.

That’s according to a new before-graduation survey of business school students by the Graduate Management Admission Council which polled the Class of 2014 in February and March–several months before their actual graduation. The early job offers from tech firms were 97% over pre-degree salaries, while the offers from manufacturing firms represented a 91% increase. Those numbers compare with 87% in consulting, 64% in products and services, and 63% in energy and utilities.

Overall, the median increase in salary of those with job offers was 80% over their pre-degree salary. That’s up from the 73% increase reported by business school graduates with early job offers in 2013. In fact, members in the Class of 2014 are more likely to job offers, drew more job offers, and received offers at higher organizational levels when compared with students who graduated five years ago when the Great Recession still weighed heavily on the job market.

MEDIAN CHANGE IN POST-BUSINESS DEGREE SALARIES BY INDUSTRY

Source: 2014 GMAC Global Management Education Graduate Survey

The number of years of work experience for a student also had a significant impact on changes in salary. Students with more years of prior work experience tend to have higher pre-degree incomes. For these high earners, a post-degree salary increase comes to a smaller percentage rise than it does for graduating students with less work experience. GMAC found that the more work experience and the higher the job level a student had when entering a business program, the lower the overall expected salary gain upon graduation (see graph on following page).