Amazon’s Amazing MBA Hiring Binge At Ross

The University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business remained the number one school from which amazon.com recruits MBAs, hiring a record 59 of the 455 MBA graduates of the Class of 2015. That is more than twice as many hires that Amazon made from Ross only a year ago when it brought aboard 27 MBAs from the school.

The MBA haul, accounting for 13% of the entire graduating class, pushed the percentage of Ross grads entering high tech to a new record high of 18%, up from 15% last year and 14% two years ago. This year’s tech placement is not far behind Stanford’s 19% placement, despite Ross’s midwestern location. In fact, the draw of technology was so strong this year that 23.4% of the class took jobs in the west, second only to the 37.9% who accepted offers in the midwest.

Amazon has been gobbling up MBA graduates in increasing numbers over the past five years. Only three years ago, the e-commerce giant hired only 15 grads from Ross, then went to 23 in 2013 and 27 last year. The jump to 59 MBA hires from a single school is both surprising and unprecedented. If you count those 59 hires over the 346 MBAs who reported back to the school on their employment prospects (as opposed to the full class of 455 graduates), the percentage of the class hired by Amazon hits 17%. Up until two years ago, Deloitte Consulting had been the school’s largest employer, hiring 25 in 2013 and 29 in 2012.

A VERY STRONG YEAR FOR PAY AND EMPLOYMENT STATS

All around, it was another very strong year for Ross. The school said that its career services function arranged more than 4,000 interviews for MBA students seeking internships or full-time employment in 2015, while 85% of the Class of 2015 successfully switched industries or functions with their MBA degrees.

Median starting salaries rose 2.4% to $117,750, up from $115,000 a year earlier. No less impressive, however, is that 90% of the graduates reporting stats to the school said they had received median sign-on bonuses of $25,000 each, while 49% of the class said they landed “other median compensation” of $20,000, up from $16,750 last year. All told, median first-year compensation for Ross grads totalled $149,960, a new all-time high (The median is weighted by the proportion of graduates who reported a sign-on bonus and other guaranteed compensation, because not everyone in the class receives those extras).

The highest paid MBA in the class landed a $170,000 base salary in consulting. Interestingly enough, however, it was international students who reported the highest sign-on bonus, $77,000, and the highest other compensation, a whopping $225,000. The school did not disclose where those graduates took jobs.

The pay numbers, however, only tell part of the solid employment story at Ross. Job offers were also up from last year. Some 92.4% of the class had job offers at graduation, up from 89.2% a year earlier, while 97.4% reported offers three months later, better than the 93.0% last year. Ross said that 86.3% of the Class of 2015 accepted their offers by graduation and that 92.1% accepted three months later (see table below).