Average First Year Pay At Fuqua: $151K

Duke University Fuqua School of Business

HEALTHCARE JOBS SHOW THE LARGEST PERCENTAGE INCREASE THIS YEAR

The biggest increase was in healthcare, attracting 12% of the graduates this year, up from 8% in 2015.”Healthcare provider jobs are of increasing interest to students,” says Dirks. “That used to be pharma, medical device companies and biotech. But we now have a club focused on healthcare providers. These folks are incredibly interested in that.”

Nonetheless, Deloitte emerged as the school’s top employer, making 24 full-time hires out of a class of 367 who reported back to the career management center. Amazon was next, with 15 MBA hires, while BCG, Microsoft and PwC each hired 13 Fuqua grads. McKinsey & Co., which had doubled its Fuqua MBA employees last year to 24, settled back to a more normal hiring pattern at the school, employing 12 members of the Class of 2016.

The recruiting companies at Fuqua are typically a diverse group of some of the big names in American business. Following the top five employers this year are Bain and Citi, which each hiring nine Fuqua grads. Bank of America/Merrill Lynch took away eight, while Accenture and Goldman Sachs employed seven each. Google, Dell, and IBM each put on their payrolls half a dozen of this year’s grads from Fuqua, while a host of companies hired five each: Johnson & Johnson, Cisco, Eli Lilly, Moelis & Co., and Wells Fargo Securities.

DESPITE HAVING FOUR FUQUA INTERNS, APPLE HIRES JUST ONE FUQUA MBA THIS YEAR

Dirks says that 50 “premier employers across a broad array of industries hired four or more Duke MBAs last year, which represents a 19% increase over 2014-15 when 42 organizations hired four or more.” A five-year look at Fuqua’s major employers shows an extraordinary array of top-flight MBA recruiters and also a fascinating glimpse at the ups and downs of the overall MBA market (see following page for the analysis).

From 2012 to 2016, Deloitte hired the most grads from the school, employing 134 Fuqua MBAs. McKinsey was second with 123 hires, while Microsoft was third with 68, Boston Consulting Group fourth with 63 hires, and PwC fifth with 50.

This year, Apple made only one hire, down from four the previous year, depsite having four Fuqua interns over the summer. Apple CEO Tim Cook is an alum of the Fuqua program and has been a big supporter of the school. In the previous four years, Apple hired 21 Fuqua MBAs into full-time positions. Of course, the number of hires any company makes in a year is based on its own needs and the desires of MBAs who can turn down job offers.

JOB OFFER DATA INCREASING REFLECTS MBA INTEREST IN EARLY STAGE COMPANIES

Among the graduating class, notes Dirks, there’s a broad distribution of when students accept job offers, partly the result of increased interest in startups and early stage firms. “Some accepted an offer well over a year ago and some are actively seeking jobs right now,” she says. “While each individual has unique interests, criteria, and risk tolerance, it’s not uncommon for this time horizon to widen even further when the economy is good, as some students may feel more comfortable waiting to seek and accept the right opportunity. My point is to lift up it’s not when students accept that’s important but what they accept.

“In 2014-15, the percentage of graduates who had accepted a full-time position by three months after graduation was 94% (with 95% having received an offer by then). This year, those numbers are down slightly at 92% accepted and 94% received, and I’m hearing from my counterparts at other schools they’re seeing a similar trend, too.” Small changes in these numbers, however, are often indicative of personal decisions. At Fuqua, for example, one student had to turn down an offer because his wife that just received a medical residency in another location.

Another interesting trend this year was the success of internationals in landing U.S. jobs. “The United States remains the predominant destination for Duke MBAs and went up over the prior year,” says Dirks. “This increase is notable in light of the continued short supply of U.S. visas for international students and the companies that hire them, not just at Duke but around the nation. Over 90% of last year’s graduates and interns accepted positions in the United States. For graduates, that represents an increase of five percentage points over the previous year’s graduates at 85%.”