Where Harvard MBAs Work & What They Do

Where do Harvard 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 Harvard 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 Harvard MBAs as well as the most likely industries that attract its graduates.

Source: LinkedIn membership data

Not surprisingly, the number one employer of Harvard MBAs is McKinsey & Co, which according to LinkedIn data, has 507 consultants who are LinkedIn members with MBAs from the school. In fact, the top three firms are all consulting firms. McKinsey is followed by Boston Consulting Group and Bain & Co.

How does this compare with some of the other elite schools? Wharton, of course, has far greater representation among financial firms. Five of the top eight employers of Wharton MBAs, for example, are investment banking firms: No. 2 Goldman Sachs, No. 4 Citicorp, No. 5 Morgan Stanley, No. 7 Merrill Lynch, and No. 8 J.P. Morgan. According to LinkedIn, Merrill Lynch has four times as many Wharton MBAs to Harvard, 237 versus 62, as of December, 2012.

What does seem surprising, however, is that the biggest brand company with the most Harvard MBAs is IBM, with 254 LinkedIn members.

The number one industry for Harvard MBAs is finance, with 4,222 members. But number two is also a surprise of sorts: entrepreneurship. Some 2,959 LinkedIn members say they have an MBA from Harvard and have identified themselves as entrepreneurs. Business development is third with 2,687 LinkedIn members.

Harvard MBAs: Where They Work & What They Do

Company	LinkedIn Members	Industry	LinkedIn Members
McKinsey & Co.	507	Finance	4,222
Boston Consulting Group	310	Entrepreneur	2,959
Bain & Co.	262	Consulting	2,345
IBM	254	Marketing	1,950
Deloitte	198	Operations	1,809
Goldman Sachs	186	Sales	1,541
Google	174	Administrative	1,494
Microsoft	173	Information Technology	930
Cisco Systems	114	Product	772
Morgan Stanley	102	Human Resources	671
Citicorp	94	Engineering	602
Hewlett-Packard	85	Creative	565
Novartis	81	Public Relations	510
Credit Suisse	74	Support	335
Accenture	72	Legal	269
Ernst & Young	72	Medical	252
Oracle	71	Accounting	251
Bain Capital	69	Buyer	131
PriceWaterhouseCoopers	63	Real Estate	95
Merrill Lynch	62
Booz & Co.	61
Amazon	60
Johnson & Johnson	55