Duke Drops Early MBA Job Report

Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business

NO MAJOR SHIFTS IN STARTING SALARY AND BONUS THIS YEAR

“I don’t have a read on salaries yet,” she says, “but we haven’t seen huge shifts in any particular direction. There is a lot of variation in it because of the late season hiring. People who get hired later tend to see some very high end salaries in private equity and some low end numbers for those taking jobs with a global health agency or a non-profit. Where the mean salary will come out, I don’t have a great crystal ball. But there won’t be huge shifts in what we have seen so far.”

One emerging trend in career management, says Dirks, is the increasing likelihood of students juggling two summer internships instead of just one. More MBAs want to do a pair of six-or-seven week internships with two organizations rather than a more structured 10-to-12 week gig with a single company.

“We are not talking about huge numbers here, but we are seeing a number of students who have made that arrangement work for them, particularly outside the U.S. or with startups. It tends not to be Deloitte, Apple or those types of companies because they have big intern classes and have a lot of structure in those programs. They are meant to be feeders into their full-time offers. It’s very dependent on the needs of the company and the projects they work on. I don’t think we are going to see companies come on campus to recruit for their mini-internship programs, but students are eager to try out different things.”

Dirks says the traditional internship market for MBA talent remains strong. “It’s been a good internship season. It is a harbinger of things to come. When we look at our stats, those numbers will see a bigger climb.”

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