Duke: Best Career Year Since Great Recession

Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business

MORE MBA STUDENTS SEEM INTERESTED IN JOBS OUT OF THE MAINSTREAM

Dirks said she just heard from a 2014 graduate who had turned down an offer from a much larger Silicon Valley corporation to accept a position at an eight-person startup. “So you see both ends of the perspective in tech,” she added. “You’re just starting to see the industry as a whole having a front and center presence in the same way that the consulting and financial services industries have had for many years.”

Dirks suggested that the school’s job acceptance rate three months after graduation would have been higher if not for more students who are seeking jobs out of the mainstream. “One of the things we are seeing is a good number of students who are walking away from earlier offers to pursue things that are more narrow in focus and often require a post-graduation job search,” she said. “They are still going to show up in the offer data but in many cases they didn’t accept that offer.”

The three-month data for reporting data is a standard, though arbitrary timeframe.  “Inevitably, you’ll talk to someone who got the job of their dreams on Aug. 15 (four days after the Aug. 11 three-month cutoff), but more students are continuing these very focused job searches. For some students who want to relocate to the West Coast or overseas, you also see them move first to their desired location. By the time they get their job search up and running, the chances of landing in that three-month window can be less.”

She cited one graduating MBA, a woman, who just landed a job in San Francisco with Levi in sustainability management. “She is thrilled,” said Dirks. “It is a great job with competitive compensation, but it’s just outside the three-month window. Another student recently got three offers in real estate in the D.C. area in a field that doesn’t hire a lot of MBAs. No matter where you draw a line in the sand, there will always be people who will land a dream job afterward. We continue to collect information, particularly in fields such as social impact or sustainability, where searches take longer. It makes the data gathering more arduous at times.”

Along with the University of Michigan’s Ross School and Vanderbilt’s Owen School, Fuqua’s employment report is generally among the most complete and transparent of the top business schools, disclosing separate data for U.S. and foreign citizens as well as hires by all the top companies.

TOP EMPLOYERS OF FUQUA MBAs

Source: Fuqua School of Business employment reports