Record Tech Hires At MIT Sloan

MIT’s Sloan School of Management has joined the growing number of business schools this year reporting some of the best career stats ever for its Class of 2014.

MIT said median starting salaries rose for the second year in a row to $124,400, up from $120,000 a year earlier and $118,500 in 2012. The school said that some 94.6% of its graduates had job offers within three months of commencement, up from 92.2% in 2013, and a vast improvement from the recession-plagued 83.4% low point in 2009.

The median sign-on bonus–received by 77.3% of the reporting students–was $25,000, while the median other guaranteed year-end bonus–reported by 19.4% of the class–was $20,000. For an MBA collecting all three components of pay, the median total first-year compensation package would have have totaled $169,400.

CONSULTING REMAINED THE BIGGEST SINGLE CAREER CHOICE FOR SLOAN MBAS

But the biggest news in the school’s 2014 employment report has to do with a major shift toward the technology industry. A record 26.1% of the class accepted jobs with high tech firms, a jump of nearly seven percentage points from the 19.2% who went tech last year. In 2012, only 16.8% of Sloan’s grads went into technology.

Even so, consulting remained the single largest career choice for Sloanies, drawing a near-record 33.9% of graduates, up from 31.9% a year earlier. Five of the eight largest employers of Sloan MBAs this year were consulting firms, with only Amazon, Apple & Google breaking a complete sweep. Consulting also paid the highest median starting salaries to Sloan graduates: $135,000 vs. $125,000 for MBAs going into either “diversified financial services” or “computers/electronics.”

McKinsey & Co. again led all the consulting firms in Sloan hires, bringing aboard 32 of the school’s 413 graduates, an increase of ten from last year. Consulting rival Bain & Co. was the next largest employer of MBA grads at MIT, hiring 17, slightly down from the 21 it took on a year ago. Amazon edged out Boston Consulting Group, employing 16 Sloanies this year vs. 15 for BCG. Apple hired ten MBAs from Sloan, while Google, Deloitte Consulting, and PwC Advisory each gained nine MBAs from the Class of 2014.

A SLIGHT DOWNTURN IN THE PERCENTAGE OF SLOANIES WHO BECAME ENTREPRENEURS

The financial sector reached new lows at Sloan, taking only 13.6% of the class, down from 16.3% last year and 26.6% in 2012. The last time a financial institution made the top employers at Sloan was last year when Goldman Sachs hired five of the school’s MBAs and was tied with Google.

This year also saw a slight decline in the number of MBAs starting their own businesses. After reaching a record high of 9.8% last year, Sloanies who immediately became startup founders slipped a bit to 7.4%—still well above the average for top business schools—but well below the high mark set by Stanford’s Graduate School of Business where 17% of this year’s graduating class became entrepreneurs.

The school said that the highest reported base salary this year was $180,000 to an MBA joining a software or internet company. The unidentified Sloanie took a general management job in the Northeast. The highest reported sign-on bonus was $90,000 for an MBA who accepted a consulting or strategic planning job, while the highest reported other guaranteed bonus in the class was $80,000.

WHERE IS THE SLOANIE WHO CLAIMS A FIRST-YEAR PAY OF $1.8 MILLION?

The Sloan MBA who told Bloomberg Businessweek that his first-year compensation this year would be a record $1,825,000 did not turn up in the report, which was based on 89.7% of reported acceptances that included usable salary information. The MBA said he was working in the real estate industry, a category that attracted so few of Sloan grads this year that it was excluded from the school’s employment report.

Unlike other business schools, Sloan typically asks its MBAs why they have chosen a particular job. This year, 32.5% said their choice was based on “growth potential” while 16.1% said they accepted a position due to “job function.” Some 15.4% of the class identified “industry” as the reason they took a job, while 12.8% said it was “job content.” Only 3.6% of the MBAs said they chose their job on the basis of compensation.