Slight Rise In MBA Salaries At HEC Paris

HEC Paris

HEC Paris

HEC Paris said its Class of 2015 MBA graduates landed average starting salaries of €82,500, or $92,635, with sign-on bonuses averaging €10,500, or $11,790. Those sums represent a slight increase from the €82,100 salary a year earlier, but a decline in signing bonuses from €13,000 in the previous year.

HEC’s starting salaries trail both INSEAD and London Business School. INSEAD’s latest graduates landed average salaries of $105,700, $13K more, while LBS’ graduating MBAs in 2015 earned starting salaries of $118,926.

The school reported that 74% of its graduates had jobs at graduation, while 90% were employed three months after graduation, equal to INSEAD’s numbers and three percentage points below the London Business School, where 93% were employed three months after commencement. On average, MBA graduates from HEC doubled their pre-MBA salaries, according to the school.

THE SCHOOL’S TOP RECRUITERS HAVE BECOME ‘OVERWHELMINGLY NON-FRENCH’

Tony Somers of HEC Paris

Tony Somers of HEC Paris

In the past five years, the ‘top recruiters’ for HEC Paris graduates have become overwhelmingly non-French, and the majority of these have been U.S. in origin. HEC Paris identified 16 companies as major employers of the Class of 2015, including A.T. Kearney, Amazon, Apple, Ernst & Young, L’Oreal, Procter & Gamble, Siemens, Schneider Electric, Tata Consulting, Uber, Unilever, and Wipro.

“Given the current economic recovery in the region, there is no reason for this trend to reverse itself in the coming two/three years at least,” wrote Tony Somers, director of HEC’s career management center, in the school’s 2015 employment report. “While it is pleasing to report that both recruitment in France and Europe has rebounded significantly this year from three years of small declines, it is also true to say that the macroeconomic picture for the next four/five years will see these markets remaining relatively flat in terms of economic growth. Therefore we can assume that the three A’s – Asia, the Americas and Africa, will be the main engines for growth and employment opportunity.”

Somers said that 230 separate companies recruited from the class for either full-time or internship positions, and 11 of the ‘Top 15’ were different from the companies that recruited from the school a year before. He said that the ratio of MBA recruiting companies to student was almost 2:1.

AMAZON WAS SCHOOL’S LARGEST SINGLE EMPLOYER 

“This year saw a significant increase in what we call ‘block hiring,’” explains Tony Somers, director of HEC’s career management center.  “We define block hiring as recruiters who hire two or more from the year’s graduating class. For 2015 it was almost 35%, almost double the percentage for 2014.”

The tech sector again attracted the largest number of students, grabbing 19% of the entire class. That’s roughly in line with London Business School where 20% of last year’s MBAs found jobs in tech. Amazon once again was the school’s top recruiter, followed by Uber, Apple, Google, Wipro, Amadeus, Groupon and HCL Technologies.

Consulting also showed improvement, accounting for 18% of the class, with what Somers called “significant improvements in salary levels.” In contrast, INSEAD sends 43% of its graduates into consulting, while a third of LBS MBA grads head off into the consulting sector.

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