MBAs’ Overwhelming Preference: Hybrid Work

The latest survey from the MBA Career Services & Employer Alliance shows that MBAs looking for full-time jobs overwhelmingly prefer hybrid work situations — and that employers are ready to give it to them.

In MBA CSEA’s April 2022 School Member Survey, 92% of responding business schools say their MBAs looking for full-time roles want those roles to be a mix of in-office and remote work. The good news for them: According to the B-schools, the vast majority of employers of MBAs — 95% — are offering just that kind of arrangement.

The stakes are high: Nearly a quarter of schools say employers that they work with are losing candidates by only offering in-person work. The most likely industries to insist on employees being in the office: financial services, followed by manufacturing and hospitality.

A PIECE OF A LARGER PICTURE

Among MBAs looking for internships, 75% of B-schools responding to MBA CSEA’s new poll say their students want hybrid roles, as do 74% of specialty business master’s graduates. Master’s students seeking internships were the least likely to prefer hybrid work environments, with only 59% of schools indicating that is those students’ preference.

MBA CSEA is a global association for graduate business career services professionals and employers of MBAs. It has more than 800 members representing more than 250 B-schools and corporations. Its latest field poll of member schools was conducted from April 28 to May 5 and received 90 total responses, 84% of which were from North America, with 13% from Europe, 2% from Asia, and 1% from Africa.

The main findings fit into a larger picture, pieces of which MBA CSEA has provided in previous polls. In October 2021, it found that significant numbers of its members had seen an increase in hybrid and virtual recruiting activity on campus, including live interviews and job postings. As P&Q reported at the time, while nearly one-fifth of respondents to that poll indicated that their students prefer face-to-face meetings, about 15% reported that students like the flexibility of remote or hybrid models.

CHANGES IN THE WORLD OF WORK

While around half of B-schools in MBA CSEA’s new poll say each of the four categories of student prefer 100% in-person work roles, the support for 100% remote jobs is significantly lower: Only about 44% of MBAs seeking full-time jobs want those jobs to be work-from-home, while only about a third of each of the other category of seeker — MBAs seeking internships, master’s grads seeking jobs, and master’s grads seeking internships — prefer to entirely work from home.

And while nearly a quarter of responding B-schools said their employers are losing candidates if they are only offering in-person work environments, another 38% said that was “somewhat” the case — nearly as many (39%) as said “No.”

Asked to elaborate, “Most schools who offered write-in responses to that question indicated that it depends on the student, or that all things equal, the students would likely choose a company that offers a hybrid option,” Megan Hendricks, executive director, MBA CSEA, tells Poets&Quants.

DON’T MISS NEW DATA: WAS COVID-19’S IMPACT ON MBA JOB PROSPECTS OVERSTATED? and ARE MBA STUDENTS GETTING MORE COMFORTABLE WITH REMOTE JOB RECRUITING?