Employment Report

Berkeley MBA Grads and Students in Demand with Top Employers

Graduates of the Berkeley MBA program continue to be in demand with employers, with members of the Berkeley MBA class of 2009 having joined 124 organizations in 23 countries worldwide. Two industries - Consulting and Technology - tied for the #1 spot with each accounting for 26.3% of the Class of '09.

Within three months of graduation, 85.4 percent of these graduating students had received an offer. Salaries remained fairly stable, despite the downturn, with a mean base of $108,428 and a median base of $110,000. Some 64 percent of students accepting positions reported receiving a signing bonus, with the average signing bonus coming in at $20,596.

“Strong relationships with recruiters and with our alumni community helped us weather the economic downturn relatively well,” says Abby Scott, executive director of MBA Career Management. In fact, the Economist Intelligence Unit just ranked Haas as the #2 business school worldwide for opening new career opportunities for students.  Active alumni and a proactive career center helped propel Haas to  the #1 business school in the US and # 3 in the world.

“Though the market was tight, we saw MBA hiring continue, with an impressive breadth of firms,” says Scott. Top hiring firms for graduating Berkeley MBA students this year include consultancies McKinsey & Company, Deloitte Consulting, A.T. Kearney, Boston Consulting Group, and ZS Associates. Other top employers for the class of 2009 include Adobe, Amazon, Genentech, McKesson, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Symantec, and Yahoo!.

Drawing upon the strong Haas community was critical, according to Scott. “Recruiters were cautious about hiring, but most employers continued to recruit. They were highly selective, making it important for students to stay focused on their goals, make networking a strong part of their job search, and tap into the many resources available for support”.

This support includes extensive outreach efforts made by MBA Career Management account managers to numerous companies, personal outreach from Dean Rich Lyons to alumni on behalf of job-seeking students, and a highly active Haas Alumni Network of more than 30,000 people who actively network through online tools and a full calendar of global events from New York to the Netherlands and from Chile to China.

That global reach extends to the career choices of this graduating class, with more than 21.5 percent of them working overseas – 11.6 percent in Asia, 5.0 percent in Latin/South America, 4.4 percent in Europe, and 0.6 percent in Africa. The San Francisco Bay Area (the 2nd largest US MBA market) remained at #1, with 60.2 percent of graduating students accepting a full-time job in the area.

In the Class of 2010, 99.6 percent of students seeking an internship found one.  Top internship firms included Abbott Laboratories, Amazon, Apple, and Yahoo!, each of which hired seven Berkeley MBA interns. The average monthly salary for summer interns was $5,848 ($1,351 per week).

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