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Source: WSJ https://apple.news/Ak_VM9fdLTYayXNioYJhQEA
Companies are dialing back or delaying hiring of M.B.A.s this fall, a sharp turn from the supercharged recruiting seasons of years past.
Career officers and students at Yale University, Columbia University and Northwestern University say businesses are spending less time on campus than in recent years to hire second-year M.B.A. candidates, or holding off on job offers. That has students thinking about their Plan B if top-tier companies arent making offers. EY, Amazon and Boston Consulting Group are rethinking hiring strategy, or saying they will make moves when next years business picture becomes clearer, the companies and campus officials say.
Any drop-off in corporate demand for M.B.A.s is startling for students who applied to graduate school in 2021 and 2022 during a white-collar hiring spree with swelling salaries to match. Since then, the three main sectors that hire M.B.A.s at top schools have hit turbulence. Tech giants made big job cuts, consulting firms put start dates on hold, and deal making slowed in finance.
During the fall, M.B.A. candidates normally lock in jobs for postgraduation the following spring, but that is happening less this year, students and career guidance offices say. Schools are encouraging students to be patient and have a Plan B in mind.
Things have changed on a dime, said Aakash Patel, a second-year M.B.A. candidate at Duke Universitys Fuqua School of Business.
Patel, 29, said many of his classmates are looking for jobs after their summer internships didnt result in full-time offers, as is common. In some cases, companies said their performance was good but the economic climate wasnt, according to Patel.
Companies in tech, finance and consulting, which recruit 70% or more of some top business schools newly minted grads according to schools employment reports, are slow-walking hiring or limiting candidates they are willing to consider.
EY, a major recruiter of M.B.A.s, is scaling back recruiting in consulting because the firm doesnt anticipate the economy will significantly bounce back by next year when these graduates would start, said Errol Gardner, EYs global vice chair for consulting.
We have to be very circumspect about who we hire in this season for next year, he said.
Amazon, long a major destination for M.B.A.s, declined to comment on recruiting this fall, but a spokesman confirmed that the company would wait to extend full-time offers to former interns until there is a clearer sense of business needs.
At Columbia Business School and the University of California Berkeleys Haas School of Business, students describe a careerlimbo.
Pretty much everything is in a holding pattern right now, said Phil Ickes, 30, a second-year Haas student. In addition to waiting on job offers after internships, Haass internal job board doesnt have many techpostings, he said.
A lot of the large consulting firms that might have had spots in prior years are just hiring less, said Kyle Macalinao, co-president of Columbia Business Schools consulting club.
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