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5/29/05 CONSULTING Good news, business school graduates: That MBA will likely land you a fat salary. Those are the findings of Consultants News, a publication of New Hampshire-based Kennedy Information Inc. that serves the consulting industry. It found that graduates of the nation's top business schools are expecting higher pay for their degree - and some just might get it. The newsletter said MBA students from top business schools expect to receive up to 20 percent more in total compensation this year based on their interviews with consulting firms. "On average, base salary for this year's MBAs is almost $110,000, up about 10 percent over last year," said the newsletter. It noted that some firms, hoping to temper the salary rise, increased signing bonuses by nearly 30 percent. The newsletter based its findings on information collected from 85 MBA students from a dozen high-ranked business schools, including Yale University, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Chicago and the University of California at Los Angeles. It found that the average salary this year will be $109,000, up from $98,751 in 2004. The increase is the first since 2002, when salaries rose to $99,082, up from $92,253 in 2000. In addition, MBA students and new graduates said they were offered signing bonuses of, on average, $14,000 and an average of $1,500 in tuition reimbursement, bringing total compensation to about $124,000 in 2005. "It appears competition for next year's MBAs will be just as fierce," reports the newsletter. "Of those first-year MBAs who interviewed with companies, almost all interviewed with multiple firms. And almost a quarter of the first-year MBA students seeking consulting internships said they interviewed with five or more firms." Jess Scheer, editor of Consultants News, said more than 80 percent of the first-year MBA students had multiple interviews for summer internships. Of the second-year students, said Scheer, more than 60 percent had multiple interviews for jobs with consulting firms. "Except for annual bonuses, everything else in our newsletter is what the MBA students said they were offered," said Scheer. "We looked at the hundreds of offers they received. We found that the one number that was wishful thinking on the part of students was the expectation that they would receive higher annual bonuses." MBAs said they were told by potential employers to expect average annual bonuses of $18,000. However, Scheer doubts they will receive that much. "Virtually nobody got an annual bonus during the last few years," he said. "But now, expectations have gone from zero the last couple of years to $18,000." Camille Luckenbaugh, research director for the National Association of Colleges and Employers, said MBA graduates will see an uptick in hiring this year. "Overall, we are seeing an increase of about 24.9 percent since 2004, an increase of about three MBAs per organization," said Luckenbaugh, whose organization surveyed 116 US firms. "We asked what areas our members were hiring for and finance was the biggest area, with 70 percent of our respondents," she said. "Fifty-four percent of the marketing firms said they planned to hire, 47 percent of general management firms plan to hire, and 37 percent of accounting firms.". Luckenbaugh attributed the change to improvements in the national economy. So did James Greeley, director of career services and cooperative education at Merrimack College in North Andover. "Quite frankly, I think if the individual has the opportunity or the resources, the MBA is a great thing to do," he said. Scheer's report also looked at MBA graduates' perception of some of the top consulting firms. When asked which companies were among the most favorable, a majority of the MBA students selected McKinsey & Co. The second top ranking firm in this category was Boston Consulting Group, followed by Bain & Co., Monitor Group, A.T. Kearney, Booz Allen Hamilton, Deloitte and IBM Consulting. But there was a disturbing finding concerning recruitment and retention in Scheer's report, namely, that companies shouldn't expect the new crop of MBA graduates to stay on the job long. "One of the big issues we are seeing is that back in January we tracked MBAs as they entered their consulting careers and an alarming number told us they were already looking for other jobs," he said. "But consulting firms need seasoned people more than ever now." WORKPLACE The Creative Group, which helps marketing and advertising professionals with job searches, offers some timely advice for workers who want to create a more harmonious cubicle culture:
Tracey Fuller, the executive director of the company, advises that employees who work in cubicles should also wear headphones when listening to music, set their telephones on quiet mode, and avoid wearing too much cologne or perfume. ON THE WEB Jobseekers and recruiters worldwide will have a more direct way of locating job vacancies on corporate websites thanks to a top-level domain called .jobs. The domain will allow companies to separate their job vacancies from their sites and manage them through a .jobs site with the company name. For example, an individual seeking to work at XYZ Co. can avoid searching for jobs on the company website by typing the company name and .jobs or XYZCo.jobs. The approach allows workers to avoid scrolling through a company website in search of a place to post their applications for jobs. Once established, .jobs will do two things to make the current recruiting process better, said Tom Embrescia, chairman of .jobs. "It will make the recruitment process simpler and it will make recruiting uniform for all companies." Will the new domain affect job boards? Jen Jorgensen, a spokesman for the society, said it should not. "There are two different types of recruiting here," she said. "If you know exactly what company you want to work for, you can go directly to that firm using the company's name and .jobs," she said. "If you want to search the industry as a whole, you can go directly to the job boards." Diane E. Lewis can be reached at .
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