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Did You Get An Offer? Are You Recruiting Again?

Unlike the legal market, the MBA job market has finally started to make a turnaround. Not only are students starting to get more interviews but some are also graduating with more job opportunities at their fingertips.  Given the environment, there’s only one thing on everyone’s mind now, as everyone starts to return back to campus. Did their classmates get a job offer? And are they going to do recruiting again this year?

At long last, it’s finally that time of year. Time when orientation for new students is over. Second year students are starting to linger back on to campus again. And everyone is starting to think about not only about full-time recruiting but also about really enjoying the final year of school.

For some, recruiting isn’t even an option, as the students have decided to take their summer employers up on their full time job offers. Of that group, many of the students got their first choice jobs last summer, so there isn’t any need to recruit again. For others, the students may not have gotten their first choice jobs but they got a job they ended up liking and were lured into going back either by the prospects of skipping recruiting this year or being offered big signing bonuses and tuition payments in lieu of recruiting.

But for others, the students can’t wait for recruiting to actually begin. It’s the chance to try something to find something different, as they may not have loved their internship this summer, whether or not it was their first choice last year. On the other hand, for others, the prospects of recruiting sound miserable. It means practicing more cases, doing more ‘forced’ networking, competing with classmates for positions again, and buying another set of new suits to wear everyday until you land a new job.

And then there’s one final group of people that just don’t know what to do.  They like their job offers but are still considering recruiting. Maybe so they can search for higher paying jobs. Maybe to get closer to their real dream job, even though they did get their first choice summer internship. And maybe because they know this is their one last hurrah to work for that big brand name company that is coming back to campus to interview in just a few weeks. No matter which of these camps people fit into, a lot of people are talking about offers these days.

I recently saw a few stats that significantly less than 50% of students, on average,  return to their summer employer. In fact, for many schools the number was closer to 30%. So when you take into account those that are sponsored, still less than 50% of students in top MBA program tend to go back, which is significantly different than law school, where the vast majority of students go back to the firm they spent the summer at.

That means that despite nearly half the people thrilled that they got an offer, 50% still need to worry about getting an offer this year, no matter whether they got one last summer or not.

Ideally, that 50% of people that need to recruit again did get an offer for the summer. That way, if they don’t get the job they were looking for, they still have a good employer to go back to. Likewise, it also makes interviews much easier, as often times in interviews employer will ask the question “Did you get an offer from your summer employer?”

For those that did not get an offer, they should come up a good reason why they didn’t. Maybe their employer didn’t give out any offers. Maybe the employer gave out some but couldn’t accommodate everyone; and in the student’s case someone at the firm would still be willing to recommend the candidate. Though in some cases, maybe the job wasn’t the right fit or performance was the issue.

Either way, people are thinking a lot more about offers now than they ever did before. And in the end, you realize that it’s not just important if you got a job offer last summer, but it’s more important that you got the right one this year if you decide to search again.

Best of luck to those that are starting their search. And congrats to those that are already finished.

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