i got this in email from my friend!
>>Yale, Harvard M.B.A. No Sure Ticket to a Job, '03 Grads Learn
>>
>> New Haven, Connecticut, May 5 (Bloomberg) -- Concerned by the
>>bleak job outlook for his graduating M.B.A.s, Jeffrey Garten, dean
>>of the Yale School of Management, dispatched an appeal to alumni.
>> ``Industries that traditionally hire M.B.A.s have been hit
>>particularly hard in this economic downturn,'' Garten wrote in
>>March. He asked alumni to ``help where you are able'' by hiring
>>Yale's newly minted masters of business administration.
>> With the U.S. unemployment rate at an eight-year high,
>>business school deans nationwide are repeating Garten's message.
>>For the second year in a row, graduating M.B.A.s -- who have spent
>>as much as $122,000 to gain the coveted business degree from such
>>schools as Yale, Harvard and Columbia universities -- are
>>struggling to secure employment. Since March 2000, New York-based
>>securities firms alone have shed 79,500 jobs.
>> ``I am not in panic mode yet, but I am considering
>>bartending,'' said Harrell Smith, 30, a former trader for BNP
>>Paribas SA who's about to get an M.B.A. from Columbia, in New York
>>City. Smith is trying for a management position in finance or
>>media, yet concedes: ``I'm getting progressively more upset and
>>depressed.''
>> A Duke University survey of M.B.A. students at 10 U.S.
>>schools found that 60 percent had a full-time job as of mid-March,
>>compared with 86 percent in 1998. Two percent reported that their
>>offers were rescinded. The survey said annual starting salaries
>>for graduating M.B.A.s has remained ``relatively flat, at $87,808
>>this year, versus $86,540 three years ago.''
>> ``It's the toughest recruiting environment this school has
>>seen in a long time,'' said Matthew Merrick, the director of
>>career services at the Harvard Business School.
>> Like Garten, Harvard Dean Kim Clark sent letters to more than
>>60,000 alumni asking for help, Merrick said.
>>
>> Alumni Connection
>>
>> ``One of the key things we have going for us is that alumni
>>hire our students,'' Merrick said. About 900 students will
>>graduate with Harvard M.B.A.s in June, and Merrick said a bit more
>>than three-fourths have at least one offer.
>> ``Five years ago, the percent would have been 90 to 95,'' he
>>said.
>> Deborah Farrington, the director of the Harvard Business
>>School's alumni association and the founder of StarVest Partners
>>LP, a New York-based venture capital firm, regularly fields calls
>>from students seeking job advice and tries to counsel them.
>> ``It's a very tough time,'' she said. ``The type of call I
>>get is, `I'm really interested in private equity. How do I go
>>about it?' And I tell them, `Look, there are not a lot of people
>>hiring.'''
>> Yale's Garten declined to be interviewed.
>>
>> Bygone Era
>>
>> When Smith and other members of Columbia's class of 2003 were
>>applying to graduate programs three years ago, the era of multiple
>>job offers, signing bonuses and other perks for M.B.A.s had just
>>started to wane with the collapse of the dot-com sector.
>> ``It was still a buyer's market,'' said Smith, who interned
>>at Yahoo! Inc., the owner of the world's most-used Internet site.
>>Now, he's struggling to get interviews in his field.
>> ``The feedback we are getting from recruiters is that for
>>each job, there are 500 resumes,'' Smith said. ``All things
>>considered, life could be a hell of a lot worse. Most of us feel
>>it's just an unlucky break to be graduating in this economy.''
>> Last year, 65 percent of students at the Stern School of
>>Business at New York University and 70 percent of students at
>>Columbia graduated with jobs in hand, according to school
>>officials.
>> The U.S. economy lost 48,000 jobs in April, and the
>>unemployment rate climbed to 6 percent from 5.8 percent in March,
>>the Labor Department reported on Friday. Banking, securities and
>>consulting firms have all curtailed hiring, recruiters say.
>>
>> `Seasoned People'
>>
>> Gail Sobel, a partner at New York recruitment consultant
>>Prescott, James & Thomas, said many firms that recruited M.B.A.s
>>in the past aren't bothering this year.
>> ``They can't even think about M.B.A.s when there are so many
>>good seasoned people out there,'' Sobel said.
>> Nancy Pascal, managing director of AlleyRecruiting LLC, a
>>Wall Street recruiting firm, said demand for new M.B.A.s has
>>declined since 2001.
>> ``The market is already overflowing with highly qualified
>>individuals that hold strong degrees and credentials that have
>>been out of work for one to two years,'' Pascal said. ``New
>>graduates and seasoned M.B.A.s are competing for the same jobs.''
>> Alison Corazzini, the head of investment bank recruiting for
>>J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., said the bank is offering slightly fewer
>>jobs this year than last, while declining to provide numbers.
>>
>> Getting in the Door
>>
>> ``It's much harder for people to get in the door now,''
>>Corazzini said. ``We actively manage the numbers that are coming
>>in so we don't have to rescind offers.''
>> Richard Bub, a former PricewaterhouseCoopers consultant
>>studying at NYU's Stern School, doesn't regret pursuing an M.B.A.
>>Still, he's not encouraged about his prospects in media or
>>corporate and business development.
>> ``Some days you get so depressed and tired of thinking about
>>it,'' said Bub, who says he dreads the prospect of moving back to
>>his parents' home in Allentown, Pennsylvania, to cut expenses
>>while he job-hunts. ``That would be the last resort.''
>> Julie Collins, the interim dean of the business school at the
>>University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said 56 percent of
>>the graduating class has a job offer. Of those, 24 percent are in
>>financial services, 19 percent in consumer goods and 13 percent in
>>management consulting, she said.
>> ``I'm surprised to see financial services and consulting
>>still there,'' she said. ``We haven't seen anything like this
>>since the early '90s. It has become really hard work to find a
>>job.''
>>
>> Non-Profit Sector
>>
>> At the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School in
>>Philadelphia, some students are seeking jobs at non-profit
>>organizations, a sector M.B.A.s haven't gone near in recent years,
>>said Peter Degnan, the director of M.B.A. career management.
>> More optimism emerges on the West Coast.
>> ``Last year was a really low point, but this year we have
>>seen an increase of 16 percent in terms of companies coming to
>>campus to recruit,'' said Andy Chan, the director of M.B.A. career
>>management at California's Stanford Graduate School of Business.
>> About 70 percent of forthcoming grads have jobs, he said.
>>Graduates command median starting salaries of $95,000 with a
>>signing bonus of about $20,000, he added.
>> At Columbia, Dan Shaffer, a former stock analyst,
>>concentrated on media management and took courses at the film
>>school. He's moving to Los Angeles to find work at a movie studio.
>> ``I'm not expecting a signing bonus or a six-figure salary,''
>>he said. ``What bothers me is the uncertainty of knowing how long
>>my savings will last before I get a job. I'm trying to avoid the
>>bartending thing.''
>>
>>--Liz Willen in New York (1)(212) 318-2658 or
>>ewillen@bloomberg.net, with reporting by Adrian Cox in New York.
>>Editors: Rosen, Horvitz, Kraus.
>>
>>Story illustration: For more on the Duke survey, see
>>
http://www.fuqua.duke.edu/admin/extaff/news/report2003/.
>>To access the Bloomberg Career Center, type
>>{JOBS <GO>}. For career outlook information by industry and job
>>category, see the U.S. Department of Labor's Web site at
>>
http://www.bls.gov/emp/home.htm. For a slide show of functions
>>related to this story, click on {CNP 08319200107 <GO>}.
