Freshly-minted MBA graduates with straight As in hand from top B-schools in America used to have only one post-grad career destination, the United States. But with high-paying Wall Street losing some of its luster, things are changing. Quite a few US grads are now trying to land jobs in Asia.
Every era has its own version of the MBA dream. BusinessWeek magazine pointed out that in the 1980s, it was about conquering Wall Street and choppering off to the fashionable Hamptons, New York’s wildly affluent and breathtaking seaside summer resort. “The late 1990s saw a stampede to Silicon Valley.
In the mid-aughts, the gilded, clubby preserve of private equity beckoned. Now, the emerging narrative is about steroidal Asia and its promise of growth,” said BusinessWeek.
“There is a sense that the centre of gravity is shifting,” Julie Morton, University of Chicago’s Booth School associate dean for career services, told the magazine.
A fairly large group of talented, recent MBAs was asking for jobs and assignments in China and India. The new MBA recruitment trends in the US reflect “changing economic realities”.
At premiere institutions such as the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, Northwestern’s Kellogg and Chicago’s Booth School, the percentage of MBAs taking jobs in Asia — including US as well as international students — has more than doubled in five years from roughly 5% of the graduating class.
“The consumer markets in India and China are booming. So a stint in Asia will stand me in good stead,” MBA student Christopher Wright, who is exploring multiple opportunities in Asia, told DNA. “China and India seem to be going from strength to strength at this point,” he said. “They are hitting on all cylinders.”
Citibank, Pfizer, Eli Lilly and Nike are also broadening their international programmes and tapping into the go-east trend by augmenting hiring for their Asia divisions. Healthcare products and pharma giant Johnson & Johnson and computer maker IBM have been hiring US students for their manager programmes and rotating them intensively through Asia. J&J has given new hires from the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business exposure to Mumbai and the West Coast in America.
“Multinationals with big markets outside America want CEOs with global skill sets. If you ever want to be at a C-suite, you have to have broad and diverse geographic exposure. You can see it in the profile of today’s CEOs, whether it is Indra Nooyi who heads Pepsico, or Muhtar Kent, who is the CEO of Coca-Cola,” said MBA student Brian Murphy.
In a telling sign that some Asian companies have weathered the economic downturn better than their recession-wracked western rivals, South Korea’s Samsung Electronics and Chinese firms have been on a hiring tear at US campuses.
At Kellogg’s, Bangalore-based Infosys and the Tata Group are also on hand for recruiting.
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