Employment News for Grads

There have been a few fascinating articles this week focused on job opportunities for recent graduates of college and various graduate programs. Here is a brief run-down: Best Places to Launch a Career is a BusinessWeek Special Report surveying hiring trends for Generation Y and ranking the best employers. Included are pieces about the Big Four accounting firms, which have been hiring like mad; Teach for America ; life at Microsoft; landing a job at JP Morgan; and profiles of 90+ employers. In Hedge Funds and Private Equity Alter Career Calculus The New York Times explores the world of the extremely successful, young, quant jocks who decide it doesnt pay for them to obtain an MBA because they are making so much money without the degree. According to the article The competition from alternative investment firms private equity and hedge funds in particular is driving up salaries of entry-level analysts at much larger banks. And top performers at the banks make so much money today that they dont want to take two years off for business school, even if its a prestigious institution like the Wharton School or Harvard. Ironically the article adds that The number of students who earned M.B.A.s in 2005 was about 142,600, nearly twice the level in 1991. But as M.B.A.s become more common, the degree seems to carry less prestige with people who land top-paying jobs in finance soon after college. Presenting a very different picture than The New York Times, which focuses on the super-successful , The Wall St. Journal in Battle for Fresh M.B.A. Talent Prompts Changes in Recruiting discusses the intense competition among employers for MBA graduates. The article reports on different recruiting tactics that companies employ to meet demand for b-school graduates. The tactics are interesting, but the demand is far more important., and wide reaching: About 69% of recruiters in the Journal survey said their companies increased starting pay this year. Nearly a third of the survey respondents said they offered salaries of more than $100,000, up from about 24% last year and 17% in 2005.