Gillian Mager was in the midst of updating her MBA job club members on her networking efforts last June when she broke down in tears. Like most in the support group at the University of California at San Diego's Rady School of Management (Rady Full-Time MBA Profile), her job search had extended beyond graduation and she spent her days sending out reams of résumés, often getting no response back. Making matters worse, she learned shortly before the meeting that a promising job opportunity she'd pinned her hopes on had fallen through.
"I remember talking about it and I just started crying hysterically," she says. "My friend just hugged me and was like, 'You know what, everything is going to work out.' "
For the rest of the hourlong session, her business school classmates discussed what might have gone wrong during her job interview, critiqued her résumé, and gave her ideas on what she could do differently next time. The group's encouragement and advice paid off; by August she landed a job as a marketing data analyst at Petco. Says Mager: "I just think if I were doing it alone, it would have been a lot harder. Having that shoulder to lean on really helped."
Students are banding together to help each other more than ever before as they navigate one of the most dismal MBA job markets in years. In the last year or two, dozens of job search support clubs, often called "job accountability" groups, have sprung up on MBA campuses across the country. Some are official school-sponsored ones organized by the career services offices at business schools, while others are student-generated and student-led meetings. While the format of the groups can vary—they take place in campus cafeterias, students' apartments, or via conference call—all of them share a common goal: to help keep students motivated and upbeat while hunting for a job in a brutal market, career services officers say. In some cases, alumni from the MBA class of 2009 still job-hunting are participating. The groups can become a lifeline of sorts for students, who can easily get discouraged and frustrated as their job search drags on, says Robin Darmon, director of Rady's MBA Career Connections office, who launched several job clubs for students last year and plans to do so again this winter.
"Keeping their morale up is a huge part of this, so we kind of act as cheerleaders. We talk them through it and say, 'This too will pass,' " Darmon says. "Most of these students are doing everything right, and in a good economy they would have had four or five job offers."
Indeed, by this time just a few years ago, most second-year MBAs at top schools had already secured job offers and signed contracts with their internship employers. But the job downturn that hit MBA campuses last year does not appear to have subsided yet and many students continue to face a prolonged and difficult job search, career services directors say. According to the latest data reported to Bloomberg BusinessWeek, 16.5% of job-seeking students from the 2009 graduating class of the top 30 MBA programs did not get even one offer by the time schools collected their final fall employment data three months after graduation. And it doesn't look like the hiring outlook is going to be much better for MBAs graduating this spring. Recruiting in areas like financial services and consulting, two of the most popular career destinations among MBA grads, remains flat or down for most business schools this fall. And many anticipate it will remain that way for the rest of the school year, according to the preliminary results of a survey of 90 business schools conducted this fall by the umbrella group MBA Career Services Council.
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