Jobmarket better

Although 82 percent looks daunting, this percentage is considerably lower than it was in GMAC’s two previous surveys. From 2001-2002 and 2003-2003, 99 percent and 96 percent, respective ly, believed the economy was weak. The Council says this most recent decline “is statistically significant and rep resents a REAL change in the opinion of corporate recruiters.”

Despite the increased optimism, the average number of new MBA hires has not grown significantly from previous years. It is the number of recruiters — who are able to hire at all — which has increased.

Further, the number of recruiters who previously said they we re constrained by the weak economy has dropped steadily from 69 percent to 57 percent to the current 50 percent.

At present , the poor economy is having a more adverse effect in Europe than in the U. S. In other regions , recruiters are much less like ly to feel the economy is weak, but significantly more likely to feel that it is constraining their re c ruiting plans, according to GMAC.

Who’s hiring

Nearly a quarter — 23 percent — of the companies surveyed hired no new MBA graduates last year, citing reasons such as “No job openings at company, MBA entry level salary demands too high, MBA skills/ resources not critical to my company and Timing of job openings did not match availability of MBA graduates.”

Also, 21 percent of the recruiters who did not hire MBA graduates cited an inability to find MBA candidates who matched their job requirements. Specifically, their efforts to select MBAs we rehampered by a limited supply of candidates with the following characteristics:
-  Relevant industry-specific experience (cited by 22 percent.)
-  Relevant functional ex p e rience (cited by 18 percent.)
-  Representative of a group targeted for recruiting, such as women, minorities or various nationalities (cited by 16 percent.) The larger the company, the more likely it was to cite as a barrier the limited supply of MBA candidates in targeted groups, such as women, minorities or nationalities. This limitation was named by 8 percent of small companies, compared with 16 percent of mid-sized companies and 26 percent of large companies.