December 1996: Volume 65: Number 2
Been There, Done That
by Janet Zich
Illustrations by Tim Clark
In a recent career survey of alumni/ae, we asked you where you've been and what you've been doing. The results are in.
In 1996, the Business School mailed a two-page questionnaire to 4,000 graduates of the MBA classes of 1965 through 1989. The recipients were divided into five groups of 800, representing the classes of 1965 through 1969, 1970 through 1974, 1975 through 1979, 1980 through 1984, and 1985 through 1989, and stratified by location to reflect their geographical breakdown—90 percent of the surveys were sent to alumni/ae in the United States and 10 percent abroad. Recipients were asked to list their major career moves over the years and provide information about each position, such as industry, size of the organization, ending salary, and reason for leaving. A remarkably responsive 2,440 MBAs (61 percent) completed and returned the survey.
If we had hoped to find an "average" alum, we would have been disappointed. Instead, we learned that our graduates reflect the diversity we speak about so proudly in our students. After all, we never intended to be a cookie-cutter school of management. Nevertheless, we found after weeks of number-crunching that some similarities emerged.
The First Job
Every alumnus/ae can remember anguishing over that vital first job after graduation. Surely it would mean the difference between failure and success in later life. Perhaps it did, but we learned that one-quarter of the respondents not only left their first jobs but also changed industries by the end of the second year, and 40 percent by the fifth.
The choice of first job varied according to the date of graduation. After 1969, there was a definite trend away from non-high-tech manufacturing and toward management consulting and, to a lesser degree, investment banking. But, in the earliest group, MBAs from 1965 through 1969, consulting drew only 8 percent and investment banking didn't even attract 5 percent. Nearly a third of those classes went into either manufacturing (21 percent) or high tech (11 percent).
After 1969, non-high-tech manufacturing dropped to 9 percent or under, and after 1975, management consulting settled into uncontested first place, with figures ranging from 20 to 23 percent. Meanwhile, investment banking rose from 6 percent in the 1970 -1974 group to 16 percent in the most recent block of classes surveyed.
Along the Career Path
Since nearly 80 percent changed industries from their pre-MBA jobs when
they took their first jobs after graduation, then we should not have
been surprised that more than half changed industries with the second
job. Only 20 percent of MBAs who started out in consulting took a second
job in that area; 51 percent in investment banking stayed there. The
retention rate was highest for high tech, with 71 percent remaining in
the industry (despite frequent job changes), followed by
media/entertainment; health care/biotech; construction/ real estate
development; and financial services other than investment and commercial
banking.
Work roles also shifted dramatically over time, moving toward general management and entrepreneurial positions. While most grads took first jobs as "functional specialists" (defined as stock brokers, venture capital analysts, CPAs, attorneys, or other specialists responsible for application of technical expertise within an organization), currently 38 percent lead organizations as general managers, owners, or entrepreneurs, and another 32 percent are business unit or functional managers. Overall, one-third have owned a company at least once in their careers and over half have been general managers or owners.
Of the "oldest" MBA classes surveyed, those from 1965 to 1974, 31 percent led organizations 10 years after graduation. By 20 years out, the number of "bosses" reached 44 percent. Currently, 26 percent of those graduates identify themselves as entrepreneurs. Only 2 percent of them took first jobs as entrepreneurs, but their number grew to 20 percent by the time they were out 10 years.
Reasons for changing jobs were remarkably similar down through the classes. They were, in order: career advancement; interest in new opportunity; more money; lifestyle; unhappiness with the current job; progression blocked; and relocation. There were differences by gender, however. Although women also ranked advancement and opportunity first and second, they were more than twice as likely as men to leave their first job for reasons of lifestyle.
Money may have ranked a poor third as a reason for taking a new job, but GSB graduates seem comfortably well off. Today's median salary-plus-bonus range of alumni/ae from the classes of 1965-1984 is $150,000 to $200,000. At the 75th percentile, the range is $300,000 to $500,000. Corresponding figures for the 1985-1989 group are $100,000 to $150,000 and $200,000 to $300,000.
One of the most prominent trends over time was a migration to smaller companies. More than half of the respondents originally came to the Business School from companies of more than 1,000 employees. Fully one-quarter came from organizations of 25,000 employees or more. While the medium-to-large companies rose briefly in popularity at the first job after graduation, the giant 25,000-plus firms fell slightly from 26 percent to 21 at the first job and then bombed to the current figure—10 percent. Today, only 35 percent of respondents work in organizations of more than 1,000 employees. An almost equal number, 33 percent, are in firms of 25 or fewer. This "downsizing" held true across all the classes.
Why?
In evaluating any survey like this, figures are the easy part. The whats
and the how muches can be bar-charted, pie-charted, and otherwise
graphed. It's the whys that are so tempting but dangerous to pin down.
For example, we note that the job category "government," which is defined to include military service, ranked third in first job choice of the MBA classes of 1965-1969 back in the days of the military draft and a mostly American, mostly male student body. Government ranked fourth for members of the classes of 1970-1974, who graduated during the waning days of the Vietnam War, and then it disappears from our charts.
It seems safe to say there's a connection between the downturn in government careers and the Vietnam War. But why? Because there was no longer a duty to serve in the military? Because government service of all kinds had been devalued by the lingering debate over the conflict? Or was "government" simply one of those unexplainable blips that appears briefly and then disappears?
During that period the Public Management Program was founded by Dean Arjay Miller. After a short falling off of interest, the PMP has resurged in the past decade, with about 10 percent of students qualifying for the certificate in public management each year and many more involved in the program's activities. Does the fact that under 5 percent of our alums take public sector jobs mean the program is not producing? Or should we measure the PMP's payoff by the 46.2 percent of respondents who served their communities as volunteers or sat on nonprofit boards during the past five years?
So How Are We Doing?
Given all of the reasons not to rely on numbers alone, we were still sorry to learn that 2 percent of respondents rated their GSB experience as poor preparation for their first jobs and 1 percent for their entire careers. But the news was more good than bad. Fully two-thirds felt their GSB experience was "very good" or "excellent" in preparing them for their first jobs, and even more—nearly three-quarters—found it prepared them exceptionally well for their entire careers.
This report was prepared with the assistance of the Pacific Consulting Group (Palo Alto, Calif.).
MBA Classes of 1965-1969 |
MBA Classes of 1970-1974 |
MBA Classes of 1975-197 |
|||||||||
First Job |
Current Job |
First Job |
Current Job |
First Job |
Current Job |
||||||
Other |
22% |
Other |
26% |
Other |
18% |
Other |
28% |
Other |
20% |
Other |
24% |
Commercial Banking |
5% |
Energy |
5%
|
Consumer Products |
6% |
Health Care/ BioTech |
5% |
Accounting |
6% |
Health Care/ BioTech |
5% |
Other Services |
5% |
Healthcare/ BioTech |
5%
|
Investment Banking |
6% |
Investment Banking |
5% |
Investment Banking |
6% |
Trade |
5% |
Consumer Products |
6% |
Investment Banking |
5%
|
Other Fin Services |
6% |
Construction/ Real Estate |
6% |
Manufacturing |
6% |
Manufacturing |
6% |
Education |
6% |
Constuction/ Real Estate |
6%
|
Commercial Banking |
8% |
Trade |
6% |
Other Fin Services |
6% |
Investment Banking |
8% |
Energy |
6% |
Other Services |
8%
|
Govt/ Nonprofit |
8% |
Manufacturing |
7% |
Other Services |
8% |
Other Services |
10% |
Mgmt Consulting |
8% |
Mgmt Consulting |
9%
|
Other Services |
8% |
Mgmt Consulting |
8% |
High Tech |
10% |
Other Fin Services |
11% |
Govt/ Nonprofit |
10% |
Manufacturing |
9%
|
Accounting |
9% |
High Tech |
11% |
Commercial Banking |
13% |
High Tech |
13% |
High Tech |
11% |
High Tech |
13%
|
Manufacturing |
9% |
Other Fin Services |
11% |
Mgmt Consulting |
20% |
Mgmt Consulting |
13% |
Manufacturing |
21% |
Other Fin Services |
14%
|
High Tech |
11% |
Other Services |
13% |
||||
Mgmt Consulting |
11% |
||||||||||
First Job |
Current Job
|
First Job |
Current Job |
First Job |
Current Job |
||||||
MBA Classes of 1980-1984 |
MBA Classes of 1985-1989 |
||||||||||
First Job |
Current Job |
First Job |
Current Job |
||||||||
Other |
28% |
Other |
21% |
Other |
19% |
Other |
20% |
||||
Commercial Banking |
5% |
Media/ Entertainment |
5% |
Manufacturing |
5% |
Venture Capital |
5% |
||||
Other Fin Services |
6% |
Manufacturing |
6% |
Construction/ Realestate |
6% |
Health Care/ BioTech |
6% |
||||
Manufacturing |
7% |
Other Services |
6% |
Venture Capital |
6% |
Manufacturing |
6% |
||||
Investment Banking |
13% |
Venture Capital |
6% |
Other Fin Services |
7% |
Manufacturing |
6% |
||||
High Tech |
18% |
Health Care/ Biotech |
7% |
High Tech |
13% |
Investment Banking |
10% |
||||
Mgmt Consulting |
23% |
Investment Banking |
9% |
Investment Banking |
16% |
Mgmt Consulting |
11% |
||||
Mgmt Consulting |
10% |
Mgmt Consulting |
21% |
Other Fin Services |
11% |
||||||
Other Fin Services |
10% |
High Tech |
17% |
||||||||
High Tech |
20% |
|
|
||||||||
