Market Has Changed for New MBA Grads

This spring, thousands of business school graduates will be returning to a much different workforce than the one they left to go and get their MBAs.

A new study shows companies are planning to hire 22 percent fewer graduates in 2009 than they did in 2008. They're also cutting internship hires by 21 percent.

On the Georgetown University campus, McDonough School of Business MBA candidates are studying hard, about to re-enter the working world.

"You know at this point in time I have not secured an offer which I've accepted," says Jon McAvoy, who left a job at Freddie Mac to get his MBA at Georgetown.

He's 31 years old and spent eight years in the workforce.

"I was hoping to continue my career in mortgage-backed or asset-backed securities," McAvoy says. "The market dried up. For that reason I shifted gears."

For a time, McAvoy was considering a career in real estate development.

"But that market has shrunk dramatically," he says.

Now, McAvoy and many of his business school classmates aren't sure what they'll do after graduation.

"A few of us are anxious," he said. "But that's only in the short term. We have to say that it makes sense for us to ride it out and find the position that which is the best fit and not the first one that's available."

A recent survey of business schools across the country found this to be the worst job recruiting season in years.

"We fortunately only saw a slight decline in the number of recruiters coming on campus," says Kristen Lynas.

She is associate director of career management at Georgetown's McDonough School of Business. "The biggest decline was in internships. But for the full-time positions we saw less of a decline."

Even so, Lynas says helping her students find jobs this spring has not been easy.

"The real difficulty is for career switchers," she says. "Those individuals who took the MBA in the hopes that it will help them make a dramatic switch in industry and job function which might have been possible in a hot job market and now is a little more difficult."

And tough on the MBA candidates' psyches.

"They go through a lot of stages," Lynas says. "I think in the beginning of the year they were in denial and hopeful optimism. Then reality hits. They're realizing it's going to be more complicated. And some roll with the punches. Some find a real crisis of - 'I need to re-think what I'm looking at.'"

A recent survey found our suffering economy is costing business school graduates jobs in every industry where they would typically find work.