Top MBA Recruiters: Royal Bank of Canada
Founded in Halifax in 1864, The Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) serves 16 million clients and has over 80,000 employees worldwide. Which means there is a lot of room for a potential RBC career among business school grads.
Continue reading…Top MBA Recruiters: SAP
SAP, which stands for Systems, Applications, and Products in Data Processing, was founded in Weinheim, Germany in 1972 by five former IBM employees. Since then, SAP has grown to become one of the world’s leaders in enterprise application software with over 98,000 full-time employees and offices in 130 countries.
Continue reading…The Top Denver Companies for MBA Graduates
In 2018, the Denver metro area was ranked the second-best location in the country for business school graduates, according to the “10 Best Cities for Business Graduates to Move” list created by Move.org. The city ranks highly for open positions, cost of livability, and unemployment rate. Graduates love the Mile-High City for its great outdoors and strong economy. It also ranks well for median hourly wage at $34,54—making Denver in the top third for discretionary spending.
Continue reading…The Top MBA Recruiters in Phoenix, Arizona
MBA talent in search of opportunities in a growing city should look no further than the Valley of the Sun: Phoenix, Arizona. Corina Vanek of the Phoenix Business Journal reports, “Employment in the Phoenix area grew 4.2 percent during the 12-month period that ended Nov. 30, 2018—the second-highest percentage growth of all metros nationwide.”
Phoenix is home to a number of excellent MBA programs, including the Thunderbird School of Global Management, Arizona State’s W.P. Carey School of Business, Ottawa University, Grand Canyon University, and the University of Arizona Eller College of Management, less than two hours southwest of Phoenix in Tuscon.
Like many major metros in the American west, Amazon is among the most prominent employers of MBA talent. But what other Phoenix companies round out the top five?
Top 5 Phoenix Companies Hiring MBA Graduates
Amazon
Amazon is the largest internet company by revenue in the world, with a reported 2018 revenue of over $232.887 billion. According to Indeed.com, Amazon salaries for Senior Product Management positions average $132,646 per year while Amazon Senior Management positions average $150,089 per year.
Common benefits at Amazon include 401K Plans, health insurance including dental and vision, employee discounts, and life insurance. Employee reviews describe the work environment as “fast-paced and exciting,” but note that a work-life balance is hard to achieve as an Amazon employee.
CVS Health
In 2018, CVS ranked 7th on the Fortune 500 and 17th on the Fortune Global 500 list with $184 billion in annual revenue. In 2017, CVS acquired Aetna for $69 billion dollars. According to LinkedIn data, Senior Director salaries at CVS Health range from $101,000-189,000 with an average salary of $138,000. CVS Health, which employs nearly 300,000, states its core values are “innovation, collaboration, caring, integrity and accountability.”
Intel Corporation
Founded in 1968, Intel Corporation is the world’s second largest semiconductor chip manufacturer based on revenue. Intel ranked 46th in the 2018 Fortune 500 list of the largest U.S corporations by total revenue. As reported by Indeed.com, Intel employees rate the company 4 out of 5 stars for compensation/benefits and 3.9 out of 5 stars achieving a work/life balance. Management positions average in the $150,000 range and include standard benefits such as PTO, vacation and floating holidays, and eight-week paternity leave.
Raytheon
The third-largest defense contractor in the United States as of 2015, Raytheon boasts more than 90 percent of its revenues obtained from military contracts. Established in 1922, Raytheon’s latest annual revenue reached $27.1 billion. Project Management positions at Raytheon average a salary of $99,000-107,000 and include generous benefits, PTO, and 401K packages. Glassdoor ranks Raytheon 15th place in its “Best Places to Interview” category, sporting a 78 percent positive response rate.
IBM Global Services
IBM Global Services has provided IT, management consulting, and outsourcing services since 1991. Its recent acquisitions of Bluewolf and Resource/Ammirati in 2016, as well as PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting in 2001, point to potentially even more growth on the horizon.
According to Glassdoor, Project Management positions at IBM average $79,910 per year. Senior Consulting positions average $101,761. Managing Consultant positions average in the $150,0000 range. Glassdoor rates IBM employee overall satisfaction at 3.7 out of 5 stars on company culture, work/life balance, management, compensation & benefits, and career opportunities.
Conclusion
There appears to be no shortage of Phoenix metro opportunities for MBAs. Outside of the five Phoenix companies, readers would do well to consider investigating a few other Phoenix employers actively recruiting MBAs, including: American Express; Arizona State University; Deloitte Consulting; Honeywell; Bank of America; Wells Fargo; and JP Morgan Chase.
MBA Job Profile: Technical Program Manager
Most successful businesses involve many moving parts. To coordinate personnel and logistics in a rapidly evolving technological landscape requires large teams of individuals and a solid technical background. This is precisely where technical program managers come in handy: they steward all aspects of a program from initiation to implementation.
What is a Technical Program Manager?
Technical program managers handle company technical needs, leading teams in product development and software implementation. They ensure that deadlines are met, and any technical issues are swiftly resolved. This requires the marriage of two traditionally unrelated skill sets—personnel management and technical proficiency.
Since every business has unique technical needs, the specific skills required may vary from company to company. However, there are certain elements that hold true regardless of a company’s specific focus. The most important attributes of an aspiring technical program manager are an acute intuition for leadership, the ability to adapt, and a keen sense of the inherent logistical needs that arise from the combination of these two areas.
Technical program managers aren’t just required to oversee projects; they must also be diligent in tracking issues within the programs they manage and successfully troubleshooting them. They are also required to utilize their expertise to assess the large-scale technical needs of a company and initiate programs accordingly. This requires the identification of all action items necessary for a program’s success as well as schedule and budget development.
Technical Program Manager Salary Expectations
According to Payscale, the median income for technical program managers is $121,627, while Glassdoor cites the average salary at $125,219. Generally speaking, experience affects pay. Technical program managers with less than one year experience earn around $90,000. Those who have been working for over 20 years earn approximately $132,000.
Infosec, an institution that offers educational resources focused on cybersecurity, offers different statistics that are less optimistic. It quotes the national average salary for technical program managers as $89,000 a year. Less experience managed often make $71,000. Senior-level managers typically see around $99,000 per year. Those in urban areas are likely to receive a higher salary than those in less densely populated areas.
However, Infosec is quite optimistic about the future for aspiring technical program managers. It estimates that number of positions will grow by roughly 15-20 percent over the next eight years.
Getting Started
Becoming a technical program manager means having at least a bachelor’s degree in fields like management, business administration, or computer science. Some businesses might hire someone who does not have a bachelor’s degree if they do have prior experience working in a related field. Naturally, if you have both experience and a relevant bachelor’s degree, or an advanced degree, you will stand out to potential employers.
Typically, this means earning an education in an engineering school, rather than a business school. However, business schools offering dual degrees can help provide a path for future technical program managers.
For instance, Harvard Business School offers a MS/MBA option. Earning an MS/MBA from the world’s most well-known academic institution means having world-class career preparation, leading to a similarly world-class career. Harvard MBA graduates, in general, can expect an average annual salary of around $140,000—and that’s before one takes signing bonuses and other benefits into account.
Many of the world’s best business schools, like HBS, offer special dual degree MBA programs for hopeful technical program managers.
Top MBA Recruiters: Bowery Capital
Founded in 2013, NYC-based Bowery Capital is an early-stage venture capital investor that primarily backs SaaS (software-as-a-service) B2B (business-to-business) startups that develop innovative software that allows companies to optimize the role of a continually changing technological landscape.
Bowery Capital is a relatively small firm with less than 50 employees and it has three groups of four individuals at the center of its operations. These groups are the Core Team, the Venture Partners, and the Revenue Council.
Bowery Capital doesn’t just invest in companies—it also provides them the right tools to succeed. It helps these companies build a customer base, provides them with a “robust software infrastructure” to enable growth, and offers crucial support in finding the right talent. This support coupled with the expertise of a combined 50 years of collective experience is what makes Bowery Capital stand out to young companies on the hunt for potential investors.
Landing a Bowery Capital Career
Considering the kinds of startups in which Bowery Capital specializes, any experience that a job applicant might have in software, digital marketing, digital media, online advertising, product management, or social media would give said applicant an edge in the hiring process. Another valuable asset is a keen sense for possible areas of growth within the tech industry.
It should be noted that at the time this article was written, there are no job openings at Bowery Capital. While the company does offer internships for MBA and undergraduate students, there appear to be no openings for those positions.
Working at Bowery Capital
Since the firm is relatively young and small, it is difficult to say much about Bowery Capital’s workplace culture. Its website lists a 12-member team and Glassdoor reviews from former employees suggest that Bowery Capital has a regular stream of interns working there on a part-time, short-term basis.
According to Paysa, Bowery Capital employees make an average annual salary of $146,819, with $97,852 marking the 25th percentile and $179,767 at the 75th percentile. However, this data does not indicate the average salaries by position, so it is unclear how much an employee who recently graduated with an MBA would make.
Life at Bowery Capital
Bowery Capital has not published any employee demographics or statements about their workplace culture, but all reviews from former employees on Glassdoor are overwhelmingly positive. In particular, they are nearly unanimous in their praise for a positive atmosphere and the expertise of their supervisors. The only con was from a former summer intern who mentioned that they had not been paid for their work at the firm.
Paysa also offers some helpful statistics on workplace demographics. Fifty-six percent of Bowery Capital’s employees are white, while the rest declined to offer this information. About 89 percent are male with the remaining 11 percent declining to disclose their gender. However, of the 12 team members listed on the company’s website, 5 are women. Additionally, the Paysa information is based on fewer than 20 users, so both of these data sets are in all likelihood only a small portion of Bowery Capital’s workforce.
Bowery Capital only has one office in New York City, but they invest in companies all over the country, especially on the West Coast, which as you may have heard has a thriving community of technological innovators.
While half of the Bowery Capital team is based in New York City, four are based in San Francisco and two are based in Boston. With this in mind, it seems likely that a Bowery Capital career would likely be based in New York City with potential opportunities for travel.
