New MBA Jobs: Morgan Stanley, Google, Nike, and More
Every MBA’s goal is to land their dream job, but why limit your choices to the United States? With so many great companies recruiting MBAs to develop businesses in markets across the globe, it’s hard to stay on top of all the opportunities out there. Here’s a selection of some of the most exciting open positions out there right now in the US, Europe and Asia: Continue reading…
In Search of the Best MBA Internships in the Bay Area
It’s not just the entrepreneurship and technology boom of the past thirty years that has brought San Francisco into prominence as a major city for business. In fact, the city’s legacy as a center for banking and finance can be traced all the way back to the years of the gold rush. From it’s nickname as the “Wall Street of the West” to its role today as a hub for technology and social media companies, San Francisco has long been a city where young business professionals can thrive.
MBA programs in the metro offer opportunities for students to connect with local organizations through Bay Area internships and corporate partnerships. These internship opportunities, the majority of which are arranged through campus recruitment or university networking, frequently open the door for full-time employment and ongoing career training. Below, we’ve rounded up just a few of our favorites.
The Best Bay Area Internships for MBAs
Amazon consistently makes the lists of top employers, both for full-time positions and summer internships, for graduates from universities like the UC Davis Graduate School of Management, SJSU’s Lucas Graduate School of Business, and the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley.
This likely doesn’t come as a surprise. With an extensive reach into the retail, tech, and entertainment industries, Amazon has made headlines in the past years for its vigorous hiring of MBA students and graduates. In 2015, the company was the number one employer for graduating MBA students, and it doesn’t look like that trend will change any time soon.
Amazon has hired more Haas MBAs for employment and internships than any one company has in recent history (33 in 2017). There are also currently 165 Haas alumni already working at the company, who continue to play a large role in the recruitment and onboarding process for new hires.
One reason that might explain the staggering number of Haas MBAs joining Amazon is the company’s vigorous recruitment process, which begins early in fall and provides practice for case interviews. According to MBA alum Carolyn Chuong, now a Senior Product Manager at Amazon, the Amazon corporate culture and Berkeley’s academic philosophy are a good fit for each other.
“Haas and Amazon have cultures that value feedback,” she said.
San Francisco’s role today as a hub for technology may help explain why Cisco Systems, an American multinational technology company headquartered in San Jose, is one of the top internship destinations for MBA students at schools like Haas, SJSU, and the University of San Francisco School of Management.
For students both in and out of the tech fields, Cisco offers internship opportunities in fields like marketing, security, supply chain, operations, human resources, and more. Schools like the San Jose State University even offers special opportunities through their corporate partnership with Cisco, such as a unique MS Software Engineering, specialization in cybersecurity available only for employees.
Listed in 2017 as the most visited website in the world, Google seems to have no limits to how far the company might grow. Headquartered in Mountain View, California, Google now employs more than 85,050 people around the globe. Talented MBAs who can break into the company can make, on average, nearly $6,000 per month as an intern, not to mention attractive benefits like free food, gym membership and transportation. Simply put, a stop at Google is one of the most attractive Bay Area internships out there.
Not surprisingly, Stanford University Graduate School of Business and Berkeley Haas have the most alumni currently with Google. San Jose State University and UC Davis grads are also prolific at the company, among other top schools like Cornell, Harvard, and MIT. Landing an internship at Google can be an incredibly challenging process. With high rates of alumni from California schools working at the company, students can leverage their university’s professional network to make connections and get their foot in the door.
Tesla, a multinational corporation specializing in renewable energy, offers a large number of internships and co-ops for MBA students. With its headquarters in Palo Alto, CA, and a commitment to taking on some of the world’s most important problems, it’s understandable why students at schools like USFCA, UC Davis, and SJSU seek out internship opportunities with the company.
“My experiences as a Tesla intern are some that I will take with me for the rest of my career,” one Tesla intern said on her experience. “I had the opportunity to tackle problems that were challenging, unique, and relevant—and within several weeks, I was trained to weigh in on decisions that would affect an entire production line.”
According to Tesla, interns and co-ops will be matched with teams and projects based on their background and career goals. Many Tesla interns have returned to the company in a full-time role after graduation.
Financial Times Ranks the Top MBAs for Entrepreneurs
Leading entrepreneurs in the business world today can often be seen as trailblazers, standing strong and independent in an often cutthroat world. What isn’t seen as often is the kind of support—whether financial capital or mentorships—that can help get an idea off the ground. In recent years, business schools and MBA programs around the globe have made this kind of support for new businesses a core part of their operation, often offering entrepreneurship majors, business pitch competitions, startup incubators and more.
Each year, The Financial Times releases their ranking of the best MBA programs for entrepreneurship, helping up-and-coming entrepreneurs to make informed choices about the best program for their career and startup goals. Its latest ranking, for 2018, has just been released.
The 2018 ranking of the top MBA’s for entrepreneurship compiled fifty schools from around the world. A number of factors went into determining which schools would make the grade, including the percentage of graduates who started a company after earning their degree, percentage of female entrepreneurs, the extend to which funding from the school or from the school’s alumni network helped in the creation of new businesses, and more. These factors combined would help decide in what position a school would fall on the ranking.
This year, schools in the United States took the top three spots on the list: the Stanford Graduate School of Business, the F.W. Olin Graduate School of Business at Babson College, and the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. Two UK business schools—the Lancaster University Management School and the Cass Business School—rounded out the top five.
Despite dipping numbers of students, the Stanford Graduate School of Business entrepreneurship program is still the top-ranked in the world, according to the Financial Times.
At Stanford, although it still ranked as the best school for entrepreneurship globally, there was actually a significant drop since in the number of students starting a business within three years of graduation. This year, it was just 22 percent of students compared with last year’s 36 percent. Babson College’s Olin Graduate School of Business also witnessed a drop; from 52 percent last year to 37 percent in 2018.
One explanation for the drop, however, is not that interest in entrepreneurship is declining, but instead being taken on more as a ‘side hustle’ than a full-time career. This was certainly the case for Samantha Penabad, a former strategy manager at Accenture and MBA at Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, who has been working on a digital donation platform called GivingFund. Although she didn’t intend on becoming an entrepreneur when she started business school, tutors at the university helped her to develop a business plan and a fellow student with finance experience joined as a co-founder. The service is scheduled to launch later this month.
But GivingFund remains a side job for Penabad, who will be taking on a full-time job in strategy and operations at Google in New York after graduation. As a result, someone like Penabad will be not be included in data for students starting businesses after graduation, but among those accepting full-time jobs. Students pursuing similar paths—working full-time but starting businesses on the side—may help explain the dip in entrepreneurship that many MBA programs are witnessing.
One reason behind this trend may be the fact that many students see a full-time role as just one step to eventually starting their own company. By putting their skills to work at a top company like Amazon or Google, students are able to more quickly pay off their student loans, which means eventually starting a business debt free. Companies like Amazon also may seek out those with entrepreneurial experience, because it demonstrates an attractive leadership quality.
“We welcome applicants with an entrepreneurial spirit,” says Amazon’s senior manager of campus recruiting, Dee Clarke. “They are given the ownership over their work, like they would [in] their own business, but within a global support network that provides added guidance and support.”
Guthrie Jones, an MBA at London’s Cass Business School, holds a similar philosophy. Although he had no intention of getting into entrepreneurship, he couldn’t stop thinking about one particular business idea and decided he’d have to pursue it. Guthrie believes his company, Icepick, which lets people rent out space on their hard drives, has the potential to become a global business. Still, if he right opportunity for a salaried role came up after graduation, he would gladly shift his plan to the side.
Nevertheless, student interest in studying entrepreneurship as part of their MBA has grown at schools like Cass. Part of this may be the result of Cass’s £10m investment fund, which has not only supported new MBA start-ups but has also trained students in the process of investing.
Financial Times MBA Entrepreneur Ranking (2018)
- Stanford Graduate School of Business
- F.W. Olin Graduate School of Business (Babson)
- Tuck Business School (Dartmouth)
- Lancaster University Management School
- Cass Business School (City University)
- Otto Beisheim School of Management (WHU)
- IMD Business School
- Saïd Business School (Oxford)
- Harvard Business School
- Judge Business School (Cambridge)
How To Get a Job with Google
As one of the most recognizable and powerful tech companies in world, Google has always prioritized bringing in fresh, new talent and hiring the best and brightest MBAs to help lead the next era of innovation at the company. Continue reading…
Top MBA Internship Opportunities in the London Metro
As a center for global commerce and business, London is one of the top cities in the world to earn an advance business degree and secure an MBA internship. Continue reading…
An Inside Look at UCLA Anderson Impact Week 2018
Five years ago, UCLA Anderson students, professors, and alumni first got together for a week-long conference about creating positive social change. Now, Impact Week is an annual event that features talks and workshops from some of the world’s leading business experts examining what the future will hold, particularly as it relates to having a positive impact.
The goal of the Impact Week conference is to help attendees rethink the role of social impact—it’s not just for non-profit organizations. Instead, attendees will be introduced to many different ways that for-profit businesses can make an impact across industries. To make this possible, the event brings in many top business leaders with experience all over the board. Some of this year’s speaker’s include:
- Cara Chacon, VP of social & environmental responsibility at Patagonia
- Chuck Lee, director of insights at Buzzfeed Entertainment Group
- Darya Allen-Attar, financial advisor at Morgan Stanley Wealth Management
- Les Borsai, founder and CEO of Gridmob
- Jennifer Vaden Barth, program manager, CS education in media at Google
This year’s conference will start on April 9th and run through April 13, and will feature workshops, panels, screenings, network mixers, receptions, and more. Each event held during the week covers a different topic. Taken together they are intended to provide a full overview of social impact. Topics to be covered include:
- Impact Investing
- How Profit is Possible in the Affordable Housing Space
- Impact in Media and Entertainment
- How to Drive Impact Through Design
- Impact on the Blockchain
- Diversity & Inclusion in Tech
Most days, the conference holds an event over lunch from 11:30 a.m. until 12:30 or 1 p.m. The remaining events for each day then typically take place after 5 p.m., so that attendees can join after work. Anyone and everyone is welcome at Impact Week, including MBA students, students from the greater UCLA community, professionals outside of UCLA, and more.
The cost to attend is $20 for the week, plus $5 per event. To learn more about the conference and to purchase your tickets, click here.
