Finding the Best MBA Internship Destinations in the Pacific Northwest
The Pacific Northwest MBA job market has been rapidly expanding for years. The region is packed full of corporate giants, technology startups, and many more lucrative companies MBAs know fully-well, such as Starbucks, Amazon, Boeing, and Microsoft. 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.
Best MBA Internship Opportunities in the Northeast
There’s no doubt that summer internships play a critical role in an MBA student’s education and career. Not only do internships provide students with the opportunity to gain hands-on experience in the workforce, but they’re also known for helping students develop professional connections and earn top-tier salaries.
But not all internships are made equal, especially for talented business school prospects. For example, working at Apple would likely have a very different effect on an MBA’s resume than working for a small, unknown startup company down the street. And if you’re looking at the top cities across the U.S. where companies actively recruit talent, you can’t go wrong with Boston, New York City, or Philadelphia for your location. But which is the best?
In this article, we highlight the top internship destinations in each city along with the top two schools in each area that will get you where you want. Continue reading…
Look Out for These Boston Internships
If you’ve read MetroMBA’s look at how summer internships play a crucial role for MBA students, you’re probably already familiar with the many benefits of interning during your MBA career. Between forging professional connections, gaining hands-on experience, and top tier salaries, MBA students have lot to gain from seeking out these opportunities. Boston internships manage to stand out, in particular, because of a wealth of excellent business school options.
Of course, the internship model is a win-win for all participants: students get the opportunity for professional experience, and companies get to work alongside emerging talent in the business world. Companies across the U.S. actively search for and recruit this talent. The need and capacity for interns, however, can vary from organization to organization. As students begin their search for the perfect internship, and can be important to take note of what companies are the biggest internship employers in their area.
Boston Internships for MBAs
Anheuser-Busch InBev (AB InBev), created ten years ago through the merger of Anheuser-Busch and InBev, is one of top hirers for MBA students in the Boston region. A Belgian-Brazilian beverage and brewing company, AB InBev has offices throughout the world, currently employing around 183,000 people. Given the global nature of their product, the company sponsors MBA and internship opportunities with a focus on global business. Each summer, the company offers a 10-12 week summer internship at their New York office, which often results in getting hired into the company’s Global MBA program—a one year high potential leadership program that prepares participants for quick career growth.
Anheuser-Busch InBev was one of the top hirers for MBA internships at both the Harvard Business School and the Sloan School of Management at MIT, two of the most highly ranked business programs in the world. At MIT Sloan, AB InBev employed nine members of the Class of 2017 as summer interns.
Founded 173 years ago in London, Deloitte remains one of the world’s top professional services networks today, providing tax, consulting, enterprise risk and financial advisory services throughout the world. As of 2016, Deloitte was recognized as the 6th largest privately owned organization in the United States.
With roughly 263,900 employees worldwide, it’s probably no surprise that Deloitte offers plenty of Boston internships. Deloitte Consulting hired six MBA interns from MIT Sloan for the summer of 2017, and also made the lists of top employers for F.W. Olin, Harvard, and Suffolk University’s Sawyer Business School.
The vast number of student interns employed at Deloitte may be a reflection of their vast internship program, which include programs like the Deloitte Consulting Immersion Program, Deloitte Women’s Leadership Launch, and the Advanced Degree Veterans’ Forum.
At Boston University’s Questrom School of Business, 108 different companies hired 140 students for internships in 2018. CVS Health, also an employer for MBAs from Harvard Business School and Babson College’s F.W. Olin Graduate School of Business, hired five students from Questrom for summer internships, making it the number one employer for that school.
CVS Health Corporation, headquartered in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, has grown since 1964 into a top Fortune 500 company with more than 246,000 employees and $177 billion in annual revenue. In December 2017, the retail and health care company also made headlines when it acquired health insurance mega-company Aetna for $69 billion.
CVS Health offers a number of MBA internship programs for MBA students, depending on their interest within the field. Among them are the CVS Year-round internship, Spanish Immersion Summer Internship, and Specialty Clinical Innovation Internship. CVS also believes in students growing their careers with the organization, which likely means greater opportunity for an internship to turn into a long term career.
With the growing popularity of jobs within the healthcare administration field, it should come as no surprise that one of the top employers for MBA internships in Boston is the Boston Children’s Hospital. The hospital, founded in 1869, has been ranked by the U.S. News & World Report #1 in eight of ten clinical specialties. For 2018-19, it was named the country’s number one pediatric hospital.
The hospital is affiliated with Harvard Medical School, so it’s likely no surprise that they are a top employer of MBA students as well, learning about the other side of health care. They are also one of the top employers for MBA students at Northeastern’s D’Amore-McKim School of Business, which requires students to pursue a corporate residency for six months of its 24-month full-time MBA program.
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…
Where Can I Get My Summer Internship?
In part one of our primer on MBA internships—”What is a Summer Internship and Why Should I be Interested?“—we took a closer look into the benefits of having a summer internship and where to start to look for one. Today, we’ll start to dive deeper into what types of opportunities are available, which companies offer them, and the potential salaries interns can make.
Where Can I Find a summer Internship?
You might already be sold on the idea of getting a summer internship, but if you’re going to reap the benefits of an internship, you’ll have to find one first.
A look at summer interns at business schools throughout the country reveals some common trends. While students find and get internships in a variety of ways, the most common method by far as through university resources. At the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago, for example, 86.7 percent of students had their internships facilitated by the school, whether through campus interviews, connections made through networking, or other sources like faculty and student groups. For the much smaller percentage who found summer internships on their own, it was a fairly even split between students with personal connections and those who applied directly through a company’s website or job board.
If you’re looking for the perfect summer internship, making use of your school’s Career Services department can be crucial part. A quick look at the Booth School’s Career Services can help make sense of that 86.7 percent number: the office provides students with help in networking, interviewing, negotiating and more. These skills might be gained through workshops, one-on-one coaching, and other techniques to help steer students through their internship experiences and onto careers.
What Will I Be Doing?
The types of opportunities available for MBA summer internships are just as varied as the students themselves. At the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, two functions emerged as the most popular (marketing and education, with 17.2 percent of Wharton interns and 15.4 percent, respectively), but overall revealed a huge variety of industry and fields. From hospitality to insurance to real estate, Wharton student interns spent their summers doing a little bit of everything. Students also did not seem to be restricted in their internship by location. While 28 students did stay in the state of Pennsylvania to complete their internship, a nearly even number took on internships in New York City, and many more spread throughout the country in states like California, Massachusetts, and the District of Columbia. Over 22.5 percent of students even completed internships outside of the United States.
Nearly a quarter of Wharton MBAs complete their summer internships outside of the United States.
The type of work performed by interns each summer can also vary heavily, depending on the company, the position, and even a students own career goals and abilities. There is also a lot of variety as far as the scope of each internship: while some interns work full-time hours over the course of a summer, other roles may require less of an extended time commitment. For Wharton interns working full-time over the summer, internship length had a huge range and might run anywhere from three to seventeen weeks.
Most major companies that hire and recruit MBAs will have some type of internship program already in place, but looking at past internship and employment reports at your university can provide a good snapshot of what types of companies students typically intern with. At Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, there were a number of companies hiring more than three students, while some hired more than 25 Kellogg students. Companies like Amazon, McKinsey & Company, and the Boston Consulting Group emerged among the top hiring companies of MBA interns from Kellogg.
In a tech company like Amazon, the type of internships offered to students can also vary widely. Students interested in working for the company might find internships available in the Finance Leadership Development Program, the Retail Leadership Development Program, the AWS CloudPath Program manager and more.
How Much Will I Make?
With the length of every internship and the hours required varying so significantly, how can students be sure their internship can support them through the summer?
A look at MBA internships and the salaries they offer from month to month reveal a general trend of well-paid internships even in industries on the lower end of the payment range. Far from the typical unpaid internship that so often springs to mind when students search for summer gigs, payment for these MBA internships can range from $1,000 per month to more than $14,000. The tremendous range in these numbers is mostly the result of differences in industry and function for each internship. At the Anderson School of Management at UCLA, for instance, student interns in consulting reported salaries ranging from $4,333 to $14,083 per month. Even the industries with the lowest salaries overall still boast pay that can generally support a student’s cost of living for the summer. For job function, the highest paid internships were in management/strategy ($500-$14,083), while the lowest were in human resources ($520-5,600).
With the possibility of high salaries, networking opportunities, and even the chance to turn an internship into a full-time career, it’s no surprise that so many MBAs participate in summer internship programs. At UCLA Anderson, 227 students of 238 sought internships for the summer—and 227 found them.
Your internship goals also might help you pick the right MBA program if you are still undecided. Looking into the success rate of internship placements at each school, as well as where students typically intern and the range of salaries they earn, might make the difference between two otherwise equal programs.
