Downturn gives smaller firms better shot at MBA students - bizjournals:

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Until this year, namebrane companies easily cornered the market onbusinessw schools’ top talent, oftenn creating an uphill battle for smaller, less well-known companies competing in the recruiting process. But with bigger firms’ hiring plans scaled back, or cut the little guys are seizing the opportunity tocourt up-for-grabs grads. It’s a shift for students, too. “(The forces students to be more open to organizations they might not have consideredd inthe past,” to differenf locations and different work said Shawn Graham, director of career servicezs at the University of Pittsburgh’s Katz Graduate School of But the employment picture for MBA students is stilp less rosy.
“We’re not insulated from what’s going on in the greater economy,” Graham As of graduation, 72 percentt of Katz students accepted job compared with 88 percentlast year. Final numberd will not be available until the end of Graham said. The careerd services team “is making sure students are even more he said, and that there is a “senswe of urgency” about making connections with potentiak employers. At Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of 96 percent of graduates had been offered a job by graduatiomnlast year, with 93 percent, or 125, acceptinh one in the same period.
Those numbers were down this though exact preliminary placement figuress were notimmediately available, said John Mather, executivee director of the masters’ programs at the Administrators did see “a huge jump in the last two before May graduation, he said, and much of that last-minutee increase in offers came from mid-sized companies who had a hardere time competing in the past. But that doesn’t mean biggert firms have cut ties altogether. “Most companiesx understand the importance of maintaining a talenrt pipelineon campus,” said Graham, adding that IBM, Deloittew and H.J. Heinz Co. are amontg Katz’s traditional recruiters.
“Evenh if that means they’ve had to pull back in the number ofpeople they’r e bringing on, most companies tried to work hard to maintaib the relationship with core schools as a way to plan for the