is investment banking good enough for top MBAs?

monydad
Thu, 03 Aug 2006 20:40:26 +0000

This is familiar ground, from the engineering sub-forum, but:

It seems to be true that certain IB and consulting jobs are disproportionally appealing to many entrants to the workforce. Whether this is due to the nature of the work, future prospects, immediate or future remuneration prospects, or all of the above.

But this impacts prospective employers of liberal arts majors far more than employers of engineers. Investment banks are “equal opportunity” poachers of talent; their recruiting efforts, and their appeal, are not limited, or even primarily directed, to the MIT recruiting department. For every individual an IB poaches away from an engineering career, there are 5 (or whatever) more than this liberal arts majors poached away from ad agencies, newspapers, or whoever else would otherwise employ them for a salary more closely aligned to what they are actually worth.

Many MBAs do not get offers from elite investment banks or consulting firms. So to say that investment banks are more appealing than engineering firms to some engineering students does not mean that MBA jobs ubiquitously are more appealing. Not all MBA jobs are investment banking jobs, or have equal appeal.

In other words, Investment banking jobs seem to have disproportionate appeal to many majors, no need to single out engineering in this regard. The engineering firms don’t need to increase their compensation, job attractiveness, etc, any more than the legions of other types of companies, who ALL lose the employment battle to the investment banks, need to. In the case of engineering, the poaching is limited to only some individuals at a few schools. In the scheme of things this might not be considered such a significant “brain drain” to cause the employers to lose much sleep about it. Fortunately for them, the I banks are really interested in only a small number of engineering types, and IMO, vica versa. The skillsets in many cases do not align well with the available jobs.