HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: M.B.A. Job Offers in Short Supply as Tech, Finance, Consulting Dial Back Recruiting.

Companies are dialing back or delaying hiring of M.B.A.s this fall, a sharp turn from the supercharged recruiting seasons of years past.

Career officers and students at Yale University, Columbia University and Northwestern University say businesses are spending less time on campus than in recent years to hire second-year M.B.A. candidates, or holding off on job offers. That has students thinking about their Plan B if top-tier companies aren’t making offers. EY, Amazon and Boston Consulting Group are rethinking hiring strategy, or saying they will make moves when next year’s business picture becomes clearer, the companies and campus officials say.

Any drop-off in corporate demand for M.B.A.s is startling for students who applied to graduate school in 2021 and 2022 during a white-collar hiring spree with swelling salaries to match. Since then, the three main sectors that hire M.B.A.s at top schools have hit turbulence. Tech giants made big job cuts, consulting firms put start dates on hold and deal making slowed in finance.

During the fall, M.B.A. candidates normally lock in jobs for postgraduation the following spring, but that is happening less this year, students and career-guidance offices say. Schools are encouraging students to be patient and have a Plan B in mind.

“Things have changed on a dime,” said Aakash Patel, a second-year M.B.A. candidate at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business.

Patel, 29, said many of his classmates are looking for jobs after their summer internships didn’t result in full-time offers, as is common. In some cases, companies said their performance was good, but the economic climate wasn’t, according to Patel.

Companies in tech, finance and consulting, which recruit 70% or more of some top business schools’ newly minted grads, according to schools’ employment reports, are slow-walking hiring or limiting candidates they are willing to consider.

EY, a major recruiter of M.B.A.s, is scaling back recruiting in consulting because the firm doesn’t anticipate the economy will significantly bounce back by next year when these graduates would start, said Errol Gardner, EY’s global vice chair for consulting.

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