Tech sector biggest employer of CMU’s Tepper grads

More than 40 percent of the 2017 MBA graduates from Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business landed jobs with technology companies.

That’s a sharp change from 10 years earlier, when the financial services industry was the biggest employer of Tepper graduates.

“It’s really a reflection of the spread of technology across all sectors and all aspects of our lives,” said Stephen Rakas, executive director of Tepper’s Career Opportunities Center.

Mr. Rakas said, “This generation’s affinity for technology” also had something to do with the trend.

A record 58 percent of the program’s female grads accepted positions with technology companies, up from 45 percent among 2016 female grads, he said.

The top three employers of the Class of 2017 were Amazon, which hired 15 percent of Tepper’s grads, followed by Microsoft and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Ten years ago — when the U.S. economy was on the cusp of the Great Recession — about 29 percent of the school’s 2007 MBA graduates ended up in the financial services sector. The top employers that year were Deutsche Bank, Deloitte and Bank of America, according to Tepper records.

Only 17 percent of 2007 graduates took positions with

technology concerns.

The recession changed the way many students viewed working for investment firms and banks. The downfall of companies such as Lehman Brothers and AIG, plus the financial misconduct and abuses exposed in the years that followed, had a lot to do with those changing perceptions of the industry.

“2008 changed so much around financial services and Wall Street,” said William Valenta Jr., assistant dean of the University of Pittsburgh’s Katz Graduate School of Business.

Mr. Valenta said today’s students are more interested in their work environment and other issues.

“Students are more socially aware. They’re thinking about companies that have a work/life balance and that demonstrate social responsibility,” he said.

Only 15 percent of 2017 Tepper grads took a position in the financial services industry.

But Mr. Rakas said that industry is doing a better job of providing what today’s students are looking for. “Ten years ago, I wouldn’t have heard banks bragging about work/life balance,” he said.

After technology, the next biggest employer was the consulting industry, which hired 20 percent of Tepper’s 2017 class.

The median starting salary of Tepper’s 2017 class was $120,000 vs. $117,000 the prior year.