Employment Data Standards: Why They Matter in Your Search for the Right B-School

 When consulting a school’s employment data report, it’s important to consider the process by which that data was compiled and analyzed.

Megan Hendricks, Executive Director, MBA Career Services & Employer Alliance

When considering which business school to pursue, prospective students often consult a school’s employment data report as a way to research typical career paths and other information about the  student profile. When using this information to make an important application decision, it’s important to consider the process by which that data was compiled and analyzed in order to ensure the information is comparable across schools.

The MBA Career Services & Employer Alliance is a professional organization of business schools and employers. A primary goal of the association is to manage The Standards for Reporting Employment Statistics, a tool which provides business schools the ability to capture and analyze their MBA and Specialty Master’s program employment data in a consistent and comparable way.  

Knowing that the data being released to the public has been calculated in the same way for each school allows for a true analysis of factors such as:

• A minimum percentage of students for which reliable employment data must be known
• Common definitions and usage of job functions and industries, allowing for accurate comparison
• A true analysis of what constituents a “job seeking” student and a job offer
• A consistent way of calculating base salary and signing bonus
• Comparable data across other factors such as world region or undergraduate major

MBA CSEA member schools that use the Standards will designate that usage on their employment reports, either in text format or through the use of the MBA CSEA standards badge.

For more information about the Standards, visit: www.mbacsea.org/standards or contact: standardsconsult@mbacsea.org.