A classroom at INSEAD, a French business school that landed atop Bloomberg Businessweek's 2010 ranking of international MBA programs for the first time since 2002.
By Alison DamastPablo Garcia-Morera had almost everything in place he needed to launch a career in Spain after graduating from IE Business School (IE Full-Time MBA Profile) this past December. Though he is Filipino, his family owns an apartment in Madrid and he holds a European Union passport. All he needed to stay in Spain was a job, but finding one proved to be harder than Garcia-Morera, who worked as an account manager at Pepsi Philippines before getting his MBA, could ever have imagined. He spent the six months following graduation applying for dozens of openings in Spain, which has the highest unemployment rate in Europe, with little luck. His hopes rose when he landed interviews at Unilever's (UN) Barcelona office and Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) in Madrid, but neither opportunity panned out.
"The job market actually ruined my plans, and by May I had to give up and go back home," said Garcia-Morera, 30, who returned home to the Philippines to work as head of sales for his family food importing business. "It was disappointing because working in Europe would have opened new doors, but it was hard to even find an opening available."
Recent graduates from Bloomberg Businessweek's 10 top-ranked international business schools continue to be hit hard by the ripple effects of the global financial downturn, with an increasing number of students like Garcia-Morera resorting to their plan B or returning home after fruitless job searches in Europe. This year's still shaky market for MBA talent in Europe and Canada shook up this year's international ranking, with France's INSEAD (INSEAD Full-Time MBA Profile) taking the top spot.INSEAD climbed two spots since the previous ranking in 2008, pushing Canada's Queen's School of Business (Queen's Full-Time MBA Profile) out of the top slot.
With jobs scarce, recruiting relationships shifting, and student anger at a boiling point, two newcomers to the top 10—No. 9 York University's Schulich School of Business (Schulich Full-Time MBA Profile) and No.10 University of Cambridge's Judge Business School (Judge Full-Time MBA Profile)—were able to elbow their way onto the list. On average, one in seven recent graduates, or 14 percent, were still without a job three months after graduation, according to placement data from the seven top-10 schools that reported it.
The hiring outlook in Europe remained challenging for the most recent group of MBA graduates, especially in countries still reeling from aftereffects of the financial crisis, said Nunzio Quacquarelli, managing director of QS Quacquarelli Symonds, a London company that organizes the annual QS World MBA Tour. "Europe is having a slow recovery and, if anything, countries like Spain, Greece, and others are not recovering yet," Quacquarelli said.
Despite the bleak economic outlook, business schools in Spain have still managed to hold their own in this year's ranking, with IE Business School and ESADE taking the third and fourth spots, respectively.
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