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Companies begin to freeze and rescind MBA internship and job offers [LIST]

This article was originally featured on PoetsAndQuants.com.

It was only a matter of time. But with global markets in flux, unemployment claims reaching record levels, and all signs pointing toward an impending recession amid the spread of coronavirus, MBA hiring could already be slowing down, according to a leaked accounting of the MBA job market obtained by Poets&Quants.

The document — dated March 26th from the Graduate Career Services office of a top U.S. business school — provides a sobering view of what is to come when MBA students end their spring terms and pour into the job market. Among hiring updates for 116 major companies, many of them mainstream recruiters of MBAs, 40 already have reported some form of freeze, cancellation, or rescinding of internship or job offers. According to the document, the info gathered is based on what employers are reporting to this school and “other top MBA programs.”

Companies from industries largely impacted by the spread of COVID-19, especially transportation, hospitality, and professional sports — have been most impacted. Delta Airlines has implemented a hiring freeze. JetBlue has also put a freeze on hiring, according to the document. Mariott, meanwhile, is rescinding internship offers. NBC Sports and at least one Major League Baseball team have put a hiring freeze or canceled internships. Ticketing companies such as Fandango and StubHub are also on the list of freezing hires or rescinding internship offers.

EVEN FACEBOOK IS CANCELING INTERVIEWS FOR INTERNSHIPS

While many major MBA recruiters, including Google, Amazon, BCG, Deloitte, Goldman Sachs and others, have not reported any hiring impacts so far, several other major employers of MBAs have. AB inBev has reportedly put a freeze on hiring, as has Adobe, Visa and Wipro. Disney put internships and job offers on hold but have not yet canceled them. Facebook and Johnson & Johnson is also reportedly canceling interviews for summer internships. LEK Consulting is actually rescinding internship offers and may also delay the start of MBA hires who have already accepted offers.

Women line up to have Facebook profile pictures taken during a Facebook event called "Finding A Job Or Hiring On Facebook" in New York February 28, 2018. The event helps people find  jobs and help local businesses hire the right people, by expanding the ability to apply to jobs directly on Facebook to more than 40 countries. / AFP PHOTO / TIMOTHY A. CLARY        (Photo credit should read TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP via Getty Images)
Women line up to have Facebook profile pictures taken during a Facebook event called "Finding A Job Or Hiring On Facebook" in New York February 28, 2018.(TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP via Getty Images)

As of last week, officials of at least a few schools reported seeing little to no impact on hiring from the spread of coronavirus, even though many officials privately worried that the market could collapse (see This Year’s MBA Job Market: How Bad Will It Get?). After all, at the worst of the Great Recession, some MBA grads who headed to Wall Street not only found themselves out of their new jobs. Some even had to return the signing bonuses given to them by the investment banks and money management firms they joined. The recession-ravaged MBA Class of 2009 may offer a guide for what to expect, though it could be worse: At the top ten business schools, MBA employment rates at graduation dropped an average of 21% from 2007, according to an analysis by Poets&Quants. At the next 15 highly ranked schools, the drop was even steeper: 23%.

The MBA students who are most at risk right now are those who have not yet accepted or landed a full-time job. While some employers will almost certainly pull back their offers—and at Stanford one student told Poets&Quants that he had already heard of classmates in that category—most employers will likely honor their commitments. Oddly, some of the big brand business schools could bear the brunt of the downturn. That’s because at such schools as Harvard and Stanford, a larger percentage of MBA students tend to look outside the mainstream for jobs—in startups, early-stage companies, private equity shops, and VC firms that do not hire many MBAs and tend to be off-cycle in their MBA hires.

INTERNSHIP OFFERS ARE ESPECIALLY VULNERABLE

Just look at last year’s employment rates at graduation for Stanford and Harvard: 67.5% and 77.3%, respectively. For the Class of 2019, one of the best MBA job markets ever, those are very low MBA job rates. They reflect self-confident graduates who have targeted employment in companies that do not bring in many interns who return to campus in September with a job offer already in hand. At HBS, only an average of 38% of the students convert their internships into full-time jobs. At many other schools, the conversion rate is well over 50%. Back in 2007, two years before the Great Recession vacuumed up lots of jobs in 2009, 93.5% of Stanford MBAs and 94.3% at Harvard had jobs at graduation.

Also vulnerable right now are internship offers to MBA students. As one veteran career management official tells Poets&Quants, “The short-term impact will be on internships,” says the source. “Internships are where companies can pull back pretty easily. It happened in ’01 and ’08 because you can always find employees to work on short-term projects. Why pay MBAs to do that?” Managing interns at a time of significant challenge is also considered a drain on resources. And students who do manage to hold on to their internships may see fewer full-time job offers come from them.

Boston: Harvard Business school building in Cambridge Massachusetts USA.  Harvard Business School (HBS) is the graduate business school of Harvard University in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. The school offers a large full-time MBA program, doctoral programs, HBX and many executive education programs. It owns Harvard Business Publishing, which publishes business books, leadership articles, online management tools for corporate learning, case studies and the monthly Harvard Business Review.
Harvard Business school building in Cambridge Massachusetts USA. (Getty)

At the moment, the hiring outcome is changing rapidly from only a few days ago when some schools had not yet heard of many cutbacks. “From the information I have at this point, I have not heard anything regarding the spread of coronavirus impacting full-time or internship positions for our Georgetown McDonough business majors,” said Talia Schatz, director of the Undergraduate Career Development Center at Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business, last week. Schatz said she had seen no internship or job offer cancellations.

“Not yet,” Schatz added. “I think companies are trying to make sure their employees are safe and transitioning to teleworking and virtual offices right now. So no word yet if employers are starting to rescind offers, defer start dates, etcetera. As of now, I have not received any communication — or even fear of that happening — from any of my students.”

CREATING NEW WAYS OF INFORMING AND COACHING STUDENTS

But schools are aware it’s a possibility and are doing what they can to stay ahead of it. According to Abby Scott, the assistant dean of Career Management at the University of California-Berkeley Haas School of Business, her office has set up a few new Slack channels to monitor the situation and keep “information flowing to and from students.”

“So far, we have been able to crowdsource and share some timely positive news about interviewing continuing virtually and job offers still coming in,” Scott says. “We know the situation is very fluid so a channel like Slack has been an effective new tool for us.”

Akin to McDonough, Scott says they continue to keep in touch with employers as everyone adjusts to remote work and are also offering virtual services to students.

This article was originally featured on PoetsAndQuants.com.

COVID-19's Impact on MBA Hiring

These 40 companies have reported disruptions to recruiting and hiring, according to a document from a top U.S. business school obtained by Poets&Quants.

Company

Status

AB inBev

Freeze

Adobe

Hiring freeze/expect internships to move forward

American Airlines

Accepted offers are still valid

Back Country

Rescinding intern + FT

Cisco

Interns delayed

Cook

Freeze

DaVita

Freeze

Delta

Freeze

Disney

Holding but not cancelled

Experian

Internships cancelled

Facebook

Internship interviews cancelled

Fandango

Internship paused/hiring freeze

Glassdoor

Freeze

Hasbro

Freeze

Herff Jones

Freeze

Hulu

Rescind/internship program paused

IMAX

Canceling internship

Intel

Under review

J&J

Summer internship cancelled

JetBlue

Freeze - honoring current offers but no new hiring

L'Oreal

Talent Management Program on hold

LEK

Rescinding internship offers/May also delay full-time start dates

Mariott

Rescinding internship offers

McChrystal Group

Postponing offers indefinitely

MLB - Washington Nationals

Internship cancelled

NBC Sports

Hiring freeze

NVIDIA

Hiring freeze

Plug n Play

Hiring freeze

Roku

Canceling internship/hiring freeze

Sephora

Cancelled internship

Simon Kucher

Hiring freeze

Sony

Some hiring/paused internship recruiting

StubHub

Rescinded

Sysco

Internship cancelled

Toast

Rescind

Varsity Tutors

Rescinding internship offers

Wasserman

Hiring freeze

Wipro

Hiring freeze

Yelp

Internship cancelled

ZipRecruiter

Canceling internship

Get the data Created with Datawrapper

This article was originally featured on PoetsAndQuants.com.

Corporate Hiring Plans For MBA 2020 Interns & Graduates

So far, most corporate recruiters are holding the line on their internship and full-time job offers. But several have either frozen their hiring plans or even plan on rescinding offers already made

Company

Current Status*

A&E

Business as usual

AB inBev

Freeze

Abbott

Business as usual

Accenture

Business as usual

Adobe

Hiring freeze/expect internships to move forward

Amazon

No changes as of now; still hiring and giving offers.

American Airlines

Accepted offers are still valid.

Amgen

Business as usual

Amphenol

Business as usual

AT Kearney

Business as usual

AT&T

Rescind

Back Country

Rescind - intern + FT

Bain

Business as usual

Bank of America

Business as usual

Barclays

Business as usual

BCG

Internship program to go forward

BofA

Business as usual

Capital Group

Business as usual

Chartis Group

Business as usual

Cisco

No changes, interns delayed

Citi

Business as usual

Citi Consumer Banking

Business as usual

Cook

Freeze

Credit Suisse

Business as usual

DaVita

Freeze

Dell

Business as usual

Deloitte

Business as usual

Delta

Freeze

Delta Partners

Business as usual

Discover

Business as usual

Discovery

Business as usual

Disney

Holding but not cancelled

Ecolab

Business as usual

Eli Lilly

Business as usual

Epson

Business as usual

Evercore

Business as usual

Experian

Internships cancelled

EY

Business as usual

Facebook

Business as usual/internship interviews cancelled

Fandango

internship paused/hiring freeze

Fortive

Business as usual

Companies

Hiring Status*

Fred Alger

Business as usual

Gartner

Business as usual

GE

Business as usual

Genentech

No changes as of now

General Mills

Business as usual

General Motors

Business as usual

Glassdoor

Freeze

Goldman Sachs

Business as usual

Google

Business as usual

Guggenheim

Business as usual

H&M

Business as usual

Hasbro

Freeze

HEB

Internship program to go forward

HelloFresh

Business as usual

Herff Jones

Freeze

Houlihan Lokey

Business as usual

Hulu

Rescind/internship program paused

IBM

Business as usual

IDEO.org (not IDEO.com)

Rescind

IMAX

Canceling internship

intel

Under review

IU Health

Business as usual

J&J

Summer internship cancelled

JetBlue

Freeze- honoring current offers but no new hiring

JP Morgan

Business as usual

Kalypso

Programs under review

Kearney

Business as usual

KPMG

Business as usual

L'Oreal

Talent Management Program on hold

LEK

Rescinding internship offers/May delay FT start dates

Liberty Mutual

Business as usual

Mariott

Rescinding internship offer

Mattel

Business as usual

McChrystal Group

Postponing offers indefinitely

McKinsey

Business as usual

Microsoft

Business as usual

MLB-Washington Nationals

Internship canceled

Moelis

Business as usual

NBC Sports

Hiring freeze

NBCU

Business as usual

Nike

Business as usual

NVIDIA

Hiring freeze

Pacific Life

Business as usual

PayPal

Business as usual

Piper Sandler

Business as usual

PJT Partners

Business as usual

Pug n Play

Hiring freeze

Company

Status*

Prudential

Business as usual

PwC

Business as usual

Qualtrics

Business as usual

Richemont

Business as usual

Roku

Canceling internship/hiring freeze

Salesforce

Business as usual

Sephora

Cancelled internship

Sequoia Consulting Group, NY

Cancelled internship

Simon Kucher

Hiring freeze

Sony

Some hiring/Paused Internship Recruiting

StubHub

Rescinded

Sysco

Internship canceled

Toast

Rescind

Twitter

Business as usual

Universal Music

Business as usual

Varsity Tutors

rescinding intern offers

Visa

Hiring freeze

VMware

Business as usual

Walmart

Business as usual

Warner Media

depends on department

Wasserman

Hiring freeze

Wayfair

Business as usual

Wipro

Hiring freeze

Wonderful

GCS is reaching out for update

yelp

Internship canceled

Zillow

Hiring freeze

ZipRecuiter

Canceling internship

ZS Consulting

Business as usual

Prudential

Business as usual

PwC

Business as usual

Qualtrics

Business as usual

Richemont

Business as usual

Roku

Canceling internship/hiring freeze

Salesforce

Business as usual

Sephora

Cancelled internship

Sequoia Consulting Group, NY

Cancelled internship

Simon Kucher

Hiring freeze

Sony

Some hiring/Paused Internship Recruiting

StubHub

Rescinded

Sysco

Internship canceled

T oast

Rescind

Twitter

Business as usual

Universal Music

Business as usual

Varsity Tutors

rescinding intern offers

Visa

Hiring freeze

VMware

Business as usual

Walmart

Business as usual

Warner Media

depends on department

Wasserman

Hiring freeze

Wayfair

Business as usual

Wipro

Hiring freeze

Wonderful

GCS is reaching out for update

yelp

internship canceled

Zillow

Hiring freeze

ZipRecuiter

Canceling internship

ZS Consulting

Business as usual

Source: Poets&Quants Get the data Created with Datawrapper