IMD's 2012 placement report

Today I noticed IMD has posted the 2012 career statistics/placement report.

You can find it here.

The most glaring observation is that the average IMD graduate's salary actually went down for the class of 2012. In dollar terms, the average salary decreased from $142,412 to $131,566, or 7.6%. However, this drop seems to be exacerbated by exchange rates - in Euros, the decline was much smaller - from €103,355 to €102,104, or 1.2%. 

See below for a side-by-side comparison of the placement report for the class of 2012 against the one for the class of 2011.



 
Here's a look at how the placement statistics changed:

There are a few interesting trends:

• Salaries obviously declined. Seems to be a reflection of the tough economic environment in Europe - fewer jobs to go around, and lower salaries in general.

• It's a little concerning that the median salary declined a lot more than the average (mean) salary though. The decline in median salary was €9,562, or 9.3%. That's not a small drop. This indicates that there must be a few very high salary figures pushing up the total mean.

• I would like to see what IMD's salary stats are when reported in Swiss Francs. I am assuming the figures are from 3 months after graduation (i.e. March 2012 vs March 2013). In that time, the Swiss Franc dropped about 4.2% against the dollar, and 3.6% against the euro.

• Interestingly, sign-on bonuses have basically doubled. Perhaps in a tough economy companies are using the sign-on bonus as a way to lure top talent, while keeping base salaries lower?

• I took a look at other school's salary statistics that I could find. The trend seems the same: salaries going down, sign-on bonuses going up.

• LBS's 2011 mean base salary went from GBP 73,955 in the 2011 report to GBP 72,964 in 2012. The mean sign-on bonus went up from GBP 16,955 to GBP 20,142.

• INSEAD's 2012 report is not yet available, but in its 2011 report, mean salaries are €86,200 which is lower than IMD's current mean salary figure, even after the drop from 2011. Insead's mean sign-on bonus is €17,000 for 2011.

• IMD is placing an even higher percentage into Industry rather than Consulting or Financial Services. A staggering 81% of the class went into industry in 2012, up from 75% in 2011. This could be a contributing factor for the lower salaries.

• A smaller percentage of the class of 2012 chose to stay in Europe (61%, vs 63% of the class of 2011). This may also be a contributing factor for the lower salaries.

Here is a look at the change in the recruiters list from 2011 to 2012:

 

Obviously the make-up of the class will cause a lot of fluctuations in the offers that are distributed, so any conclusions from the list above should be taken with a grain of salt. In any case, here are some my observations from this data:

• The total number of recruiters fell from 93 in 2011 to 78 in 2012. This may be a reflection of the increasing competitiveness of the job market for MBAs. Still,  a ratio of almost 9 recruiters for every 10 IMD students is impressive.

• The fact that 43 companies continued as "repeat" recruiters in 2012 is a good sign. These companies clearly like IMD talent if they choose to come back year after year. This category alone represents almost one recruiting company for every two students.

• Many companies from 2011 did not show up in the 2012 list, including a few strong names like PWC, Procter & Gamble, KPMG, Deloitte, Adidas. This is not necessarily a bad thing - it is worth to keep these in mind as potential networking opportunities. They may not have recruited any IMD grads in 2012, but they did recruit IMD grads in the past.

• There are a host of exciting "new" recruiters for 2012: Expedia, Heineken, Jaguar Land Rover, Mars Foods and Unilever to name a few.