The Bloomberg Recruiter Report: Job Skills Companies Want But Can’t Get
Business schools are supposed to produce graduates who have the abilities companies need most. But corporate recruiters say some highly sought-after skills are in short supply among newly minted MBAs. As part of our ranking of 122 top business programs, Bloomberg surveyed 1,320 job recruiters at more than 600 companies to find out which skills employers want but can’t find—and which B-schools are best at meeting the needs of the market.
The skills gap
These skills are fairly common among graduates, and are sought after by recruiters.
These skills are less common, but are also not as sought after.
Many graduates have these skills, but companies don’t highly prize them.
The sweet spot: Rare skills that companies want most.
The skills gap
That’s the overall picture. But the qualities employers want change from industry to industry. Use the drop-down menu to explore the skills gap in different parts of the job market.
Pick an industry:
The skills gap
These skills are fairly common among graduates, and are sought after by recruiters.
These skills are less common, but are also not as sought after.
Many graduates have these skills, but companies don’t highly prize them.
The sweet spot: Rare skills that companies want most.
That’s the overall picture. But the qualities employers want change from industry to industry. Use the drop-down menu to explore the skills gap in different parts of the job market.
Pick an industry:
These schools are hitting the sweet spot
The recruiters also scored MBA programs on their success at turning out graduates with the most sought-after skills.
Pick an industry:
Why are some lists shorter than others? For a school to be matched with a skill here, it had to be scored by a minimum of eight recruiters in that industry who have experience with the school’s graduates.
How schools stack up
Among recruiters, some schools are considered strong at teaching certain skills.
Pick a skill: Order by: Rank / Alphabetical
Each school, in depth
Recent or prospective MBAs may want to spend some time here. Pick an industry and school to see how recruiters rate the skills of B-school graduates.
Pick a school: Pick an industry:

school

all schools average

Methodology
The source of the data in this report is Bloomberg's Employer Survey, which was conducted as part of our 2014 Full-Time MBA Rankings. The survey was conducted in partnership with Cambria Consulting from July to September 2014.
1,320 recruiters who hire MBAs as part of their job
614 total companies
23 S&P 500 companies
17.6%Consulting 17.5%Financial Services 12.2%Technology 9.5%Consumer Products 7.9%Manufacturing 5.8%Energy 5.2%Health Care 3.6%Other 3.2%Pharmaceuticals 3.0%Chemicals 2.9%Transportation 2.7%Retail 2.1%Edu/Govt/ Nonprofit 2.0%Media / Advertising 1.7%Telecoms 1.4%Real Estate 1.2%Hospitality
To qualify to take our survey, respondents had to have recent MBA recruiting experience. We asked 122 MBA programs that participated in our 2014 Full-Time MBA Rankings to name people involved in recruiting their students in the last two years and to provide their e-mail addresses. Eligible respondents were both HR professionals and non-HR professionals who recruit for specific roles. This process yielded a pool of 8,358 recruiters at 4,931 companies.

We sent the survey to all 8,358 individuals identified by schools. Respondents were also encouraged to nominate colleagues involved in MBA recruiting to take the survey. Our final respondent pool comprised 1,320 recruiters from 614 employers—1,263 nominated by schools, 57 referred by colleagues.

In our survey, we asked recruiters to pick from a list of 14 qualities the five qualities that are most important to them when hiring MBAs, and the five that are hardest to find when recruiting MBAs. We also asked them to identify up to 10 schools at which they had significant recruiting experience in the last five years.

We then asked recruiters to rate, on a scale of one to five, how well these schools' graduates performed on specific qualities important to them when they recruit MBAs. These scores comprise the findings in this report.

We define "sweet spots" as the skills that the largest numbers of recruiters within each industry listed as both highly desired and hard to find.

Finally, a note about alumni: It is common for MBA alumni to take up the task of recruiting from their alma mater for their employer. However, alumni tended to rate their own school significantly more favorably than non-alumni rating that school; while some schools in our rankings had many alumni in the employer survey, others had zero. To correct for this imbalance, we excluded alumni ratings from this report.