It’s Not About the Money: How to Aim for MBA Candidate Satisfaction

According to Poets & Quants, a recent survey from Training the Streets reveals some interesting news about recent MBA grads. The good news? This cohort received higher starting salaries than in previous years, with 46% fielding offers of $125,000 or more. This year’s class also had more options as 28% received three or more job offers compared to 22% last year.

Clearly, the MBA market is heating up, and employers are floating higher salaries and bonuses to attract top talent. However, it isn’t all good news. While MBAs received higher salaries than usual, their overall satisfaction with these job offers fell from 45% to 32%. Dissatisfaction rates actually DOUBLED to 14%. No wonder MBA turnover remains so high at most companies!

Although some will want to, it would be too easy to attribute this startling data to generational greed or flawed expectations. However, the truth is pretty clear to anyone with successful recruiting and management experience. For candidates of all ages and experience-levels, job satisfaction has little to do with money. (You don’t have to take my word for it and can listen to other experts like Glassdoor’s Chief Economist Andrew Chamberlain who have the data to prove it.)

Don’t get me wrong! Competitive pay will always be an important recruitment tool, but you don’t want your candidates to just fall in love with a salary. You want them to fall in love with your company and your people! After all, a fully engaged and happy employee is worth more than any bonus (especially if it costs you an estimated $150K when they exit your company in a year or two.).

So how do we reverse the tide of dissatisfied MBAs going forward? It begins with how you engage your candidates at the earliest stages of recruiting. Think of it this way — if candidates are going above and beyond to impress YOU, it’s time for you to do the same.

It’s time to pursue more dynamic forms of engagement.

Rushed interviews. Sweaty palms. Stacks of resumes. This is the chaotic nature of career fairs and campus events. Let’s face it, they aren’t very conducive for making good first impressions (for you AND the candidates!) MBAs want to truly get to know your company, and they crave more personalized interactions that allow them to present their best selves. So stop sticking to the ineffective status quo of your closest competitors and set yourself apart! Create more meaningful and memorable ways to engage your desired candidates, such as case competitions, experiential learning opportunities, mini-projects, apprenticeships, or engagements with employees who already work at your company.

It’s time to engage diverse candidates differently.

Let’s face it — MBA programs have made efforts to recruit and graduate diverse students. However, recruitment engagement strategies haven’t quite kept up with the times. Sure, talk about your employee resource groups. Feature photos of diverse employees on your career page. Retool your job descriptions. These efforts won’t fully engage diverse candidates who want to fully envision themselves at your company. Don’t treat them like another number to ramp up your diversity pipeline. Engage them as much as possible. Show that diversity is more than just good PR and share the tactical efforts that are being made to create a more inclusive culture at your company. This is a good opportunity to engage candidates in apprenticeships or mini-projects that give them a sneak peek into your company culture — so they can more easily imagine themselves working there.

It’s time to ditch the impersonal interview process.

Have your MBA candidates told you lately how much they LOVE your phone screens and personality tests? Have they expressed pure joy for the gauntlet-style interview process? Probably not, and why would they? MBA candidates invest vital resources in their education, extracurriculars, case competitions, and side projects — simply for the opportunity to get an interview with you. How fulfilling can it be to then sit through long personality tests or repeatedly answer the same behavioral interview questions that don’t highlight the talent and ability of the candidate? Rethink your interview process. Create effective avenues for candidates to show their skills and competencies in more dynamic ways, such as mini-projects.

It’s time to act FAST.

Did you know that your slow interview process could be weeding out your best candidates? Top performers know their worth beyond salary, and snail-like interview tactics are a turn-off. We know this personally because many of our WeSolvers have made tough decisions to accept time-sensitive offers from other employers when their first choice acted too slowly. You may be a top company that everyone wants to work at, but remember, other firms will gladly lure away your top candidates if you don’t act fast enough.

Let’s face it, another round of interviews probably won’t reveal any groundbreaking information. But with the right data, it is possible to quickly vet candidates and make the best hiring decisions.

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At WeSolv, we are committed to making sure companies and candidates find the perfect match. We know this can be done through better engagement strategies like the ones outlined above and predictive performance data. Reach out to us if you’d like to know more ways to make your MBA employees happy before they walk through your door.