Employment: Interperting Placement/Employment Statistics from Universities.

I have encountered several people researching and exploring MBA programs. Inevitable "placement" statistics enter into the discuss and I am surprised how little most people know about what is being put in front of them. Therefore, I am posting this excerpt from a document I found on the Queen's Career Centre website. Hopefully it will help people to start asking the right questions about what is being presented to them. Statistics can be very useful, but they can also tell many different versions of the "truth"; some of them misleading.

Reporting Guidelines and Statistics – a few comments.

1. READ INFORMATION CAREFULLY - ESPECIALLY THE FINE PRINT!

Many schools may report information on their web sites differently from the guidelines set out by the MBA CSC – this is perfectly acceptable as long as the institution clearly sets out for you the basis of their reporting.

2. What does the placement (employment) rate mean?

Placement or employment rate is the percentage of students in the class with employment at a given date.

It is the percentage of students with offers of employment based on the number of students reporting back to the university and actively looking for work. This means that if there are 100 students in the graduating class, 80 have reported back to the university and 60 of the 80 have job offers, the placement rate is 75%, not 60%.

Active job seekers -Further to the above, if 20 of the 80 reporting back are continuing to further their education, not in an active job search or otherwise not looking for work (extended travel for instance) then the placement rate is 100% : 80-20 = 60 of which 60 are reporting having received an offer.

Offers count as placement. If a student receives a bona fide offer for a suitable MBA level job but declines it, they are nonetheless considered placed as they had the opportunity to accept meaningful work.

3. Timing of placements;

a. At Graduation – means offers received on or before the official graduation date at the school.

b. Within three months of graduation means offers received on or before the three month anniversary of the official graduation date at the school.

c. Placement reports can include dates beyond three months depending on the type of program and profile of the average graduate. Graduates with more work experience often are more targeted in their job search and may elect to take longer than three months to search for the right job.

4. Source of placements:

Placements facilitated by the University are not just those offers received through formal on campus recruitment programs. University-facilitated placements may include offers received as a result of networking events, alumni connections or other university sponsored, arranged or facilitated sources.

5. Timelines and transparency:

Look for schools that report several years’ worth of data. Economic conditions play a significant role in placement and salary statistics. You should want to see how well an institution fares in both strong and weak conditions. Further, consider how stable and how consistent the salaries are from year to year. Some years a few outliers may take the numbers look very good but may not reflect the total picture of salaries over a long run.