Exploring the Demand for MBA Graduates

As the most popular post-graduate degree in the US, the MBA shows up frequently in job postings. But the MBA is a broad-reaching degree. What jobs are MBA candidates being hired for? What skills ought they have? We used our expanded job posting analytics to take a deeper look at where the demand for MBAs comes from, and how it relates to the job market.

Looking at the top job titles for MBAs, we can see they mostly fall into the realms of either finance or product/project management. The skills and certifications required in finance roles are usually straight forward and well-known. Product management* is much less predictable. For that reason, let’s hone in on the specifics of product management job postings that require an MBA.

*Note: We lumped similar job titles, like product manager and project manager, together under product management. Many of these jobs share responsibilities and skillsets.

Product Management: Top Companies Hiring, Skills, & Certifications

From November 2015 to May 2016, the number of product management postings that require an MBA increased 147%. However, the number of unique postings saw much slower, but also steadier, growth. This means that while the number of positions hasn’t changed quickly, businesses are trying much harder to fill MBA product management positions than in the past.

Top Companies Hiring

Which companies are hiring? Oracle and Amazon have many more unique postings than any other companies. Oracle has a duplicate to unique posting ratio of 18:1, meaning for every unique posting, there are 18 additional postings. This posting intensity indicates Oracle is putting serious effort into finding product managers with an MBA. The national average intensity for the US job market is 7:1.

Top Associated Skills

Beyond seeing which companies are looking for product managers, we can see what skills those companies expect applicants to have. We can also see how important a skill is to product management positions by comparing how often it appears in product-management-specific job postings compared to all other jobs. The result is a concentration score. A high concentration score means that skill is important to, and uncommon outside of, product management roles.

First, let’s take a look at concentrated hard skills. Unsurprisingly, the product management skill is the most important and sought after in these roles. Intelligence gathering appears in relatively few postings, but has a high concentration score, as does product marketing.

Concentrated Hard SkillsConcentration ScorePostings With SkillProduct Management52.514,284Intelligence Gathering38.7994Product Marketing256,601Market Trend16.33,232Product Lifecycle11.73,110

Similarly, we can look at concentrated soft skills to see which of them are most important to product management. Here, the skills are shared by many other jobs, so they have low concentration scores. Leadership is the only skill that shows up more often on job postings for these positions than all other jobs.

Concentrated Soft SkillsConcentration ScorePostings With SkillLeadership1.210,545Coordinating0.64,644Team Leading0.2714Cooperation0.1724Critical Thinking0.1874

Top Associated Certifications

Aside from the MBA, over 2,200 postings mention a Project Management Professional Certification. Another large group of postings (1,605) look for PMI Certified workers. Finally, a small number of postings (473) mentioned a Certified Public Accountant, or CPA.

With this quick analysis, we learned that major corporations have stepped up recruitment efforts for product managers who have an MBA. These corporations are making it a priority to find candidates with a strong mix of product development and business skills.

To learn more about Emsi’s Job Postings Analytics and labor market analysis tools, contact info@economicmodeling.com or request information here.