A Higher Degree of Demand for ‘Techno-MBAs’

Some college students get care packages from Mom. E. Mia Nam got them from the management consulting firms that were vying to hire her.

There was the mug stuffed with coffee and crackers, a gift basket with wine and cheese and a bottle of champagne. The award for originality goes to the firm that sent the 30-year-old Newport Beach woman a flashlight with a map and the message that it hoped she’d find her way to its door. That company, the big management consulting firm A.T. Kearney, took her on a dinner cruise in Newport Harbor after she accepted their lucrative job offer.

“It is amazing,” Nam said. “This is one of the few times you get to feel pampered.”

Nam is one of 43 UC Irvine MBA candidates, who, for the first time, also have a specialty in information technology management. It’s a hot job market in general, but demand for these students is sizzling.

Three months before receiving their master’s degrees in business administration, at least 90% of them have job offers in hand for an average of $84,000 annually, compared with an average of $67,000 for UCI’s other MBA candidates.

They’re getting signing bonuses of up to $20,000, stock options and promises of future bonuses. Five have packages totaling more than $100,000 each. One student reported receiving a raise before starting the job because the firm he signed with was worried he’d get better offers.

These students--on average about 28 years old--are headed for management jobs at Fortune 500 companies and consulting firms that are hungry for MBAs who understand the role of technology in business.

Among the companies recruiting them are the big six accounting firms, and major corporations such as Intel Corp., Clorox Co., Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., J.P. Morgan & Co., and PepsiCo.

“Techno-MBAs” have been springing up at business schools across the country, and suddenly they are all the rage. UCI’s MBA program, a bit of a backwater until recently, is drawing attention with its cutting-edge approach that blends technology throughout its curriculum.

The program was rated among the nation’s top 20 technology-focused MBA programs last year by U.S. News & World Report and Computerworld magazines.

Suvesh Balasubramanian, 28, a computer science engineer from India who is completing his MBA program this week, learned the virtues of call waiting. At one point, he had three phone calls at once from firms that were courting him. “They’ll do anything to get you on board,” he said.

He’ll start as a management consultant at the Irvine office of Ernst & Young in May, making $85,000 a year. He received a $20,000 signing bonus.

Fellow student Drew Aron said, “I didn’t know how I’d be received, didn’t know if the demand would be there.” So the 31-year-old Irvine man threw his resume into the piles of every consulting firm recruiting on campus.

Now, after receiving three generous offers, he’s got a six-figure job at Coopers & Lybrand in Los Angeles.

The students say they are trying to keep it all in perspective.

“You can’t let it go to your head,” said David Chia, 23, who picked up a $60,000-a-year job at Andersen Consulting in El Segundo.