MBA就業統計:諮詢業仍是MBA首要選擇
Google, Facebook and Amazon might grab more of the headlines, but consulting firms are still snapping up the most students at top business schools as they remain the largest recruiters, according to the latest MBA placement statistics.
谷歌(Google)、Facebook和亞馬遜(Amazon)或許搶佔了更多頭條新聞，但根據最新的MBA就業統計，諮詢公司依然是最大的招聘者，從頂級商學院搶走了最多MBA學員。
Amid a surge of interest in technology companies, consulting’s enduring appeal — particularly that of McKinsey, Boston Consulting and Bain, or the “big three” — comes at the expense of finance and banking, which are still recovering from recession.
在MBA學員對科技企業興趣激增的同時，諮詢公司，尤其是“三巨頭”麥肯錫(McKinsey)、波士頓諮詢集團(BCG)和貝恩(Bain & Co)吸引力不減，是以金融業和銀行業爲代價的，後兩個行業仍在從衰退中復甦。
Recent surveys suggest little more than a third of those who enter consulting after graduation are still working in the field six to eight years later. However, MBA students continue to find attractive the high starting salaries — up to $145,000 a year — and the fast career progression offered by consulting firms.
最近的調查似乎表明，在畢業後進入諮詢業的MBA學員中，僅有三分之一的人在6至8年後依然在該領域工作。然而，MBA學員依然覺得諮詢公司高達每年14.5萬美元的起薪和快速的職業發展很有吸引力。
Still, some observers worry the influence of consulting is now so great that it may be influencing business schools to serve the needs of the profession.
話雖如此，一些觀察人士擔憂，現在諮詢業的影響力太大，以至於可能影響商學院爲該行業的需求服務。
Among the schools to report placement statistics for their classes of 2015, Chicago Booth says the consulting sector has recruited 32 per cent of its MBAs, a rise of 4 per cent on last year and the first time consulting has come close at the school to toppling financial services.
在報告2015屆MBA班就業統計的商校中，芝加哥大學(University of Chicago)布斯商學院(Booth School of Business)表示，諮詢業招募了其32%的MBA學員，比去年上升了4個百分點，在學員就業去向中，諮詢業首次接近打敗金融服務業。
Consulting firms hired the most MBAs at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business in 2015 for the second consecutive year. More than a third of its MBAs this year have entered consulting, with the big three snapping up 18 per cent.
2015年，諮詢業連續第二年成爲達特茅斯大學塔克商學院(Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth) MBA學員的頭號去處。該校超過三分之一的MBA學員進入了諮詢業，僅“三巨頭”就奪走了18%的學員。
“For the past few years, about a fifth of Tuck’s graduating students have gone to work for the big three consulting companies and this current recruiting cycle looks to continue that trend,” says Stephen Pidgeon, the school’s associate director for career development who joined McKinsey when he graduated from Tuck in 2007. “Consulting provides a very good match for the interests of MBA students in that it looks for intellectually curious people with a strong mix of hard and soft skills — a top business school is one of the best places to find a rich mix of these people.”
“過去幾年，塔克商學院大約有五分之一的畢業生進入諮詢三巨頭工作，當前這一輪招聘看來將延續這一趨勢，”該校職業發展副主任、2007年從塔克商學院畢業後也曾在麥肯錫就職的斯蒂芬皮金(Stephen Pidgeon)表示。“諮詢業很符合MBA學員的興趣，這個行業尋找的是身具多種軟硬技能、有求知慾的人——頂級商學院是尋找大量這類人羣的最佳地點之一。”
Throughout the financial crisis, Harvard Business School has placed a steady quarter of its MBAs in consulting. And its appeal is not restricted to the US. Insead reported that consulting firms hired 41 per cent of its 1,011 MBAs in 2014, more than a quarter hired by the trio of top firms.
在整個金融危機期間，哈佛商學院(Harvard Business School)進入諮詢業的MBA學員比例穩定在四分之一。諮詢業對MBA學員的吸引力不僅限於美國。歐洲工商管理學院(Insead)報告稱，諮詢公司僱傭了其2014屆1011名MBA畢業生中的41%，諮詢三巨頭僱傭其學員的比例超過四分之一。
A glance back at history suggests that in the early days of consulting it was the strategy firms that needed business schools to help legitimise their emerging profession. Now their influence spreads beyond recruitment. Joe O’Mahoney, senior lecturer at Cardiff Business School says several European schools, such as Grenoble and Cardiff, now run consulting modules. Others, such as UCD Smurfit, run MScs in management consulting while Lancaster invites Accenture consultants to teach on one of its MScs.
歷史似乎表明，在諮詢業的早期，這種做法是該行業公司的戰略：它們需要商學院幫助這一新興行業得到承認。現在，諮詢業的影響力已經超越了招聘。卡迪夫大學商學院(Cardiff Business School)高級講師喬攠汙霍尼(Joe O’Mahoney)表示，格勒諾布爾高等商學院(Grenoble Graduate School of Business)和卡迪夫大學商學院等幾所歐洲商學院現在都提供諮詢業課程模塊。愛爾蘭都柏林大學學院(UCD)邁克爾斯墨菲特商業研究生院(Michael Smurfit Graduate School of Business)提供管理諮詢理學碩士課程，而蘭卡斯特大學管理學院(Lancaster University Management School)則邀請埃森哲(Accenture)的諮詢師爲該校的一個理學碩士課程授課。
However, Prof Sturdy says that even if these services are on an MBA curriculum, good business school academics are not afraid to subject them to significant critique. “Even the best consulting firms rely on correlation rather than causality when selling ideas,” he says. “This problem would come up in any research methods class.” Prof Sturdy argues that consulting firms could contribute further to MBA learning by discussing more practical examples, but thinks they are hindered by their need to be associated only with success.
然而，布里斯托大學(Bristol University)管理學教授安德魯斯特迪(Andrew Sturdy)表示，就算諮詢服務成爲MBA教學大綱的一部分，好的商學院學者不怕對它們進行嚴肅的評判。“即使是最優秀的諮詢公司，在兜售理念時依賴的都是關聯性而非因果關係，”他說，“任何研究方法課都會冒出這個難題。”斯特迪教授主張，諮詢公司能夠通過談論更多實用案例給MBA學習做出更多貢獻，但他認爲，諮詢公司會因爲它們需要只和成功聯繫在一起而受到阻礙。
The top firms believe their relationship with schools is a win-win for both sides, but their lead recruiters are keen to stress their future as well as current recruitment needs. “We’d like MBAs to learn more about organisational dynamics and the science of decision-making,” explains Mel Wolfgang, head of global recruitment at BCG. “That would help clients absorb the work we do and change their decision-making for the better.”
頂尖諮詢公司相信，它們和商校的關係是雙贏的，但它們的招聘主管在介紹目前的招聘需求時，也熱衷於強調它們的未來。“我們希望MBA學員學習更多有關組織動力學和決策科學的內容，”波士頓諮詢集團全球招聘主管梅爾茠爾夫岡(Mel Wolfgang)解釋道，“這能幫助客戶吸收我們所做的工作，改善客戶的決策。”
Brian Rolfes, director of global recruiting at McKinsey, says client work continues to expand outside traditional strategy consulting and into implementation, restructuring, transformation and digital. “Clients are also looking for more specialised experience so people with a MBA and experience in certain functions or industries are more important than ever,” he says.
麥肯錫全球招聘總監布賴恩圠爾夫斯(Brian Rolfes)表示，客戶業務正不斷擴展，超越傳統的戰略諮詢，進入實施、重組、改造和數字化。“客戶也在尋找擁有更專業化的經驗的人，因此既擁有MBA學位又擁有某些職能或行業的經驗空前重要，”他說。
The mutual benefit has been most evident between McKinsey and Harvard Business School — so entwined that writer Martin Kihn coined the term McHarvard in House of Lies, his controversial book on consulting. Through its case study method, McKinsey helped bolster Harvard’s MBA, giving it real-world cachet. McKinsey still uses the case-based interview to recruit MBAs. “The case study method ingrains a consulting mindset on students from an early age,” says Andrew Sturdy, a management professor at Bristol University. “Harvard pioneered this method with the explicit support of McKinsey.”
麥肯錫和哈佛商學院的互利最爲明顯——兩者的關係如此密切，以至於馬丁蘒楗(Martin Kihn)在他有關諮詢業的有爭議著作《謊言屋》(House of Lies)中發明了一個詞“McHarvard”。麥肯錫通過其案例分析法幫助提升了哈佛商學院的MBA，建立了其在課堂之外現實世界的聲望。麥肯錫現在依然使用基於案例的面試來招聘MBA畢業生。“案例分析法使學生從早期就養成一種諮詢業的思維方式，”布里斯托大學的斯特迪教授表示，“哈佛商學院在麥肯錫的公開支持下開創了這種方法。”
In his unauthorised biography of McKinsey, The Firm, business journalist Duff McDonald writes that when Harvard president Derek Bok proposed jettisoning case study methods in 1979, McKinsey chief executive Marvin Bower wrote a 52-page retort. The proposal was scrapped. In return, Harvard acted as a breeding ground for future McKinsey consultants who understood the firm long before they started working there.
達夫麥克唐納(Duff McDonald)在其未經授權的麥肯錫傳記《麥肯錫的故事》(The Firm)中寫道，當時任哈佛校長德里克娠克(Derek Bok)在1979年提議拋棄案例分析法時，時任麥肯錫首席執行官馬爾溫貟爾(Marvin Bower)寫了一份52頁的反駁書。該提案遭到廢棄。結果，哈佛成了麥肯錫未來諮詢師的孵化器，讓他們早在爲其工作之前就瞭解這家公司。
McKinsey became the first to focus on hiring business schools’ crème de la crème — at Harvard these were the Baker Scholars, the top 5 per cent of each class — prioritising youth and potential on the grounds that it was easier to mould a young mind. By the mid 1960s, at least two of every five McKinsey consultants had gone to Harvard. “The practice of hiring from top schools really took off when BCG started to compete with McKinsey for talent in the 1960s and 1970s,” says business journalist Walter Kiechel and author of Lords of Strategy, “and business schools had to demonstrate success in placing their students with the firms.”
麥肯錫成爲首家專注於僱傭商校精英的諮詢公司，優先考慮年輕和潛力，理由是年輕人的頭腦具有更大可塑性——在哈佛商學院，這些精英指的是成績處於每個班級前5%的貝克學者(Baker Scholar)。到上世紀60年代中期，每5個麥肯錫諮詢師中至少有兩人上過哈佛。“波士頓諮詢集團在上世紀60和70年代開始和麥肯錫爭奪人才，使僱傭頂級商校人才的做法真正起飛，”著有《戰略之王》(Lords of Strategy)的商業記者沃爾特蘒切爾(Walter Kiechel)表示，“而商校也必須向這些公司輸送畢業生，以展示自己的成功。”
In recent years, the big three have widened their search to a broader range of business schools, but the bulk of recruits comes from elite schools: Harvard, Yale, Kellogg, Duke, Wharton, Chicaco Booth, Michigan Ross, MIT Sloan, Tuck, Darden, London and Insead. Being top employers puts them in a strong, some would say dominant, position at some schools. “Consulting firms use greater resources than many other employers can,” says Prof Sturdy. “Business schools are not always effective in regulating this and [it] can crowd out other options.”
近年來，諮詢三巨頭拓寬了人才搜索範圍，納入了更廣泛的商校，但大部分新晉員工都來自精英商校：哈佛商學院，耶魯大學管理學院(Yale School of Management)，凱洛格管理學院(Kellogg School of Management)，杜克大學(Duke University)福庫商學院(Fuqua School of Business)，賓夕法尼亞大學沃頓商學院(Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania)，芝加哥大學布斯商學院，密歇根大學羅斯商學院(Michigan Ross)，麻省理工學院斯隆管理學院(MIT Sloan)，塔克商學院，弗吉尼亞大學(University of Virginia)達頓商學院(Darden school of business)，倫敦商學院(London Business School)和歐洲工商管理學院。作爲頂級的僱主，它們在一些商校占強勢地位（一些人可能會說霸主地位）。“比起其他許多僱主，諮詢公司能夠使用更多資源，”斯特迪教授表示，“商學院並不總能有效地規範這一點，（這）可能會擠掉其他的選擇。”
