JEREMYCWILSON.COM

Top Kellogg Employers From 2000 – 2010

Just a few weeks ago I wrote a blog post that discussed where students from Kellogg went to work for the summer and upon graduation.  As a follow up to that analysis, I thought I’d also do a bigger one. This time measuring where alumni have gone not only for the past year but also for the past ten years. While some of the results might be surprising, on the whole most of them are probably things I could have anticipated.

I’ve always suspected that a lot of Kellogg grads go into consulting. But after running the numbers, it turns out that a great majority of alumni do. McKinsey, Bain, BCG, and Deloitte are at the top of that list.

It’s important to keep in mind that this analysis doesn’t take into account where alumni began after school. But instead it measure where they were as of the date of the survey, in 2010. Likewise, it also only captures data from those who provided responses to the survey from the career center. Understanding that sometimes we all get busy, there will certainly be a number of alum that were not able to fill out the survey.

With that said, below is the data collected on alum from the past ten years.

A few points of analysis:

1. First, one interesting observation is that the top ten employers account for 28% of all people that have graduated from Kellogg in the past ten years. That is to say, the biggest employers are hiring a lot of students.

2. Second, the consulting industry is far and away the largest hirer of Kellogg students over the past ten years. Of all the students that went to top ten employers, 81% of them went to consulting firms. Not that this comes as a surprise given Kellogg has long been known as one of the strongest schools for those that want to recruit for the consulting industry.

3. Third, of all those that went to consulting firms 73% went to the Big Three consulting firms – Bain, BCG and McKinsey. From an absolute standpoint, that means that about 17% of all the population went to big three consulting firms.  And of those, nearly double went to McKinsey versus the next closest firm, which was BCG.

4. Fourth, it is quite surprising that neither high-tech firms nor marketing firms played a large role in the top ten list, as only Microsoft and Johnson & Johnson represent those functions.  On the other hand, it’s probably likely that the next ten employers are dominated by marketing and tech.

5. Fifth, financial services firms, e.g. Investment Banks also didn’t play a very large role. Two banks made the top ten list – Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch – but combined they have less than 10% of those that went to top ten employers. Perhaps on the surface that’s not surprising because many people don’t consider Kellogg to be a “finance” school. But on the other hand, the finance major is the most popular major at Kellogg.

6. FINALLY – services firms generally, generally accounted for 90% of the top ten employment stats (81% consulting + 9% banking).  This is not a large a surprise.  Top MBAs have flocked toward these careers for year, as these firms not only pay more but they are also seen as being launching pads into other careers.