Sunday, May 18, 2008

Been reading alot from the forum regarding the "famous" 2007 SMU graduates survey.......
Its quite interesting to know how people think....... Some posts are really good while some are plain ignorant.......I have time on my hands hence going to write a little something on it as well......

Well, first off, I do not doubt the accuracy of the survey BUT I feel that the way the survey was conducted could be flawed.......

• They are using average in the statistic....... Well, lets just include 10 x Ibankers and 10 x consultants in these statistic and its gonna skew skyhigh...... Well, alot of us know that consultants and Ibankers definitely commands such atronomical payscale(6k, 7k, 8k per month is common)...... Next arises the common myth that local students don't really stand a chance of getting hired by these firms....... Well, thats certainly false....... Seen a number of local graduates hired as consultants in firms such as BCG, Bain, McKinsey...... And a number of fresh graduates from local universities hired as Ibankers in banks like JP, ML, GS, MS etc etc...... And lets not forget about graduates that work overseas in London, New York, Hong Kong, Dubai etc etc....... :P

Median will be much more accurate in presenting the current jobmarket scene.......

• I believe that not all the students are being invited to participate in the survey....... The sampling size might not be random afterall....... Even if its random, lets visit the mindset of a student that might not be having such an attractive salary package, is he/she more or less incline to fill up that survey....... My guess is the latter........ Again, skewing up the average......

Random sampling and compulsory participation might do the work..... Though I have no idea how to make it compulsory....... Revoke their chance of graduating if they do not fill up the survey accurately...... Or maybe reward by paying students a sum of 20 dollars for the survey?? Hahaha...... I certainly hope they implement the reward system.......

• Being in SMU myself, I notice that many SMU students have a strong penchant for investment banks, consulting firms or big MNCs...... Even our accounting students try to avoid going into the Big 4, SIS students avoiding IT jobs....... And most landed up going for the above mentioned type of firms...... Well, we are a business school afterall...... So this trend again pushes up the average wage of a typical grad......

Benchmarking against NUS and NTU biz school will be good.......

• In my impression, 2007 seems to be a great year for jobseekers....... Im lazy to research on facts to back this up...... But my gut feel is that its correct....... Explaining the high average once again........

So all in all, I believed that the survey is accurate........ So lets wait for the NUS and NTU survey results for benchmarking.......

Labels: SMU Employment Survey

posted at 18.5.08 _________________________________________________________________