Best Business Schools Hiring:
Consumer Products Industry

The consumer-products industry accounted for 4.5% of all MBA hires, fifth-highest of any industry, according to data and survey results from this year’s ranking. Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management (No. 7 in the US) sent 44 graduates, the most of any school, into consumer products. Second was Indian School of Business (No. 5 in Asia), with 38. One role within consumer products that offers growing opportunities to MBAs is product management—basically, what the name suggests: The role involves planning, developing, launching and managing a product or service, which are often digital. Consumer packaged goods make up another area of expertise. “Our students go into a broad array of roles within the CPG space,” says Liza Kirkpatrick, assistant dean of career services at Kellogg. “Last year we saw students pursue roles in operations, strategy, finance, leadership programs and brand management at CPG companies, assuming titles as finance managers, product managers, senior planners and strategy analysts, among others.”

school number of hires percentage of hires median salary (US dollars) median salary (local currency)
Stanford 4 1.5% $165,000 Not applicable
SDA Bocconi 4 5.2% $154,139 €129,235
IE 16 8.9% $153,280 €128,515
MIT (Sloan) 10 3.0% $141,000 Not applicable
UC at Berkeley (Haas) 13 5.1% $140,000 Not applicable
Boston University (Questrom) 4 3.4% $127,700 Not applicable
Emory (Goizueta) 4 3.4% $127,500 Not applicable
Chicago (Booth) 12 2.2% $125,800 Not applicable
Harvard 16 3.0% $125,000 Not applicable
Rice (Jones) 5 3.4% $125,000 Not applicable
UCLA (Anderson) 23 8.4% $123,000 Not applicable
Carnegie Mellon (Tepper) 4 3.1% $122,500 Not applicable
Northwestern (Kellogg) 44 9.4% $122,500 Not applicable
Brigham Young (Marriott) 20 14.7% $120,000 Not applicable
Columbia 11 1.8% $120,000 Not applicable
Cornell (Johnson) 12 4.8% $120,000 Not applicable
Dartmouth (Tuck) 9 3.7% $120,000 Not applicable
Duke (Fuqua) 13 3.8% $120,000 Not applicable
Indiana (Kelley) 10 13.5% $120,000 Not applicable
Michigan (Ross) 16 5.3% $120,000 Not applicable
NYU (Stern) 8 3.6% $120,000 Not applicable
Pennsylvania (Wharton) 10 1.6% $120,000 Not applicable
Rochester (Simon) 6 5.6% $120,000 Not applicable
Southern Methodist (Cox) 3 3.6% $120,000 Not applicable
Virginia (Darden) 12 3.4% $117,500 Not applicable
USC (Marshall) 9 5.5% $117,000 Not applicable
INSEAD 10 1.3% $115,096 €96,500
Texas Christian (Neeley) 3 10.7% $115,000 Not applicable
Texas at Austin (McCombs) 6 3.1% $115,000 Not applicable
Vanderbilt (Owen) 13 8.7% $115,000 Not applicable
Fordham (Gabelli) 8 15.7% $113,000 Not applicable
Washington in St. Louis (Olin) 5 7.0% $113,000 Not applicable
Wisconsin 12 16.2% $113,000 Not applicable
Notre Dame (Mendoza) 10 9.8% $112,000 Not applicable
Yale 13 4.9% $112,000 Not applicable
Florida (Warrington) 8 22.2% $111,500 Not applicable
Georgetown (McDonough) 13 6.6% $110,000 Not applicable
North Carolina (Kenan-Flagler) 7 2.4% $110,000 Not applicable
Northeastern (D'Amore-McKim) 5 10.0% $110,000 Not applicable
Maryland (Smith) 4 6.9% $105,532 Not applicable
William and Mary (Mason) 3 4.5% $104,333 Not applicable
IMD 3 3.9% $98,911 Not applicable
UC at Davis 4 12.1% $98,000 Not applicable
Ohio State (Fisher) 4 8.9% $97,500 Not applicable
IESE Business School 18 6.7% $96,776 Not applicable
Colorado at Boulder (Leeds) 5 8.1% $94,000 Not applicable
Minnesota (Carlson) 4 7.1% $93,259 Not applicable
Hult 10 7.2% $88,800 Not applicable
Boston College (Carroll) 6 10.2% $85,000 Not applicable
Tennessee (Haslam) 3 8.1% $81,800 Not applicable
Texas A&M (Mays) 5 8.1% $78,000 Not applicable
POLIMI Graduate School of Management 8 17.0% $75,021 €62,900
Western (Ivey) 3 2.1% $74,830 CA$96,000
McGill (Desautels) 3 10.0% $66,256 CA$85,000
ESIC 5 9.8% $63,069 Not applicable
Kentucky (Gatton) 3 6.5% $62,000 Not applicable
CEIBS 4 3.8% $58,854 CN¥390,000
SUNY at Buffalo 5 9.6% $57,500 Not applicable
Indian School of Business 38 4.3% $36,623 ₹2,700,000
Cambridge (Judge) 8 5.5% Not available Not available
London Business School 3 0.8% Not available Not available
Texas-Dallas (Jindal) 3 7.0% Not available Not applicable