B-School Grads Lean More Towards Start-ups Than Big Companies

This Ad Age article caught my eye given it's about business school grads and their choices for careers/jobs:

http://adage.com/article/news/b-school-grads-shirk-staid-cpgs-startups/237627/

Many of us live this or know full timers that are going through this, but the article focused on how Business school graduates are now turning down jobs at companies like Procter & Gamble, PepsiCo, Kelloggs to take positions at small tech companies and start-ups and young digital companies such as Gilt Groupe and Etsy.  Graduates are preferring these positions because they can have a greater impact (verses a larger company where they have less say and less control), higher positions and titles (i.e. Vice President level), and companies that are faster paced and not slow moving. To quote a professor at Wharton who teaches predictive modeling "The best and the brightest students are impatient and they want to wear those hats now and not wait five years to see what fits them best," he said. "They don't want to have four choppy little descriptions on their résumé."  Grads are also leaning towards start-ups because finance jobs are becoming less plentiful as, according to Kellogg employment statistics "only 7% of graduates in 2011 went into Investment Banking, brokerage and securities, compared with 12% in 2008."

Also found this quote interesting given that even experience at a failed start-up can be good for a resume:  "Typically we think of startups being very risky, since more than half of them are likely to fail," said Harvard's Mr. Sahlman. But unless a person has caused a failure or lied or cheated or stolen, in the world of entrepreneurship he's considered experienced, not damaged."

My thoughts are that this is a cycle similar to what we have seen in the 90's when everyone left the corporate world to start a dot.com.  I feel like this is a fad and people will eventually crave the stability that a big company brings.  That said, I know many of my fellow Executive MBA Graduates, including me, are looking at starting their own companies, so while we are not necessarily heading towards small start-ups, we want the flexibility that comes with ownership in a company and are headed in that direction.  I don't think that is a trend that will change as entrepreneurship has always been attractive and just continues to grow.