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Vestaron makes an eco-friendly pesticide derived from spider venom. Bagaveev uses 3-D printers to make rocket engines for nanosatellites. Transatomic Power is developing a next-generation reactor that runs on nuclear waste.

They all have one thing in common: money from Silicon Valley venture capitalists.

After years of shying away from science, engineering and clean-technology start-ups, investors are beginning to take an interest in them again, raising hopes among entrepreneurs in those areas that a long slump is finally over. But these start-ups face intense pressure to prove that their science can turn a profit more quickly than hot tech companies like Snapchat and Uber.

NY Times article

Now you can access My Career Dashboard from any mobile device! Our new mobile app lets you:

This is a collection of nine superlative articles published in last week’s Economist – a must-read, though not a quick-read! Look on the right side under “Special Reports.” Just a couple of excerpts:

Today’s entrepreneurial boom is based on more solid foundations than the 1990s internet bubble, which makes it more likely to continue for the foreseeable future. One explanation for the Cambrian explosion of 540m years ago is that at that time the basic building blocks of life had just been perfected, allowing more complex organisms to be assembled more rapidly. Similarly, the basic building blocks for digital services and products—the “technologies of startup production”, in the words of Josh Lerner of Harvard Business School—have become so evolved, cheap and ubiquitous that they can be easily combined and recombined….

So instead of outlining what these startups do, this special report will explain how they operate, how they are nurtured in accelerators and other such organisations, how they are financed and how they collaborate with others. It is a story of technological change creating a set of new institutions which governments around the world are increasingly supporting.

You can download a copy of the latest employment report here. A summary of the results is below.

Results at a Glance

• 94% (LY: 93%) of seeking students had full-time offers within three months of graduation
• Growth in the technology sector and in entrepreneurship led to new industry sub-categories
• 339 organizations hired MBA students; 94% of organizations hired one or two students
• Median annual base compensation for full-time offers was unchanged at $125,000
• Median signing bonus for full-time offers increased to $25,000 (+$5,000), a record high.
• Median ‘Other Guaranteed Compensation’ for full-time offers increased to $30,000 (+$5,000)
• 100% of seeking students accepted summer internships
• Median monthly compensation for internships was unchanged at $7,000

The results reflect and validate our emphasis on alignment of career and life goals, known informally as career-life vision.  The CMC helps MBA students to understand themselves and to develop a personal definition of a meaningful life – and to build a portfolio of personal and professional pursuits to support that vision. In this light, the specific industries, organizations, and roles chosen represent many individual student decisions.

Full-Time Job Trends

• 45% of Stanford MBAs pursued roles in the finance (26%) or consulting (19%) industries
• The overall decline in finance (-6%) masks shifts within that industry.  Employment in hedge funds/private equity increased to 15% (+1%), while venture capital fell to 4% (-4%) as more students pursued operating paths.
• Student interest in consulting remains strong; historically it fluctuates.
• Technology was the top industry, attracting 32% (+8%) of students
• Other notable areas of student interest were nonprofit, particularly education, at 5% (+3%) and healthcare at 5% (+1%).

Summer Job Trends

Industry trends for summer internships are similar in nature to those seen for full-time jobs. Median monthly base compensation ($7,000) was unchanged from last year. In addition, 100% of job-seeking students accepted summer internships.

MBA students continued to participate in the GSB’s summer internship programs below. Only students in the paid programs are included in our employment report.

• 44 students were funded for an Entrepreneurial Summer Program (ESP) internship with an early-stage company
• 23 students received a Stanford Management Internship Fund (SMIF) fellowship to work with a public, nonprofit, or social-purpose for-profit organization.
• Our employment report does not include the 94 students who participated in Global Management Experience (GMIX) projects. In a GMIX project, students work with a corporate, government, or nonprofit organization located in a non-U.S. country new to them. These unpaid projects last four weeks.

Technology

The increase in technology is consistent with trends in the economy and with job growth. In contrast to just a year or two ago, cash compensation in technology  is now comparable to other fields – often with the possibility of growth equity.

Technology has become a diversified category. It comprises organizations that impact both new and traditional industries. In fact, “tech” has become an industry suffix –  clean-tech, ed-tech, fin-tech, health-tech, etc.  – and serves as a proxy for innovation and growth in nearly every sector. Accordingly, with this employment report we are changing the way that we report technology sub-categories.  We hope that you will find this year’s new tech sub-categories more helpful.

• Agriculture
• Consumer electronics
• E-Commerce
• Education
• Finance
• Human resources
• Internet services
• Manufacturing
• Marketing
• Media & entertainment
• Natural resources
• Retail
• Software
• Transportation

Entrepreneurship

Per the MBA Career Services and Employer Alliance (CSEA) standards that Stanford follows in reporting MBA employment statistics, entrepreneurs are excluded from our reporting. The only exception is to explain that entrepreneurship was the path chosen by 18% of the graduating class (+5%).

“Entrepreneurship” is a simple word that doesn’t capture the breadth of student ventures. So this year, we are including  a supplemental table that breaks down our student ventures by industry. In 2013, students launched ventures in 18 different industries. Finance was the most popular industry for entrepreneurs. The top industries, in order, are:

• Finance
• Internet services
• Media & entertainment
• Human resources
• Retail
• Healthcare
• Consumer products
• Education
• Energy/cleantech
• Software

Recruiter Diversity

Our leading employers span a wide variety of industries: consulting, finance, technology, healthcare, consumer products, and nonprofit.  What they have in common is work environments that offer the ability to make an impact, a focus on career development, and diverse challenges and responsibilities.

Stanford is grateful to the 339 organizations that hired Stanford MBAs and to all organizations that recruited at Stanford over the last year. The CMC’s recruiting relations team works closely with each recruiter to recommend the best approach for hiring students. We believe this produces the best outcomes for employers and students.

The CMC is pleased to announce its GSB Industry Transition Tool that allows you to track the full-time industry choices made by GSB students from the Classes of 2003-2011! It also covers entrepreneur choices for the Classes of 2009, 2010, and 2011. There are six tabs to the spreadsheet:

1. The pivot charts on the first two tabs answer two different questions:

• For a given pre-GSB industry, what industries did students select after graduation?
• For a given post-graduation industry, from what pre-GSB industries did students come from?

Filters at the top left enable you to focus on data by year, work authorization status, and entrepreneurs. Entrepreneur data is available only for the Classes of 2009, 2010, and 2011 but is the result of exhaustive research by Lisa Sweeney at the CMC. Her data covers nearly every single student entrepreneur during this time.

2. The pivot tables on the next two tabs present the same data in a tabular format. Students returning to the same pre-GSB industry after graduation are highlighted.

3. The next two pivot tables focus specifically on GSB entrepreneurs

• From which industries do entrepreneurs come before enrolling at the GSB?
• To which industries do entrepreneurs go after graduation?

4. The next table uses combined compensation data from the Classes of 2009, 2010, and 2011 to show how compensation transitions from pre-GSB to post-GSB.

Technical note                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

PC Excel 2010 users will see the filters automatically. If using PC Excel 2007, just click anywhere in the chart to see the filters. Unfortunately, Microsoft doesn’t support pivot tables in the Mac versions of Microsoft Office so you’ll see only a static chart. Please try again using a PC.

Thank you students!               

Thank you to all present and former GSB students (over 2,500) who supplied this anonymous data.  If you’ve accepted a job this year, just click on “Update My Status” at the top center of the Dashboard. You’ll help build this table for next year’s students!

» My Career Dashboard

If you’re conducting a global  job search, see the latest edition of the Robert Walters’ Global Salary Survey. This is a terrific 400+ page resource that covers salaries and recruiting trends for 25 countries, from Australia though Vietnam.

Mary Meeker, a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caulfield and Byers, has just published her latest huge deck of amazingly useful data, the “2012 Internet Trends Year-End Update.”

The report was presented just yesterday at Stanford! See @kpcb for Twitter feed.

General Electric is betting that Internet-era technology is ready to sweep through the industrial economy, much as the consumer Internet has transformed media.