GMAC Survey Finds Strong MBA Hiring Confidence as AI Skills Rise
GMAC's 2025 Corporate Recruiters Survey found that 99% of responding employers remained confident in graduate business education, while 90% planned to hire MBA graduates in 2025. The July 1 report, based on 1,108 recruiters and hiring managers across 46 countries, also found rising interest in AI-tool fluency, but problem-solving and strategic thinking remained employers' top current priorities.
GMAC released its 2025 Corporate Recruiters Survey on July 1, 2025, reporting continued employer confidence in graduate business education as AI skills gained importance. The survey was fielded from January through March 2025 and included 1,108 corporate recruiters and hiring managers from organizations and staffing firms in 46 countries; nearly two-thirds of respondents worked at Global Fortune 500 companies.
The Graduate Management Admission Council said 99% of responding employers expressed confidence that business schools prepare graduates to succeed in their organizations. It also reported that 76% expected to hire the same number or more MBA graduates in 2025 than in 2024, while 90% planned to hire MBA talent. These are employer survey responses and hiring intentions, not a measure of completed hires.
AI fluency rose, but human skills remained central
GMAC said problem-solving and strategic thinking remained the two most important current skills for recent business-school graduates. Knowledge of AI tools recorded one of the largest year-over-year gains and ranked first among the skills employers expected to value five years later.
BestColleges reported that 31% of respondents called AI-tool fluency important in hiring, compared with 26% in 2024. It also noted an important limitation from the report: the year-over-year changes were within the survey's margin of error. The figures therefore support a directional signal that employers are paying more attention to AI fluency, but they do not establish a precise market-wide increase.
Poets&Quants reported that, among recruiters who considered AI knowledge important, most valued the ability to apply AI tools to business strategy and decision-making rather than merely operate the tools. GMAC's release also emphasized communication, adaptability, emotional intelligence, and the ability to work through uncertainty.
What the survey means for teams and candidates
For candidates, the evidence favors concrete examples of using AI to frame a decision, improve a workflow, or evaluate trade-offs over a generic claim of AI literacy. For hiring teams, the survey suggests assessing AI-tool fluency alongside problem-solving and communication instead of treating it as a substitute for those skills.
The findings are a 2025 snapshot of recruiter expectations, not a current hiring forecast for 2026. Their durable value is narrower: they show that employers were already combining demand for practical AI use with continued confidence in the strategic and interpersonal skills associated with graduate business education.
Key Points
- 1GMAC's July 1, 2025 survey covered 1,108 recruiters and hiring managers in 46 countries and found 99% confidence in business schools' preparation of graduates.
- 2GMAC reported that 90% of respondents planned to hire MBA graduates in 2025, while problem-solving and strategic thinking remained the top current skills.
- 3BestColleges reported AI-tool fluency rising from 26% to 31% in hiring importance, but noted that the year-over-year changes were within the survey's margin of error.
Scoring Rationale
GMAC's 2025 survey offers a useful, bounded benchmark for employer confidence and AI-skill expectations across 1,108 respondents in 46 countries. Its age, survey design, and within-margin-of-error year-over-year changes limit immediacy and causal conclusions, supporting a moderate impact score.
Sources
Primary source and supporting public references used for this report.
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