Employers Remain Confident in Graduate Business Education: GMAC Survey
Credit: JGI/Jamie Grill / Tetra images / Getty Images- Employers said in the 2025 GMAC Corporate Recruiters Survey that AI skills are becoming more important.
- Employers also painted an optimistic picture of hiring, with more saying they would hire business graduates in 2025 compared to 2024.
- While AI skills are increasing in importance, human skills remain key to potential employers.
- Those include skills like problem-solving, adaptability, and communication.
A new survey by the Graduate Management Admissions Council (GMAC) shows enthusiasm among global employers for the skills refined by students in graduate management education (GME) programs and optimism that they’ll be hiring business graduates.
A new question on the 2025 GMAC Corporate Recruiters Survey found that 99% of employers retained confidence in GME programs to prepare students for careers precisely because navigating the shifting landscape caused by artificial intelligence (AI) demands additional business acumen.
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“As AI reshapes work and hybrid workplaces become more common, this confidence reflects graduates’ ability to adapt and lead through uncertainty, signaling that business schools remain essential partners in developing the skill sets and mindsets organizations need,” GMAC CEO Joy Jones said in the report.
But even as the importance of AI education increases, GMAC found employers’ most desired qualifications for recent business graduates remain uniquely human: problem-solving, communication, strategic thinking, and adaptability.
Value of AI Skills on the Rise
Of the more than 1,100 corporate recruiters surveyed by GMAC in 2025, 31% said fluency in AI tools was a key factor in deciding whether to hire business graduates, up from 26% in 2024.
The 6-percentage-point bump comes as no surprise to business schools that have scrambled to integrate AI into their curricula.
Business schools have overwhelmingly embraced AI over the past year.
That’s taken many forms — from investments in the tech by the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School to schools like the American University Kogod School of Business opting to infuse it throughout its curriculum.
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Other schools, like the Arizona State University W.P. Carey School of Business, have launched entire degrees dedicated to AI in business.
Human Skills Still Matter
Employers’ increasing interest in AI skills, however, is only part of a broader picture as to why employers want to hire business graduates. The traditional, human skills taught in graduate business school remain key to employers.
For the second year in a row, corporate recruiters told GMAC that problem-solving and strategic thinking are the most important skills they consider when hiring current GME graduates.
But adaptability and initiative have grown in importance to employers, according to the survey. In fact, they now outrank time and project management and interpersonal and teamwork skills.
For instance, the percent of employers that rank problem-solving as the most important skill for GME grads fell from 59% to 54%; communication fell from 57% to 51%.
In analyzing the responses, GMAC found that employers are thinking about the integration of AI and technology into how human skills such as problem-solving and adaptability are developed.
“Even more important to employers than AI are the many skills that business schools have developed in their students long before OpenAI’s launch of ChatGPT in 2022,” the report reads.
Whether or not that is truly prescriptive of employer needs is up in the air: All of the year-over-year changes are within the margin of error, according to the report.
Still, the importance of human skills follows a broader trend and builds on previous GMAC findings in 2024.