Best Companies to Work for after Graduation

Graduating from college can give one both a feeling of accomplishment and uneasiness. It takes a lot of hard work to do well in college and graduate. As graduation arrives (and the fear of having to pay back student loans comes), many worry about the next step to take, which is usually to try and secure a good-paying job and start to establish some sort of career.

Sure, there will be a little fear and uneasiness upon graduating, knowing you will have bills to pay, as payments for student loans will soon be due. It's not easy finding that perfect job fresh out of college.

Unfortunately, since last year, the number of grads being hired has dropped (and appears it will continue to drop) and starting salaries have dipped.

Only 20% of 2009 grads who have applied for a job actually have one. Out of those that are employed, 73% had completed an internship at some point during college.

Part of the problem can be linked to the fact that job openings reached a record low in July. According to the Labor Department, the U.S. had 2.4 million job openings in July, the fewest since it began tracking in 2000 and exactly half of the record high 4.8 million in mid-2007.

Turning to Internships
Perhaps this new dilemma will mean more internships post-graduation for recent grads. Many students are choosing to work unpaid internships, just to be qualified for the job(s) they want that require previous work experience.

Some say this small investment of time can prove invaluable later, when the economy improves. Proving yourself to be a valuable resource while interning for a company can easily get you hired on as a full-time paid employee later on.

Best Companies to work for

You'll need an idea of where you'd like to start your career. Of course, this all depends on your major, as you may already have a few companies in mind. There are select companies out there that are considered top employers for grads, as they offer great advancement through the company as well as a good starting salary and benefits.

1. Deloitte
2. Ernst & Young
3. PricewaterhouseCoopers
4. KPMG
5. U.S. State Dept.
6. Goldman Sachs
7. Teach for America
8. Target
9. J.P. Morgan
10. IBM

Source: BusinessWeek

Please take these 2009 rankings by BusinessWeek lightly, as they only include companies that participated in their survey. Companies like Google (for example), who were ranked 7th last year, were not included in this year's ranking because they declined to participate in BusinessWeek's survey.

Other Employer Rankings

Universum Ranking
Universum’s IDEAL Employer Survey, taken by more than 60,000 undergraduates, is a ranking of what students see as being the “best place to work”.

1. Google
2. Walt Disney
3. Apple Computer
4. U.S. Department of State
5. FBI
6. Ernst & Young
7. Peace Corps
8. NASA
9. PricewaterhouseCoopers
10. Teach for America

Fortune Ranking
Though maybe a little outdated now, back in 2007 Fortune published a list of 20 Great Employers for New Grads. Here they ranked companies based on perks to new hires just out of college, including salary, benefits, workplace flexibility, and growth opportunities within the company.

1. Lehman Brothers
2. Electronic Arts
3. Pricewaterhouse Coopers
4. Randstad
5. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
6. Rockwell Collins
7. Teach for America
8. Qualcomm
9. Key Bank
10. Northrop Grumman