Where do they want to go?

Switching gears from analyzing moves made by companies to garner profits now to the perspectives of their future employees themselves. I was surprised by an article posted on BusinessWeek called “Google Tops Grad Pick for Top Employers.” The ranking is based on "the responses of more than 130,000 business and engineering students in 12 major global markets who told Universum where they dream of working." Of the businesses they could work for, 120 were named and they could pencil in any company which was not on the list. Google leads the Universum ranking for  the second time in a row followed by four accounting firms: KPMG, Ernst & Young, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Deloitte, and five other companies which rounded out the top ten: Procter & Gamble, Microsoft, Coca-Cola, J.P. Morgan, and Goldman Sachs.

While recovering from a recession, I could not believe that Goldman Sachs would come out so high on this list. Sachs played a dramatic role in the housing crisis, but to those questioned for the purpose of this survey, is still an attractive place to work. Considering that there are barely any companies on the list who are less than a decade old, I conjecture that holding a position in these companies contributes to growth in that field.

Google considerably and the rest of these companies on this list have a "unique corporate culture." Google specifically gives "free food and haircuts and lets employees bring their dogs to work" among other things. We all seek a feeling of leisure from doing the work we do. Companies are winning over college graduates and slowly everyone by providing that feeling directly to us.

Written by

Leya Abebe

Article:

http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/content/sep2010/bs20100928_433243.htm