Top 100 Ideal Employers for 2011 College Students and Recent Graduates

Every employer wants to be an employer of choice but most simply are not. Many quality employers are not ranked as employers of choice by college students or recent graduates because the employers don’t hire students or grads or because the employers don’t hire many. So an employer’s failure to make a “best of” list is not necessarily a criticism of the employer so much as it is a recognition that the list is essentially a popularity list and the strength of an employer’s brand goes a long way to ensuring their success in popularity contests.

“Best of” lists are important for large employers who hire dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of college and university students for internships, part-time work, seasonal jobs, and temporary jobs and recent graduates for entry-level jobs and other career opportunities. Landing on a “best of” list makes it easier for employers to recruit the best talent, which in turn makes it easier for them to remain on the “best of” list.

One of the best lists for how students perceive organizations as employers is the American Student Survey from Universum. “The research functions  as a basis for decision-making when choosing target groups, messages and channels for future employer branding campaigns, and as a control instrument for measuring the appeal an organization has over its specific target groups.” For 2011, Universum surveyed 61,726 respondents at 345 colleges and universities between December 2010 and March 2011 and generated 206,462 employer evaluations. Students were targeted separately according to their main field of study so Universum was able to generate a Top 100 Ideal Employer Ranking list for five fields of study:

• Business
• Engineering
• Information Technology
• Natural Sciences
• Humanities / Liberal Arts

We’ll publish the results for each of the above five areas in the next five blog articles so stay tuned…