NEW YORK, Sept. 7 /PRNewswire/ — Walt Disney Co. landed the No. 1 spot on BusinessWeek's inaugural "Best Places to Launch a Career" ranking. Disney's strong on-campus recruiting, solid benefits, and collaborative culture helped put the entertainment giant at the head of the BusinessWeek ranking, which identifies top employers for new college graduates.
BusinessWeek's "Best Places to Launch a Career" ranking couldn't be more timely or useful. Some 1.4 million college graduates are entering the workforce this year, and many have no clear destination in mind. BusinessWeek's analysis, the most comprehensive of its kind, sifts feedback from students, college career counselors, and the employers themselves to reveal which companies offer the biggest advantages for entry-level employees, such as the highest pay, the most rapid advancement, and the best training programs. The resulting list of 50 top companies is a road map for the Echo Boomers — sometimes called the Millennial Generation — as they take off on the biggest trip of their lives: their careers.
Confronted with this demanding generation, companies are scrambling to attract and retain the most talented among them. Some executives say they are offering entry-level employees more variety and challenges, providing senior-level mentoring, and even giving them opportunities to work for causes they believe in. Granting more competitive pay and benefits, faster career advancement, and more responsibility means taking big risks with the greenest employees on the payroll.
BusinessWeek's "Best Places to Launch a Career" ranking is in the September 18, 2006 issue, on newsstands September 8. Expanded content is available on BusinessWeek.com, including a robust new subchannel featuring the full methodology, profiles of each employer, slide shows, tips on avoiding first-year mistakes, interactive tools, and a video roundtable with recruiters from top companies.
"The Best Places to Launch a Career" 1 Walt Disney 26 AT&T 2 Lockheed Martin 27 Eli Lilly 3 Deloitte & Touche 28 MTV Networks 4 Goldman Sachs 29 Philip Morris 5 Enterprise Rent-A-Car 30 Ferguson Enterprises 6 State Department 31 BP America 7 Raytheon 32 CIA 8 General Electric 33 Federated 9 JPMorgan 34 Grant Thornton 10 Abbott Labs 35 SunTrust Banks 11 Verizon 36 Shell Oil 12 Ernst & Young 37 Progressive 13 Google 38 Peace Corps 14 National Instruments 39 IRS 15 KPMG 40 Booz Allen Hamilton 16 L'Oreal 41 NASA 17 Bain & Co. 42 Capgemini 18 Merck 43 Teach For America 19 Ameriprise Financial 44 Kraft Foods 20 Accenture 45 Northwestern Mutual 21 Pepsi Bottling 46 Southwest Airlines 22 Lehman Brothers 47 Kohl's 23 Wells Fargo 48 Comptroller of the Currency 24 United Parcel Service 49 Exelon 25 Vanguard 50 Progress Energy
Source: BusinessWeek
