The surprise in BusinessWeek's second annual ranking: Accounting firms
have raced to the head of the pack
by Lindsey Gerdes
SPECIAL REPORT
Best Places to Launch a Career
* The Best Places to Launch a Career
* The College Administrator: What's Different About the Ys
* The New Hire: Why I'm Delighted with Deloitte
* Video: Inside Scoop From Big Four Recruiters
* Profiles and Forums
* Personalized Ranking Table
* Slide Show: Wacky Ways to Land a Job
* Teach for America Taps Titans
* Video: Upward Bound at JP Morgan—One Analyst's Personal Account
* Reporter's Journal: Microsoft's Happiness Czar
* September 24, 2007 Issue of BusinessWeek
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Members of Deloitte & Touche's Class of 2007. Chris Buck
Accountants used to be spoofed as bean counters—dutiful, middle-aged,
gray-suited men with considerable analytical expertise but little
charisma. That was during the good times. After their uninspiring
performances in the corporate scandals of recent years, accounting
seemed like a profession without much of a future, and the firms
certainly no place to launch a career. Scratch that. This year
accountants became sexy. Accounting firms dominated BusinessWeek's
second annual ranking of the best companies for new college graduates:
Deloitte & Touche is No. 1, followed by PricewaterhouseCoopers and Ernst
& Young. The last of the Big Four, KPMG, moved up four spots, to No. 11.
Why did the accounting firms do so well? Enormous demand. Across
industries, there is a mad scramble to recruit the best and brightest of
a new generation, the much-maligned, heavily scrutinized Gen Y. Nowhere
is the pressure more intense than in the Big Four. The Sarbanes-Oxley
Act has so greatly increased the need for their services that the firms
are facing an epic talent shortage.
That has put them in an unusual position: They are among the first to
rethink how to recruit college grads, keep them happy on the job, or
just keep them at all. Ernst & Young uses Facebook to let prospective
employees talk freely with real ones. Deloitte will show a rap video
about office life—made by interns—to give students a realistic view of
the company. And PwC requires some bosses to get a second opinion on
their evaluations of new hires to make sure the feedback is clear
enough, the goals ambitious enough for kids who are uncomfortable with
ambiguity. Welcome to the post-millennial world.
THE GOOGLE EFFECT
Our ranking is based on three extensive surveys: of career services
directors at U.S. colleges, the employers they identify as the best for
new graduates, and college students themselves. This year we were able
to examine the records of many more companies, which allowed us to
expand our list of employers from 55 to 95 and broaden our view of the
corporate landscape. Several newcomers, including PwC, IBM (IBM), and
Microsoft, (MSFT) eclipsed last year's favorites. Walt Disney (DIS) had
been No. 1; this year it fell to No. 7. Last year's No. 2, Lockheed
Martin (LMT), slipped to No. 9.
There were a number of surprises beyond the rise of the accounting
firms. Only nine companies in the top 50 last year offered starting
salaries of at least $55,000. This year twice that many pay big money;
among them are the brand-name tech companies, where, thanks to the
Google effect, first-year salaries now average $60,000 to $65,000 (and
that's before bonuses). We also saw the three pharmaceutical companies
surveyed last year fall in the rankings. Merck & Co. (MRK) (No. 49),
which was in the news because of its problems with Vioxx, did poorly in
the student poll.
Our survey shows how some of the smartest employers are starting to deal
with a new generation that expects a very different workplace from the
one of their parents. The intense desire to hire young graduates is
prompted by the retirement of the boomers, of course, but also the dead
certainty among executives that their success marketing to youthful
consumers depends on the insights of IM-ing, YouTube-watching
twentysomethings who are often heralded for their tech savvy, if not
much else.
The employers that did best in our ranking recognize that they have to
accommodate this new generation. Many of them are trying to appeal to
Gen Y by making themselves more transparent, flexible, responsive, even
nurturing. Their initiatives range from the conventional (more vacation)
to the questionable (a faux sitcom about office life).
