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SEPTEMBER 18, 2006 
Identifying The Ideal Employer We started with more than 100 companies, then winnowed the list by combining survey replies from three different groups Choosing an employer after college is an intensely personal process. A company that's perfect for one job seeker may be perfectly wrong for another. But even if priorities differ, all job seekers care about many of the same things: pay and promotions, corporate culture, and training programs, to name a few. It's these attributes of a workplace BusinessWeek has undertaken to measure with its inaugural ranking of the Best Places to Launch a Career. To start, BusinessWeek turned to a group of people who stand at the intersection between the classroom and the cubicle: the nation's career services directors. In March we conducted a nationwide survey of directors at top colleges and universities, public and private, in every academic discipline. The survey asked the directors to identify the top five employers for entry-level workers in a dozen industries, and the top 10 employers overall. Of the 110 directors surveyed, 40 replied, for a response rate of 36%. Using the survey data, BusinessWeek constructed a list of more than 100 companies, nonprofits, and government agencies that were eligible for the final ranking. This was a two-step process. The first step involved identifying the five high scorers in each industry. For every career services director who ranked a company No. 1 in its industry, the company received five points. Every No. 2 ranking was worth four points, every No. 3 ranking was worth three points, and so on. After tallying the points, including ties, we had a total of 61 companies. To flesh out the list, we reviewed the remaining companies suggested by the career services directors and identified those with the highest industry point totals among all the industries. That added a further 43 employers to the list, for a total of 104. Next, we invited each employer to answer an extensive survey seeking information on hiring, pay, benefits, training programs, and retention. Of the 104 organizations, 55 completed the survey, for a response rate of 53%. We then compared each employer with others in its industry. For each ranking question, the best response, such as the highest pay or retention rate, was awarded 10 points. The worst response, or no response at all, received no points. Points awarded to others depended on the number of employers in that industry. To complete the ranking, we combined the results of the employer survey with two additional pieces of data: From the survey of career services directors, we tallied the points for each respondent's overall ranking of employers -- 10 points for each No. 1 ranking, nine points for each No. 2 ranking, and so on. And from Universum Communications Inc., a Philadelphia researcher that surveyed 37,000 U.S. undergraduates this year, we received the percentage of students who listed each employer among the five for whom they would most like to work. If no career services director included an employer among the top 10 overall, or if no student survey data were available, such employers forfeited the 25% associated with that survey. If data from both surveys were unavailable, the employer was placed at the bottom of the ranking, with its place determined solely by the employer survey.  By Louis Lavelle
BW MALL
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