Are Your Students Getting Jobs at the Best Companies to Work for?

Have you ever envisioned your dream job?

I regularly ask my students where would they like to work after graduation and I ask this question of both my undergraduate and graduate students.

Some have geographical preferences (don't we all, in a sense) whereas others look for "name" companies and/or those that provide certain benefits.

Ultimately, employees will stay with an organization (company or, in the case of certain PhD graduates, a university or college) if they feel appreciated and are "happy."

Fortune has released its list of top 100 companies to work for  and what really pleased me was the list included so many companies that our graduates in Operations Management (undergrads)  and Management Science (PhDs) have been or are presently employed by. Note the majority of our PhD graduates from the Isenberg School of Management at UMass Amherst do enter academia.

At the top of the list was Google (not surprising) but second on the list was SAS, where one of my former PhD students, Dr. Padma Ramanujam,  works.  I had blogged about visiting her there last year while at the SAMSI workshop and being hosted by Dr. Radhika Kulkarni, who is a fellow recipient of the INFORMS WORMS Award. The cafeteria reminded me of places in Sweden, which I regularly write about. I had been on a dissertation committee of a PhD student at UMass in computer science and he is employed by Google.

Dr. Davit Khachatryan, who also received a PhD with a concentration in Management Science from the Isenberg School of Management, recently gave a talk at the Isenberg School, in our Meet a PhD Alum initiative, works at Price, Waterhouse, and Coopers, which is 81 on the list.

And our most recent PhD recipient in Management Science, with an official PhD receipt of February 1, 2013, is Dr. Milad Ebtehaj, whose new position is with Fedex, number 98 on the list. I have had former undergrads in Operations Management also work for Fedex, as well as for Deloitte, number 47 on the list. Ernst&Young is number 57 on this latest ranking, and one of our former Jack Welch scholars is employed by this company in Boston. I have a warm spot for Ernst&Young because of the recognition that I received from them for my mentoring activities (Thanks!).

I could list more connections between our graduates and the best companies to work for but I will stop here.

Congrats to all the companies that made the list, which, even if they do not employ our graduates now,  they may do so in the future. In any event, it is clear that being good to employees is good for business! Have you ever seen an unhappy employee at Whole Foods?