College grads looking for their first job may want to give Verizon Wirelessa call.
The telecommunications giant is expecting to hire more than 13,000 entry-level workers this year, making it the top employer of recent graduates according to CollegeGrad.com,which tracks the numbers annually.
Despite a tough job market—and an 8.9 percent unemployment rate—some companies are still planning on hiring new grads.
“Many said that new grads were the lifeblood of their companies,” says Adeola Ogunwole, director of marketing and PR at CollegeGrad.com, which conducted the survey.
Ogunwole says that even though many of the companies have laid off more senior employees, they're still looking to hire fresh talent.
Overall, CollegeGrad.com found that hiring was relatively stable among the companies surveyed, down just 1.5 percent from 2008, but up 11.4 percent from 2007. The survey found hiring in a diverse amount of sectors, from customer service to financial firms.
At Verizon Wireless , the jobs for new hires are mostly in customer service, according to Kim Allenbach, director of employee experience at the company. Allenbach says that new hires that start out at call centers and retail stores can move into other career tracks like marketing. Other mobile phone companies that are hiring include AT&T, which is taking on 3,428 people, T-Mobile with 590 hires and Sprint with 160.
Rental car company Enterprise Rent-A-Car came in second in the survey with 8,000 new hires expected. Filling out the top five are the IRS, Progressive Insuranceand the non-profit Teach for America.
The survey results look particularly bright for accounting majors.
Financial firms Deloitte, Ernst & Young, KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers plan to fill a combined 9,000 positions, with many of them calling for accounting degrees.
The IRS, naturally enough, is also looking for accounting skills in filling many of its 5,000 new jobs.
If the IRS is not for you, there's plenty of other work for Uncle Sam. The FBI expects to hire 2,950 new workers in a variety of capacities this year. Other government agencies, like the Patent and Trademark Office, the Labor Department and the State Department all expect to hire a thousand or more people.
Not bad, for a recession.
“College grads should know that there are still jobs available out there,” says Ogunwole.
