Press Release

CollegeGrad.com Names Top Intern Employers for 2008

Top 200 Intern Employers Plan to Hire more than 46,000 Interns in 2008

STATE COLLEGE, PA--(HR MARKETER)--February 27, 2008--CollegeGrad.com, the #1 Entry Level Job Site, today announced the Top 200 Intern Employers for 2008. According to the results of the 2008 Top Entry Level Employers survey, current college students can expect Top Intern Employers to hire more than 46,000 interns in 2008.

The Top Intern Employers list details the 2008 internship hiring plans for 200 employers nationwide, and is available online at www.CollegeGrad.com/topemployers/internships.shtml. Each employer page also details projections for entry and masters level hiring for the 2008 recruiting year.

Among the 2008 Top 200 Intern Employers listed by CollegeGrad.com, 53% anticipate hiring more interns in 2008 than 2007. 22% will hire the same number and 25% will be hiring fewer interns than in 2007. But even though more than half of employer respondents indicated they would be increasing their total intern hiring, the total increase in 2008 intern hiring is only 0.52% over 2007 intern hiring.

Why so slight? "It may reflect the uncertainty with the economy," said Brian Krueger, President of CollegeGrad.com. "A small increase is not inherently a bad thing, but it may be showing a leveling off of the demand for entry level talent in future years."

At the top of the list, Walgreens plans to hire 7350 interns in 2008. "We're proud to be the leader in internship opportunities," said Marty Slevin, Walgreens manager of retail management recruitment. "Today, we offer more advancement opportunity than at any time in our 106-year history for students in retail management, pharmacy, technology and a broad spectrum of corporate positions."

Other employers on the list are hiring as many as 2500, and as few as 5 interns in 2008. Across the board, employers point toward their internship programs as critical to future success in their recruiting and business efforts. Recruiting leaders specifically highlight best-fit evaluation as key to that success.

"Interns are critical to the success of ensuring a robust college grad hiring effort," said Jolie Chehadeh, Campus Recruiting Program Lead for Thomson. "Interns experience the organization firsthand and make an informed decision on whether it is the right long-term career fit, and the organization is able to evaluate the skills and overall fit of the intern through firsthand experience."

Lesser known employers find their internship programs valuable for developing on-campus advocates for their company. "Interns go back to their school after working at Argon ST and talk to other students about the positive engineering experience at Argon," said Terry Collins, Argon ST’s CEO. "This helps us in hiring higher quality new graduates from their university."

With more than 46,000 internship opportunities represented by the Top Intern Employers list, Krueger recommends that college students take advantage of available internships to launch themselves into post-graduation employment.

"The experience gained in an internship or co-op can be the key differentiator for many new college grads," says Krueger. "A successful internship can be the ticket to locking down a job offer, or several job offers, early in your final year."

Having already completed their internships, the Class of 2008 can look forward to a positive entry level hiring year. Top Entry Level Employer survey results released by CollegeGrad.com last month project entry level hiring to increase 11.8% in 2008.

About CollegeGrad.com:
CollegeGrad.com is the #1 entry level job site on the Internet and is the leader in the field of entry level job search. Brian Krueger is President and Founder of CollegeGrad.com and author of the best-selling book for entry level job search, College Grad Job Hunter.

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CONTACT INFO: Heidi Hanisko, CollegeGrad.com, 262-375-6700 or contact us online.

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Additional employer quotes:

"Interns continue to be DFAS' #1 recruiting strategy for making full-time entry level offers into our three-year Leaders in Motion training and development program. DFAS looks forward to each summer as interns create excitement and bring energy with them. We always assign each intern to a seasoned professional to obtain real-world, "hands-on" experience; give each intern a summer group project where they get to help develop their leadership skills; and we provide them opportunities to meet our senior leaders, meet our customer - the service member, and learn about various departments/processes in our workplace. During the summer, the interns never cease to amaze us with the amount of work they get accomplished, the professional attitudes they display, and the general willingness to take on any assignment given to them."

Cindy Cox
Program Manager, Leaders in Motion Program
Defense Finance and Accounting Services

"Interns are critical to our success as our work peaks in the summer months. Internships also provide managers the best way to test a student’s skills & work ethic before we hire them as fulltime employees upon graduation.

Darcy Van Orden
Senior Staffing Manager
Centennial Contractors Enterprises

"I believe interns bring a lot of value to our organization due to their fresh perspective and new and creative ideas. There is zest for learning that is always refreshing to our organization, thus allows us to provide very meaningful work to our interns. It is then up to our interns (with the guidance of their managers) to make the most of their work assignment and apply that creativity to their projects, which can lead to their work and/or recommendations being implemented within the organization. Also, the internship program is a 3 month, challenging, yet fun experience, that allows us to interview and evaluate our interns, but also allows our interns to interview and evaluate us as an employer of choice. They should be able to walk away from the summer experience with us and feel comfortable coming to work for us full time upon graduation. The balance between the quality of their work experience, company exposure and the collaborative and collegial environment, will all be factors that will rate us either as that employer of choice or just the 'company I interned with.' My chips are on the employer of choice sentiment!"

Brian Wesley
University Relations Director – North America
Whirlpool Corporation

"Interns are invaluable to Sodexho as they are the future leaders of our company. Our goal with the Sodexho Future Leaders Internship Program is to convert 70% of our interns into management hires. Because of the success of our program last year, we are doubling the number of internships that we will be offering in the summer of 2008."

Michelle Thomas
Senior Manager, Diversity Recruitment
Sodexho

"Grant Thornton's focused learning path guides advancement at each stage from intern to partner to ensure employees know the steps needed to take to grow within the firm."

Monique Brannon
Director of Recruiting
Grant Thornton LLP

"Interns give us with the opportunity to mentor, coach and teach future professionals.

"Internship programs enable us to expand the academic knowledge of our interns through real "hands-on" experiences and technical applications.

"Interns also create a link between academia and corporate America that is important for the constant creation and evaluation of effective curricula versus real world job needs."

Tony Gilbert
Recruiting Director
NAVSEA Warfare Centers

"FactSet puts a lot of time and effort into developing a structured and meaningful internship program because we feel that positive internship experiences can develop on-campus FactSet advocates after the interns return to school. While in our program, interns get the opportunity to work on projects that have real-world applications."

Dan Viens
Director of Human Resources
FactSet

"Larson Design Group recognizes the importance of growing our company for continued success and in order to do that we recognized that we must pay serious attention to recruitment. The most proactive way for us to address the real concerns of recruitment in our industry as well as how brain drain is affecting our market regions was to invest our resources into establishing ourselves as a preferred Internship and Job Co-operative destination among students. Students get hands-on experience in their chosen field and we hope they like it enough to think of us first when they consider job opportunities. To date, our program has produced the kind of results we were hoping for; reduced recruitment costs in ad placement and national recruiter, but more importantly leading students to our company that are from our market areas and keeping their talents local."

William Phillips
Director of Human Resources
Larson Design Group

"Interns provide a valuable recruiting resource to our company. As a smaller company, Argon ST is not a well known name and interns go back to their school after working at Argon and talk to other students about the quality of our people and the positive engineering experience at Argon. This helps us in hiring higher quality new graduates from their university."

Terry Collins
CEO
Argon ST

"Interns are critical to the success of ensuring a robust college grad hiring effort. Interns have the opportunity to experience the organization firsthand and make an informed decision on whether it is the right long-term career fit. Additionally, the organization is able to comprehensively evaluate the skills and overall fit of the intern through firsthand experience. When given meaningful work, even in a short period of time, interns have the ability to make an impact on the business."

Jolie S. Chehadeh
Campus Recruiting Program Lead
Thomson

Additional college career center quotes:

"A candidate with internship experience will stand out over all other candidates. With an internship, you can describe what you learned, problems you solved, what you liked, what you didn't, and experiences that stretched your skills. A student or recent grad with internship experience can write a more effective resume, typically interviews better, and is more prepared to ask questions of a prospective employer."

Linda Ickes, MA, SPHR
Associate Director, Career & Student Employment Services
Western Michigan University

"Internships are the real key for students to take their theoretical knowledge and learn how to apply it in an actual work environment. The students who take full advantage of internship opportunities prepare themselves to be ready to hit the ground running at their first full-time employment with the ability to link theory to practice."

J. Kendrick Schetter
Assistant Director of the Career Center
Millsaps College

"Internships foster respect for work, enhance classroom learning, help in career decision making and give students a chance to roll up their sleeves and work hands-on. We try to direct students to the challenging situations that will give them a leg up on the competition if they graduated and sought jobs in those fields.... and the skills learned are often transferable from one field to another."

Ron Gallagher
Assistant Director/Internship Program Counselor
Williams College

"The value to entry level students of having relevant internship experience on their resume should never be taken for granted. An internship from which a student gained skills and real work experience that are directly related to the first jobs that they target out of college not only gives the student a leg-up over other new grad candidates to be chosen for entry level positions, but it can even push the grad into being qualified for the next higher level position.

"The employer gets at least a 2 for 1 deal by hiring a new grad who has completed a relevant internship. They get a new hire who can hit the ground running having recently applied skills and knowledge to the real world of work in addition to bringing their fresh perspective and up-to-date theories and practices to the position and company.

"Therefore, college grads must be diligent to describe any relevant paid, unpaid or volunteer experiences by articulating the skills and accomplishments they achieved during their internships; not just listing basic tasks they performed. I also always tell our students to consider and describe their relevant unpaid experiences with the same respect that they would give any paid experiences on their resume. This not only enhances their resume but also their self esteem!"

Nancy White
Director of Career Services
Lakeland Community College

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