College grads pick contractors as desirable employers

Making up more than a quarter of the 100 companies listed in a ranking of the most attractive employers are either government contractors or companies that have a significant government contracting business.

The annual rankings are based on a survey of recent college graduates who were are asked to pick their most desirable employer.

In the IT category, Google came in first, but IBM, which is on Washington Technology’s Top 100 rankings of the largest government contractors, was ranked No. 5. A total of 28 companies made the rankings by Universum, a consulting company that focuses on hiring and retention.

Other companies on the list with significant government business were:

Microsoft (No. 2)

Cisco Systems (No. 14)

Lockheed Martin (No. 16)

Hewlett-Packard Co. (No. 17)

Dell (No. 18)

Oracle (No. 19)

Boeing (No. 21)

Northrop Grumman (No. 23)

AT&T (No. 27)

Deloitte (No. 28)

Verizon (No. 29)

GE (No. 32)

Accenture (No. 40)

PricewaterhouseCoopers (No. 42)

Siemens (No. 46)

United Technologies Corp. (No. 47)

Ernst & Young (No. 48)

BAE Systems (No. 51)

Raytheon (No. 52)

Booz Allen Hamilton (No. 55)

KPMG (No. 56)

Motorola (No. 57)

VMWare (No. 72)

Rolls-Royce North America (No. 79)

SAP (No. 87)

EMC (No. 89)

Salesforce.com (No. 99)

The survey was conducted from November 2011 to March 2012, and had 59,643 respondents at 318 universities across the country.

The list also included several government agencies led by the National Security Agency at No. 12.