As ambitious yet sometimes laid-back dreamers, many students aspire to join top companies and work in impressive corporate environments after graduation.
Recently, LinkedIn released its annual Top 50 Best Companies in America list, helping those who want to advance their careers in the U.S. get to know these "dream" employers.
LinkedIn's annual best companies list mainly considers the following seven factors:
Ability to advance, skills growth, company stability, external opportunity, company affinity, gender diversity, and educational background.
Each factor reflects important underlying details about a company.
Top 10 Companies on LinkedIn's U.S. List
1 Amazon
Amazon has topped the list for two consecutive years, which is inseparable from the rich benefits it offers employees.
While major tech companies are engaged in a talent war, Amazon has spent lavishly to raise salaries again: the maximum base salaries for management and technical staff have been doubled, and even ordinary workers got raises, with an additional three million dollars poured into pay hikes.
Think that's enough? To retain top talent, Amazon also plans to invest a whopping $1.2 billion over the next three years in talent development. Amazon will cover full college tuition for front-line employees and exam fees for multiple certifications, including English language tests.
2 Alphabet
You might not be familiar with the name "Alphabet," but it is Google's parent company. From this perspective, its second-place ranking isn't surprising.
In the fourth quarter of 2021, Alphabet's revenue grew 32% year-over-year to $75.33 billion, showing strong growth momentum!
Last quarter, Alphabet hired another 6,500 employees, a move that also significantly boosted its subsidiary YouTube, with revenue growth even surpassing Netflix!
In terms of employee benefits, Alphabet adopts a hybrid work model and offers four weeks of "work from anywhere" per year, long-term leave, and "no meeting" days.
At the same time, Alphabet creates work communities through resource sharing and training, allowing employees to learn from different fields without letting remote work hinder communication.
3 Wells Fargo
Wells Fargo, one of the four largest banks in the U.S., surpassed last year's third-place JPMorgan Chase on the LinkedIn list this year, successfully breaking into the top three.
Now, Wells Fargo is doubling down on cloud business growth and plans to hire thousands of additional software engineers and technical staff. As a financial group, Wells Fargo also has significant demand for talent across various roles, including consulting, investment, and lending, requiring people skilled in strategy and execution.
After joining the company, Wells Fargo also offers tuition reimbursement benefits and recently invested another $300 million in employee development and training.
4 JPMorgan Chase
JPMorgan, a bank that seems to have a branch at every other intersection to say hello. In 2021 alone, Chase generously gave all junior-level employees two pay raises. And the CEO directly stated, "We want to be very, very competitive on pay."
JPMorgan is thirsting for talent, with a bit of a "judge by ability, not background" attitude: no matter your background, as long as you have the ability, Chase welcomes you.
Chase also places great emphasis on equality, diversity, and inclusion, and has set up a dedicated recruitment channel for people with autism, while also removing questions about criminal records from job applications. Such an inclusive attitude toward employees is likely one reason it consistently ranks high on the list.
5 Walmart
Fifth on the list is Walmart, the retail giant whose global workforce outnumbers the previous companies combined, and it plans to hire 50,000 more employees by the end of April.
Many positions at Walmart do not require a college degree, providing equal employment opportunities for those who want to join a large company but may not have higher education.
On the benefits side, in addition to annual raises, Walmart has partnered with several U.S. universities to offer employees full tuition coverage when attending those schools! This includes online programs at Purdue University and several other top 100 universities.
6 IBM
IT industry leader IBM is also improving benefits after a major internal restructuring! In addition to giving employees more flexibility to work remotely like Alphabet, IBM's most people-centric benefits lie in its personalized parental leave arrangements, compassionate leave that cares for employees' physical and mental health, and early childhood education training.
At the same time, IBM was the 9th largest company willing to sponsor H1B visas for foreign employees in the U.S. in 2021, providing more H1B visas than even Facebook. Its care for foreign workers has won IBM a great deal of goodwill.
7 AT&T
After acquiring WarnerMedia in 2018, AT&T, the largest telecom service provider in the U.S., expanded into film and entertainment. Last year, AT&T announced that Warner would partner with Discovery to create an entirely new, independent entertainment company. The merger is expected to be completed in 2022, so let's look forward to it!
After business expansion, AT&T has also stepped up efforts to train its own employees. The company invested $2 million in its internal "AT&T University" training program, partnering with platforms like Udacity and Coursera to develop online courses aimed at enhancing employee skills.
8 Bank of America
Bank of America (BoA) ranks just behind JPMorgan among the big four U.S. banks, and in 2021 achieved record-breaking progress in a series of high-tech patents: a 31% increase in AI patents, 86% growth in blockchain patents, 32% growth in data analysis patents, and 40% growth in payment-related patents.
And BoA has also been named by Fortune as "the third most female-friendly large company in the U.S." thanks to its family care benefits and relatively strong gender ratio among senior employees.
9 Apple
As one of the first companies to shift to remote work at the start of the pandemic, Apple employees now only need to come into the office three days a week.
Additionally, the retail division, a core part of the company, now enjoys doubled sick leave benefits. Retail employees also have access to paid parental leave and discounts on emergency child care.
For a giant like Apple, which centers on technology products, tech, and retail, the job opportunities span a wider range of industries, making it suitable for talent in technology, design, marketing, communications, and many other fields:
10 Comcast
Here is another group that stands out because of its subsidiaries. This is actually the parent company of the famous Universal Studios and DreamWorks Animation!
As the world's largest communications company, Comcast's benefits focus on employee development, including mentorship programs, departmental rotations, tuition assistance for continuing education and skills development, and covering 78% of employees' medical expenses.
Most importantly, Comcast's belief is to let employees actively be themselves because it believes that only when everyone realizes their personal potential can the company get better and better.
After looking at so many dream companies, one can't help but sigh that top companies indeed have good reasons for their strength. From generous benefits to career advancement, they take care of everything for their employees—such thoroughness is hard not to be tempted by!
For students who want to develop their careers at these top companies, early and thorough preparation is the key. Of course, big companies are not the only path for talented individuals. What suits you best is what matters most.
I wish every student can eventually find their dream company!
