Great news for new college graduates in the region. According to CollegeGrad.com, three local companies are among the top 100 nationally in 2007 for entry-level hiring. The complete list is here.
So who are these local companies where you young folks should apply? PNC, 84 Lumber and Education Management Corporation (EDMC). 84 Lumber is projected to hire 1,700 new graduates; PNC- 1350; and EDMC- 625. Obviously, all of these positions being filled are not local. But according to last Friday's Pittsburgh Business Times, 60% of PNC's new grad hires will be local and about 400 of EDMC's will be.
In addition, there are many other companies on the list who have a local presence and will be hiring new grads in the Pittsburgh area.
While we're on the subject, I have to address an issue for young people setting out to interview soon. My wife is a manager in her company and she has recently been interviewing/sifting through resumes (95% of whom are new grads) deciding who she is going to hire. You wouldn't believe the horror stories she has about clueless new grads and their interviewing skills. Let me give you a few tips:
1. Wear a suit! Whether you're male or female doesn't matter. EVERYONE should wear a suit. And khakis do not count and are not acceptable.
2. Answer the question! I don't care how idiotic a question you are asked in an interview, DON'T refuse to answer it (as one of my wife's recent, young interviewees did).
3. Remove personal interests from your resume. Honestly, no one cares that your hobbies include being the biggest Harry Potter fan in the world. In fact, it will creep most people out.
4. Your resume must be PERFECT! Punctuation and grammar MUST be 100% perfect. Running it through a spell-check doesn't count. Look it over in detail and have other people look at it too.
5. Don't say what your REAL goals are! If you're applying for a job that is not related to your field and that you don't plan on making a career, KEEP THAT TO YOURSELF. Am I telling you to lie? Yes, if you want to get hired. No one wants to hire someone who is going to quit in four months after they find a job in their field. Let me clarify- I am not telling you to lie about your accomplishments and credentials, just your intentions.
Good luck, young bucks! I hope you find a good job and stay in the region.
Showing posts with label pittsburgh business times. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pittsburgh business times. Show all posts
Thursday, July 19, 2007
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Pittsburgh's Fortune 500 Companies are Movin' on Up!
Welcome to the first post of Good News Pittsburgh!
The new 2007 Fortune 500 list was released on Sunday (read the end of the post to see why I waited two days to write about it). And it is generally good news for Pittsburgh area companies.
As noted in the Pittsburgh Trib article above, Pittsburgh's corporate status improved from having six Fortune 500 companies headquartered here to having seven, albeit temporarily. The increase from six to seven came from Allegheny Technologies which rose from #536 to #455. However, the list also includes Mellon, which recently announced a merger with Bank of New York that will move the company's official headquarters to NYC. That means that next year, after the deal goes through, we will be back down to six again.
But the good news--which is never reported by the mainstream Pittsburgh media-- is that we will be back up to eight in approximately two years courtesy of the meteoric rise of American Eagle Outfitters (now up to #683) and Dick's Sporting Goods (now up to #633). In total, we have 12 Fortune 1000 companies headquartered in Western Pennsylvania, not to mention Alcoa and Mellon, which only on paper are headquartered in New York.
Add to that the North American headquarters for Bayer, GlaxoSmithKline and FedEx Ground and we're doing just fine, thank you. And, oh, did I mention that we have two more companies headquartered here, Giant Eagle and Highmark, that would both be ranked in the Fortune 500 (around #350) if they were public instead of private? I'm not even going to go into the other local companies that don't even make it into these conversations: 84 Lumber, GNC, Mylan Labs, DQE, etc.
The point is- we're doing OK. Really. It's not all gloom and doom. But you wouldn't know that from the facts that are conveniently omitted by the major newspapers in the area. And that brings me to the reason why I waited until Tuesday to comment on this, even though the list actually came out Sunday. I did it to illustrate my point about how incompetent theses local media entities are. Two days after the fact, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the Pittsburgh Business Times still have absolutely NO MENTION of the new Fortune 500 rankings in print or online. And the Trib FINALLY has something this morning.
Predictably, the P-G and the Business Times will both copy off of the Trib now that they've seen the article and are aware of it. Way to be on top of it, guys! And that's how it works in the Pittsburgh media: lazy reporting. Just wait for the press release to come out and then print it word for word. God forbid someone actually do some research for an article or write something original. Or commit the biggest faux pas possible--gasp!--do a story on something positive in the region!
Believe it or not, there ARE positive things going on here, and people DO want to hear about them. That's why I created this blog. This is what you'll get- positive stories that go unreported or under-reported in the pathetic local media.
Until next time! Hey, that was pretty good for a first post, huh?
The new 2007 Fortune 500 list was released on Sunday (read the end of the post to see why I waited two days to write about it). And it is generally good news for Pittsburgh area companies.
As noted in the Pittsburgh Trib article above, Pittsburgh's corporate status improved from having six Fortune 500 companies headquartered here to having seven, albeit temporarily. The increase from six to seven came from Allegheny Technologies which rose from #536 to #455. However, the list also includes Mellon, which recently announced a merger with Bank of New York that will move the company's official headquarters to NYC. That means that next year, after the deal goes through, we will be back down to six again.
But the good news--which is never reported by the mainstream Pittsburgh media-- is that we will be back up to eight in approximately two years courtesy of the meteoric rise of American Eagle Outfitters (now up to #683) and Dick's Sporting Goods (now up to #633). In total, we have 12 Fortune 1000 companies headquartered in Western Pennsylvania, not to mention Alcoa and Mellon, which only on paper are headquartered in New York.
Add to that the North American headquarters for Bayer, GlaxoSmithKline and FedEx Ground and we're doing just fine, thank you. And, oh, did I mention that we have two more companies headquartered here, Giant Eagle and Highmark, that would both be ranked in the Fortune 500 (around #350) if they were public instead of private? I'm not even going to go into the other local companies that don't even make it into these conversations: 84 Lumber, GNC, Mylan Labs, DQE, etc.
The point is- we're doing OK. Really. It's not all gloom and doom. But you wouldn't know that from the facts that are conveniently omitted by the major newspapers in the area. And that brings me to the reason why I waited until Tuesday to comment on this, even though the list actually came out Sunday. I did it to illustrate my point about how incompetent theses local media entities are. Two days after the fact, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the Pittsburgh Business Times still have absolutely NO MENTION of the new Fortune 500 rankings in print or online. And the Trib FINALLY has something this morning.
Predictably, the P-G and the Business Times will both copy off of the Trib now that they've seen the article and are aware of it. Way to be on top of it, guys! And that's how it works in the Pittsburgh media: lazy reporting. Just wait for the press release to come out and then print it word for word. God forbid someone actually do some research for an article or write something original. Or commit the biggest faux pas possible--gasp!--do a story on something positive in the region!
Believe it or not, there ARE positive things going on here, and people DO want to hear about them. That's why I created this blog. This is what you'll get- positive stories that go unreported or under-reported in the pathetic local media.
Until next time! Hey, that was pretty good for a first post, huh?
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