Why You May Be Having Difficulty Hiring Accounting & Engineering Grads

Accounting and engineering firms continue to show a lot of interest in hiring new college graduates, according to the Winter 2008 Salary Survey published by the National Association of Colleges & Employers, and they are offering some handsome starting salaries.

Based on the results of this most recent survey, the table below outlines the top employers for 2007-2008 new college graduates, along with their average starting salary offer.

One related challenge that I've encountered, at least in my regional marketplace, is that these service providers (particularly engineering, accounting and consulting services) are not well represented in general salary surveys.  As a result, our best efforts to market price the jobs where new grads in these "hotter" fields traditionally enter an organization can fall short of truly capturing what is going on in the marketplace.  For this reason, I like to pay attention to what NACE reports for these select jobs, in addition to whatever other survey sources a client of mine might typically use.