etting a career started is never easy. First-day stumbling blocks can give way to larger questions about choosing the right career path. Imposter syndrome, information overload, the challenge of new colleagues: it’s almost enough to make you miss the routine of sending out endless résumés to online job descriptions. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in December 2023 that there were more job openings than applicants (with 0.7 applicants per opening), a trend that has held since May 2021. That means the landscape favors people on has partnered with Plant-A, a data intelligence firm, for the second annual ranking of companies that excel at hiring people getting their careers off the ground.. The data, divided into small, medium and large segments based on each company’s size, is compiled from responses from workers with less than five total years of employment experience who are currently at companies with more than 500 employees. This survey aims to benefit people early in their career by surfacing companies that could be a good fit for them. It presents a portrait across industries—including advertising and marketing, engineering, health care and software firms, among others—to highlight companies that are making the best moves to attract fresh talent. We hope the ranking serves as a resource for helping to find matches between job starters and the companies looking to hire them.
