There are plenty of reasons to go to college, including personal enrichment, self discovery, and spring break. But, ultimately, most graduates hope a degree = a job + a paycheck. The fact that Chicago is home to top employers ranging from startups like Groupon, to rapidly growing firms like Orbitz and CareerBuilder, to major industry leaders like Boeing, Kraft, McDonalds, United, and Wrigley means greater opportunities for graduating students. In fact, many of BusinessWeek’s 69 Best Companies to Launch a Career have a presence in Chicago, and a number of leading entries – including Boeing, Sears, Walgreens, and Abbott Laboratories – have headquarters here. And many global companies – including three of Chicago’s 28 Fortune 500 companies – have recently expanded downtown to gain better access to the city’s unmatched talent pool:
- In response to Walgreens’ opening a new e-commerce office downtown, Senior Vice President Sona Chawla told Crain’s Chicago Business, “I see it as a way to… attract and retain the best and the brightest in this space.”
- After United Airlines decided to move its operations to Willis Tower, Chairman Glenn Tilton said, “By locating downtown we are able to take advantage of Chicago’s tremendous resources, while offering our employees a wide variety of affordable lifestyle options.”
- According to MillerCoors President Tom Long, “Having access to an attractive base of talent, transportation, and business resources” was a factor in the company’s decision to locate in downtown Chicago in 2009.
- According to Rose Ann Pastor, Assistant Dean of Career Management Services at Loyola’s School of Business Administration, “We have noticed a trend in major companies focusing their college recruitment efforts in Chicago. Recruiters that have historically cast wider nets now find the talent they need here.”
The majority of seniors at Northwestern University, University of Chicago, and the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) had already accepted a job by the time they graduated, and interviews with students from these universities consistently named the relatively high number of job opportunities in Chicago a key factor in their decision to stay after college. (Nearly 200 companies recruited undergraduates from UIC, Loyola University Chicago, and DePaul University campuses and 1,281 posted full-time job offers on school job boards in 2009).
Majority of Business Undergraduates Secure Job Within 3 Months of Graduating
Note: survey data not available for all business schools.
Source: Northwestern Graduation Survey Data Report 2008; University of Chicago Undergraduate Exit Surveys, Class of 2009; UIC College of Business Adminstration Undergraduate Employment Survey Report 2008-2009
