Picking a major is an arduous task for some, but with CollegeGrad.com's announcement of the top entry level majors, that task may be less painful. The list published by the job-search Web site details the most employable majors based on a recent survey.

Five hundred top entry-level employers were asked to break down their hires based on college major. The results found that accounting made up 23% of all entry level positions being hired, followed by all engineering majors who making up 13% of the total positions. Marketing, computer science and business administration completed the top five in that order with about 10% of hires coming from each major.

Accounting Professor Norman Nemrow was not surprised by the rankings.

"Accounting is such a great stepping stone to a wide variety of other careers," said Nemrow. "It's not just a single-destination major."

He suggests that every student should take Accounting 200 before they graduate so they are able to speak the language of business.

Around 13,000 college grads will be hired by the "Big Four" top accounting firms this year. Most of those will be accounting majors. Likewise, thousands of engineering positions will be filled in companies like Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Northrop Grumman.

Collectively the engineering major came in second for most entry-level hires this year. The electrical engineering degree made up the most of those hires, while mechanical engineering followed closely behind.

An engineering degree can also act as a stepping stone for a college graduate. Many graduates with engineering degrees will end up in medicine, law or consulting fields.

"We train engineers to work on real-world problems as members of teams and with an awareness of the societal and global impacts of their work," said Dean Wheeler a chemical engineering professor at BYU. "Also, we are fortunate to get the cream of the crop when it comes to student quality."

The specific skill set of the top 5 majors is what makes them the most employable at the entry level. Graduates in these majors are in demand due to the large number of openings and the size of the companies requiring their specific skills.

Often accounting and engineering graduates will have multiple job offers at graduation to consider. "But even when the economy is not doing as well, engineers still have relatively good job prospects and salaries," said Wheeler.

Graduates in other majors will also have many job possibilities at their fingertips as well. The skill set required by other industries can often be met by a mixture of majors. This is why the numbers of grads hired at the entry level tend to be more varied for grads in other majors.

Tony Gibert, Recruiting Director for NAVSEA Warfare Center, reminded students in a press release that those skills specific to your major do not stand alone. "New college hires need to understand that the academic knowledge they acquire, the global understanding of social, economic and political factors, their leadership and communication skill, and their professionalism are all important elements of their success and essential to our jobs."

Copyright Brigham Young University 28 May 2008