The National Society of High School Scholars (NSHSS) has published their 9th annual exploratory research survey on the emerging career and life aspirations of over 13,000 of the nation’s highest-achieving millennial students and professionals in April of 2016. NSHSS hopes that the results of their survey will help them to continue their mission of providing relevant  scholarship and mentorship programs to over 1 million extraordinary young men and women around the world who might not have any other opportunities to reach their goals.  

One of the most valuable categories in the survey, The Top Preferred Companies, asked the participants to rank the top 200 companies they wanted to work for. The list revealed a lot of interesting changes in the career goals of young people since the first survey in 2008 and even showed a huge shift since the 2015 survey. 

Some of the major highlights of the survey include the 3M Company, formerly known as the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company, that made its debut on the list and beat Google out of last year’s top choice and into second place. Participants continued to rank technology companies as their most preferred employers, with health companies and hospitals following closely behind. One other surprising debut to the top 200 companies was BuzzFeed, an American private internet digital media company that provides trending social and entertainment news.

The top 5 factors that the survey participants reported using in their preference choices included fair employee treatment, flexible work hours, career advancement opportunities, healthy work/life balance, and social responsibility. Employers can model the success of these high-demand, competitive employers by providing their employees with a work experience that values these top criteria choices.

The top 16 Preferred Companies for Millennials in 2016 are ranked in ascending order as follows: 

1. 3M
2. Google
3. St. Jude Children’s Hospital
4. Walt Disney Company
5. Local hospitals
6. FBI
7. BuzzFeed
8. Apple, Inc.
9. CIA
10. Amazon
11. Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta
12. Health Care Service Corp.
13. Mayo Clinic
14. Microsoft
15. Nike
16. U.S. State Department