NASA Tops IT Grads’ Wish Lists for Gov’t Job Offers

[Oceander]

NASA Tops IT Grads’ Wish Lists for Gov’t Job Offers

By Brittany Ballenstedt
Next-Gov
March 26, 2014

Who says young computer science graduates do not want to work for federal agencies?  A new report lists the top 100 ideal employers among undergraduate computer science students, and 14 federal agencies made the list.

The latest survey of more than 46,000 undergraduate students by branding consultancy Universum found that the usual tech industry leaders – Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon and Facebook – were the top most ideal employers listed by respondents.

And while federal agencies were not among the top 10 picks, the good news is that many cracked the top 25, with even more making the top 100 ideal employers ranked by computer science grads.  Among the top agency picks were NASA (11), National Security Agency (13), FBI (14), CIA (15), Defense Department (22), U.S. Air Force (25) and State Department (29).

Rounding out the list was the Energy Department (37), U.S. Navy (41), Centers for Disease Control (43), Environmental Protection Agency (45), Veterans Affairs Department (50), U.S. Army (56), Treasury Department (75) and the National Institutes of Health (78).  Several government contractors also made the list.

Federal agencies also were listed as ideal employers in all other job field categories surveyed, including business, engineering and natural sciences.

So how do agencies tap into this strong interest among young entry-level workers?  According to Universum, they key for employers is to tout the workplace qualities most desired by Millennials.  Among the key qualities were respect for employees, job security, a creative and dynamic work environment, professional training and development, a friendly work environment, supportive leaders, leadership opportunities, ethical standards, high future earnings and a clear path for advancement.

My belief is that those are all areas in which federal agencies can excel.

How will your agency tap into the strong interest in federal jobs among young college students?

This article originally appeared in Nextgov. com.

[mountaineer]

I hope these aspiring NASA workers speak some Arabic language, given the shift in NASA's primary purpose to "Muslim outreach."

[Chieftain]

NASA??  YHGTBSM!!  Last time I checked, NASA does not even have a manned launch vehicle and is completely dependent upon the Russians for shuttling US astronauts to and from the International Space Station; which by the way, is rapidly approaching the end of its service life, and will likely be abandoned by the US long before 2020.  The Russians want to extend that by 8 years but doing so would be completely on them.

SpaceX, just to mention one, is a much more likely place for a serious space science grad to seek employment.  There is other serious venture capitol being spent out there doing long range planning and design for permanent space mining projects, including mining on the moon and out into the asteroid belt.  If someone can figure a way to start shuttling large chunks of ice in from out in the Oort Cloud we would never have a fresh water shortage anywhere on the planet.  If someone can figure a way to start smelting ore mined on asteroids, and turning out finished architectural structures in space, well above low earth orbit, say, out at one of the LaGrange points, large scale manufacturing in space would be possible along with all kinds of technologies that simply are not possible on the ground, or in orbit around a large gravity source. 

NASA served us well in paving the way for the private and commercial exploitation of space.  NASA is hardly the end-all be-all agency it once was, and that's fine because a lot if not most of the people who used to be employed exclusively by NASA have moved on to places like SpaceX and elsewhere, and slowly commercial use of space is unfolding.