Jobs That Send College Grads Over the Moon

New studies look at what makes college graduates and working Millennials happiest in the workplace.

Image: IStockphoto

If you’re graduating college and plan to get a job as a software engineer, get ready for a prosperous and blissful career and—if you’re qualified— expect to be recruited by the likes of Amazon, Google and AOL, a new study finds.

Software engineers score highest overall in terms of salaries and finding happiness in the workplace, according to the CareerBliss Top 20 Hot Jobs for New Grads ranking released Wednesday by online career community website CareerBliss.

In addition to technology careers, jobs in healthcare, finance or sales bring the most happiness in areas such as work-life balance, and the biggest bucks as well, the ranking shows. Heidi Golledge, CEO and co-founder of CareerBliss said in a release on the findings that the data also shows an improving job market for college grads.

“We are seeing the highest demand in years for new college grads in areas such as tech, sales and finance,” Golledge said. “Salaries are climbing and companies are aggressively recruiting college grads in these fields.”

The survey comes out just as Elance, another online job site, released the results Tuesday of its survey of Millennials and their attitudes and approaches to work.

The company, which connects freelancers with clients, found that 53 percent of career-seekers born after 1981 stated that they are happier working as a freelancer versus a full-time employee. As for companies Elance works with, they are definitely pursuing freelancers with technical skills, as well as those with online marketing abilities in the areas of search engine marketing, social media marketing and SEO, Ellen Pack, Elance vice president of marketing, said in an email to Portfolio.com.

“As mobile devices become ubiquitous, we see a corresponding demand spike in Android and iPhone programming skills,” Pack said. “Additionally, Web development skills like PHP programming and the newly adopted HTML5 programming language continue to be hot on employers' lists.”

The CareerBliss survey evaluated more than one million data points to determine which companies are hiring and which fields are happiest for college graduates with anywhere from zero to three years of experience. Here are some of the findings:

• You don't need to make a lot to be happy: Software engineers have a bliss score of 7.86 on a scale of 1 to 10, and an average salary of $71,916, but sales representatives, ranked No. 2 on the list, have a significantly lower average salary of $47,629 and a bliss score of 7.78. The third position on the list was business analyst, which has an average salary of $72,773 and a bliss score of 7.85. Coming in at No. 4 was sales manager, with a salary of $68,676 and a bliss score of 7.66, while No. 5 was product manager, with an average salary of $72,717 and a bliss score of 7.40.
• Healthcare and finance are hot fields too: You didn't have to ace calculus and engineering to find your bliss on the job. Science and economics help too. Rounding out the top 10 were the following: No. 6, financial analyst; No. 7, physical therapist; No. 8, network engineer; No. 9, occupational therapist; No. 10, registered nurse.
• These hot companies want you: The survey also looked at hot companies and specific titles for which they are hiring. No 1 was working as a Kindle software development engineer for Amazon, while No. 2 was B2B payroll sales representative for Paychex Inc. and No. 3 was business analyst lead for JPMorgan. Avon is seeking bilingual district sales managers (No. 4) and Google is looking for product managers near Boston (No.5). Click here to see the full list from CareerBliss.

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