It's no secret that companies are cautious when hiring software engineers - the usual wisdom being that a bad hire can cause a lot of harm. Being a recent grad exacerbates this problem, being unproven relative to most other candidates.
That being said, I've noticed that there seems to be classes of people & companies who are a bit more apt to take that kind of risk. It's hard to pin them down though. In your experience, what are these classes? What drives companies to consider recent grads?
Or am I wrong - finding patterns in the noise - and that's basically unknowable?
Most job listings don't mention if they aren't considering new grads (even if the listing doesn't exclude them). For that reason, I'm trying to figure out which companies (and even which industries) are more likely to hire recent grads in order to better target my job search. Hopefully this info can help others in my position as well.
Thanks for looking.
I've been very impressed with the way that Microsoft, Dell, Intel are willing to take the time to onboard new employees. (Although some prefer interning them first)
You can also look into research / government support. Government organizations or government contractors are usually not as competitive financially, although more competitive on most other dimensions. "No one gets rich at JPL" was a phrase often joked about by people that had spent 20+ years in that sort of work. Many of the younger people at GrammaTech & Galois were hired right out of college. They're stability comes from a different business model.