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A growth surge has fueled the need for upward of 1,200 new college graduates in the coming year at Raytheon, a defense contractor that has maintained a strong college recruiting strategy for diverse candidates with technical degrees. "We have a history and a recruiting presence at over 100 colleges and universities nationwide," says Jeff Goodman, university programs manager. "When you look at all of our locations that hire college grads, we pretty well cover the northeast to the southwest."
Besides its locations in the northeast, Raytheon also has major plant sites in the Washington, DC beltway area; Dallas, TX metroplex; Tucson, AZ; Aurora, CO; Indianapolis, IN; St. Petersburg, FL; and southern California. The corporation's work involves defense and government electronics, space, information technology, technical services, and business aviation and special mission aircraft. Most positions require a DOD security clearance. Of its 80,000 employees, 30,000 are technical professionals or engineers.
Raytheon primarily seeks engineers in software, systems and hardware. It also hires mechanical, industrial/manufacturing and aerospace engineers, as well as a variety of majors for leadership development programs.
The corporation posts job openings internally first. Every employee has to be at the company for at least a year before he or she can request a transfer, however. Goodman says that once someone comes to work at Raytheon, there are wonderful opportunities in store for career advancement and enrichment and workplace flexibility. For example, many of Raytheon's businesses span different locations; a person could be part of the network centric systems business, which is headquartered in McKinney, TX, but work in Florida, California or the northeast.
Of the 100-plus schools where it recruits, Raytheon particularly targets twenty-four that have strong engineering and IT programs and good representation of women and people of color. Every university has a single point of contact at Raytheon for setting up formal recruitment efforts. Goodman notes that Raytheon's campus recruitment representatives are primarily its own engineers.
Internships and co-ops are strong recruiting resources, Goodman says. Most participants are at Raytheon's larger facilities. Opportunities vary according to the needs of a specific location. For example, a large missile systems operation in Tucson primarily uses summer interns. Other locations, like Raytheon Aircraft in Wichita, offer parallel co-ops while the student goes to school. Raytheon sometimes extends an educational leave of absence to student interns until they finish their degrees and are ready for full-time hire.
New college graduates may request to go to a location on a temporary basis to help with a particular project, or they may move within one location to other areas of application in their field. An electrical engineer, for instance, may work as a design engineer in the microwave radar center in Dallas for a couple of years and then move to test engineering.
"Recent college grads are sold the notion that they should join a company thinking less in terms of a career there and more about what they can learn and take to their next opportunity. Here they can progress without necessarily having to become managers. They can grow within a program and go into program management, or they can grow within a function," he says, adding that new graduates receive "all kinds of help to stay afloat. If you like challenges and you like to solve problems, this a good place to come and work. You'll learn from experts who have been doing this for a long time."
Raytheon has a variety of mentoring programs. People can work side by side with a mentor, or they may be assigned to someone who is not in the same organization but is available for career advice. The corporation also provides "skip-level lunches," where people can talk with higher-level employees.
Raytheon also has various employee resource groups (ERGs), which are active in both recruiting and internal programs. They are essential to helping the corporation build relationships with staff at its locations across the U.S. "The program is very strong in all of our major locations and is getting stronger all the time. In fact, many of the local ERGs are becoming enterprise-wide organizations," Goodman says. There are groups for women, Hispanics, African Americans, Native Americans, Asian Americans, people with disabilities, and the GLBT community. Enterprise-wide ERGs with chapters in most major locations include Raytheon Black Engineers Network (RayBEN), Hispanic Organization for Leadership & Advancement (HOLA), Raytheon Asian Pacific Association (RAPA) and Young Engineers & Scientists Network (YES!Net).
Raytheon is concerned about upcoming generations, and keeps an eye on younger students with strong math inclinations so that they can become interns or co-ops at the corporation later on. Its MathMovesU program helps middle schoolers hone their math skills for success in a collegiate technical curriculum. Middle-school children can also participate in MathCounts, a national enrichment, coaching and competition program. College students who volunteer to be assistant coaches for MathCounts teams may receive $1,000 scholarships per semester, renewable for up to six semesters or until graduation.
"One other thing that we do is arrange for celebrities, like Dave Mira, the X-games BMX bicycle guy, and Lisa Leslie, the WNBA player, to visit a middle school as surprise celebrity substitutes," Goodman says. "They're good role models and we're happy to have them represent Raytheon."
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www.raytheon.com
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Headquarters: |
Waltham, MA |
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Employees: |
80,000 worldwide |
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Revenues: |
$21.9 billion in 2005 |
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Business: |
Defense and government electronics, space, information technology, technical services, and business aviation and special mission aircraft |
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