I’m a believer in actively managing your career. After all, no one else is qualified to do it but you. So two articles in Business Week’s September 14th issue caught reminded me of something.

Sometimes your hire-ability depends not on who you are, but your current and past employers.

Article one is The Best Places to Launch Your Career

  • … she entered a three-month management training program …
  • While traditional perks such as pensions and health insurance still have their place, more companies are finding inventive ways to attract, retain, and motivate their youngest employees—using everything from work-from-home programs to faster promotions to financial benefits that kick in a few years down the road. Says Adam Kling, a workplace consultant with RHR International: “They’re using those and other perks to help offset what you’re seeing in your monthly paycheck.” Or more to the point, what you’re not seeing in your monthly paycheck.
  • The Big Four firm still attracts more than 3,000 highly sought-after accounting students each year with extensive training and mentoring programs, performance bonuses, and the promise of face time with top executives—including an annual trip to Walt Disney World (DIS) for all U.S.-based interns, where they get to mingle with the powers that be.
  • To make the most of their recruiting efforts, many companies are scaling back their scope. In recent years, Philip Morris USA dropped nearly 50 campuses from its program, leaving it with just 34. Philip Morris President Craig A. Johnson says the quality of new hires is up as a result, and that more interns are being converted into full-time hires: 47% in 2007, up from 32% in 2005.
  • For many companies, though, the bigger problem—far bigger than recruiting—is retention.
  • Indeed, one reason high pay alone is no longer enough to guarantee loyalty is that many members of Gen Y, who have been entering the workforce since 2004, have other priorities. For them, issues such as community service and serving the greater good are among the most important, according to the 2008 Universum USA survey of U.S. undergraduates.
  • By making a big impression when it matters most—in the first year of employment, when a lot of entry-level hires jump ship, or at the three-year mark, when boredom and frustration often set in—employers can get their young charges over the hump and, with luck, motivated to stay on for many more years.
  • While many companies award promotions only when a vacancy exists, several, including Philip Morris USA, have shifted to a system that considers employees for new positions whenever they’re ready—vacancy or not—thereby removing one of the biggest obstacles to promotion.
  • And Whirlpool is now giving employees a chance to fast-track their careers by offering them opportunities to work on special projects that will enhance their skills, thus making them eligible for promotions earlier. The projects can be anything from a 60-day stint with HR to six months spent designing a new appliance. The pilot program was started in July, but the company expects it to be popular with young employees and to improve retention, which is already the best among consumer products companies in our ranking. “The more opportunities we can provide our employees to engage in meaningful work and challenging assignments, the more quickly we can help them achieve career goals,” says Jeff Beavers, Whirlpool’s director of global university relations.

Reading between the lines then, training and non-monetary carrots combine for low(er) turnover and thus better reputation the company has in the market. Better company reputation, the better you look for having worked there. If your employer has high turnover, no training plans or other schemes to better you, it is a warning sign.

Article two is The Companies Headhunters Avoid and reinforces the deductions from the first. In fact they are back-to-back in the dead-tree version.

  • The question: Which companies do they largely avoid recruiting from? Some of the most cited are known to be in turmoil …
  • Recruiters also singled out companies that are widely viewed as successful.
  • The conclusion among headhunters is that the very attributes that make Coke a great company—an iconic brand and an unmatched global distribution system—also make it too easy for young managers to rise without having to develop the entrepreneurial skills necessary to compete in other arenas.
  • Whether it’s their quirkiness, poor leadership development, or political culture, these players have become the corporate equivalents of the Hotel California: You can check in and enjoy your stay, but the risk is that you can’t leave.
  • Three of the companies named as problematic by recruiters made this year’s ranking of best places to start a career.
  • One trait that puts a company on the blacklist is excessive bureaucracy.
  • … recruiters take issue with what one describes as a “patrician culture of conflict avoidance,” which tends to make some alumni ill-equipped to handle crisis
  • One peril is a tendency at some companies to relegate managers to narrow duties, thereby fostering limited skill sets.
  • Several Silicon Valley headhunters say they’re now hesitant to recruit from two of the tech sector’s most successful companies because of their testosterone-driven, take-no-prisoners cultures. Managers who thrive there, they say, are often bad fits anywhere else.
  • … a culture that seemed to reward executives more for political skills than results.

It is accepted that most upper-level positions in business/management do not get advertised on Craigslist but are instead handled by an agency of some sort. As testing evolves, this will become more normal in this field as well. But even before that, hiring managers will see your resume and see your employer. Is that going to tilt the scales in your favor or against? It might be worth seeing what the market has to say about your employer and then seeing how you can offset or escape it if necessary.