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Special Feature 100 Best Companies to Work For
A big fat list of great employers
Why shouldn't you have a truly awesome job at a terrific company, even in this economy? And just to remind you, really cool jobs do still exist.
Last Updated: January 23, 2009: 2:06 PM ET
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(Fortune) -- Truth be told, most of us are happy just to have a job.....any job....right now. But wait a minute, take a look at yourself in the mirror. You're no slouch. Actually, you're pretty impressive. So why shouldn't you have a truly awesome job, even in this economy? And just to remind you, really cool jobs do exist. At great companies. That are still hiring. In fact, at Fortune we have a big fat list of 'em. The 100 Best Companies to Work For. (Whoomp! There it is.)
What's interesting to me about our list is that it is so diverse. Yes there are tech companies and Silicon Valley is heavily represented, but employees at the likes of Edward Jones, the brokerage house based in St. Louis (and #2 on the list) with offices all over small-town America are happy campers too. There are a bunch of retailers on the list like Wegmans, Whole Foods, and REI, which goes to show that 'great service company' is not an oxymoron.
Actually the company that really kicks butt (wait, that's a pun) in this department is Zappos the online shoe store. (Get it? Kicks. Shoes.) Writer extraordinaire, Jeff O'Brien has a really cool feature on this amazing company, (#23 on the list.) He writes: "If you need a wall between work and life, you probably won't make it through the interview process...the Zappos HR team uses cartoony applications and wacky interview questions to screen for creativity and individuality while filtering out egomaniacs and wallflowers." Sounds like my kind of place.
And this kind of corporate behavior is business as usual at companies on our list. Cash tucked in appreciation letters at King's Daughters Medical Center of Ashland, Ky. (#45), fresh fruit Mondays and M&M Wednesdays and no layoffs either at SAS of Cary, N.C. (#20), and great healthcare at Boston Consulting Group ( #3). No matter what happens with the economy, the demand for talent will remain. Great companies know that super-motivated, happy, world-class employees is by at itself an incredible competitive advantage. 
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