Lockheed Optimistic

Lockheed Martin Corp., the Pentagon's biggest contractor by sales, has a positive outook for 2009. While the Pentagon's budget will likely decrease under an Obama administration, many defense companies such as Lockheed have a sizable order backlog to help them ride out the recession. The Wall Street Journal ran a story last Friday, in which Lockheed CFO Bruce Tanner described the company's record $80.9 billion combined backlog among it's four divisions.

Lockheed is based in Bethesda, Md., and has a strong presence here in Orlando. UCF Career Services runs the Lockheed Martin Work Experience Program.

Several additional large defense contractors (Raytheon Corp., General Dynamics Corp., and Northrop Grumman Corp., are all expected to report outlooks over the next few weeks. On Thursday of last week, Northrop Grumman reported that it will take a write-down of at least $3 billion for its shipbuilding and space businesses, resulting in a net loss for the fourth quarter.

All of the companies mentioned above (Raytheon, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon) will be attending the Spring Career Expo.

You can view a complete list on our Google Groups page (see links on top right and bottom to join this group).

Company of the Week: SAIC

SAIC

In teaching an upper-level management class this week, this company came up in conversation. SAIC, short for Science Applications International Corp., estimated needing about 300 entry-level hires in 2007. This is up from 180 in 2006.
SAIC, a Fortune 500 company, currently has about 44,000 employees spread among 150 cities worldwide. The company's clients include the Department of Defense, the intelligence community, Homeland Security, and other governmental agencies and specialized markets.

Okay, but what do they actually do?
SAIC provides solutions (products and services) to clients using technology innovations. A family of both wholly-owned and majority owned companies, SAIC makes a significant impact in the following industries: Energy, Environment, National Security, Critical Infrastructure, and Health. View a complete list of their products here: http://www.saic.com/products/

And, do they have open positions?
Yes. Visit the "Careers" section of their website for a fully searchable job database.