Come September. The campuses of America will be swarming not just with returning undergraduates, but also with employers set on signing up the most able 10% of them. 'We are seeing a far more competitive market for talent,' says Steve Canale, a recruitment manager at General Electric (GE). Students who recently could have expected two or three offers in their final year are now getting as many as five. To gain a competitive edge, firms are arriving ever earlier on campus with their recruitment caravans. They also start to look at (and select ) summer interns more as potential full-time employees than as mere seasonal extra hands: 60% of GE's graduate recruits in America this year, for instance, will come from its crop of more than 2,000 interns. Many interns will have employment contracts in their pockets before they even return for their final year of study. Firms are working harder to polish their image in the eyes of undergraduates. Some have staff who do little but tour campuses throughout the year, keeping the firm's name in front of both faculty and students, and promoting their 'employer brand'. GE focuses on 38 universities where it actively promotes itself as an employer. PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), an accounting firm, targets 200 universalities and gives a partner responsibility for each. PwC says that each of its partners spends up to 200 hours a year 'building relationships on campus'. That particular investment seems to have paid off. Each year Universum, an employer-branding consultant, asks some 30,000 American students to name their ideal employer. In this year's survey, published recently, PwC came second (up from 4th in 2004), topped only by BWM. Yet the German carmaker, which knocked Microsoft off the top spot, steers clear of campuses, relying for its popularity, says Universum, on the 'coolness' of its products. Students, it seems, are heavily influenced in their choice of ideal employer by their perception of that employer's products and services. Soaring up this year's list were Apple Computer (from 41st to 13th) and the Federal Bureau of Investment (from 138th to 10th). The success of Apple's cool iPod has had a powerful effect in the firm's ability to recruit top undergraduates. Likewise, the positive portrayal of the FBI in some recent films and TV shows has allegedly helped with recruitment. The accounting firms say that the fall of Enron and Arthur Andersen has done their recruitment no harm: instead, they claim, it has made students realize that accounting is not mere number crunching, but also involves moral judgments. The 'Big Four' accounting firms are all among this year's top 15 ideal employers. Undergraduates now do much of their research into future employments online. There seems to be a close correlation between their choice of ideal employer and their choice of most impressive website — where PwC, Microsoft and Ernst & Young win gold, silver and bronze respectively. Even so, some famous firms think they still appreciate the personal touch, and are sending their most senior executives to campuses to meet students and to give speeches. 'The top attracts top,' says, Claudia Tattanelli, boss of Universum in America.Jeffrey Immelt, GE's chief executive, is a keen on-campus speaker and has visited six leading universities in the past year. In the process, he may have shaken hands with one of his successors. What can we learn from the first paragraph?