Southwest Airlines Co.

With a CEO who enjoys dressing in Elvis regalia, Southwest Airlines "goes the extra mile" to ensure that employees "are not just doing their jobs, but enjoying them." Southwest has been named one of the top ten companies in Fortune's annual list of 100 Best Companies to Work for in America. Says one employee, "We brag that one person typically does the jobs of ten people, so it's a lot of hard work. But we love to have fun." One former employee adds, "Although he company is constantly growing, they really make an effort to keep to the culture they started with -- a kind of brash young upstart that doesn't try and compete with the big boys, but will do what it can to show that they belong at the top." Another insider had this to add, "We had frequent roof-top parties at the corporate headquarters in Dallas."

Training and benefits

"Training varies from position to position," one contact shared, "for example I don't think that you get paid for flight attendant training, but I was paid through my training period working in the corporate headquarters." As far as benefits go, the company is on par with its rivals, contacts seem to say. "We have a good benefits package with medical, dental, vision, life insurance and adoption assistance." Shares on employee. They go on to say that "Where the company makes up for the average to below-average pay and the kind of run of the mill benefits package is in the extra perks and programs they offer. Starting from your first day of employment, you and your spouse, children, and parents can fly for free on Southwest and get other travel discounts as well. The 401(k) is also good, but not stellar, and we have a stock purchase plan where you pay 90 percent of market value for the company's stock, but Southwest picks up the broker commission on stock purchases, which is nice."