Employees say Bain & Company is the No. 1 best company to work for, according to Glassdoor’s latest report of the top 100 best places to work in the U.S.

The annual report, now in its 17th year, is based on anonymous employee reviews where workers rate aspects about their job, the work environment and their employer over the past year.

Bain & Company was recognized as the top large U.S. employer for the second year in a row, and sixth time overall in the report’s history. The business consulting firm is one of just two companies that have ranked among the best places to work for all 17 years, with the other being Google, ranked at No. 28 this year.

While tech companies dominate the list, other sectors make a strong showing: The No. 2 best place to work is Crew Carwash based in Indiana, and beloved burger joint In-N-Out rounds out the top three.

Here are the top 10 best companies to work for, according to Glassdoor:

Company rating: 4.6

Headquarters: Boston

Industry: Business consulting

Company rating: 4.6

Headquarters: Fishers, Indiana

Industry: Auto services

Company rating: 4.6

Headquarters: Irvine, California

Industry: Food service

Company rating: 4.5

Headquarters: Santa Clara, California

Industry: Computer hardware development

Company rating: 4.5

Headquarters: Indianapolis

Industry: Biotech and pharmaceuticals

Company rating: 4.5

Headquarters: Redmond, Washington

Industry: Computer hardware development

Company rating: 4.5

Headquarters: Bellingham, Washington

Industry: Real estate

Company rating: 4.5

Headquarters: Salt Lake City

Industry: Religious institutions

Company rating: 4.5

Headquarters: Peoria, Illinois

Industry: Insurance carriers

Company rating: 4.4

Headquarters: Natick, Massachusetts

Industry: Software development

The ratings consider employee feedback at companies with at least 1,000 workers from October 2023 to 2024 and their opinions on the best reasons to work for their employer, as well as downsides.

Glassdoor prompts workers to provide their thoughts on aspects like career opportunities, compensation and benefits, culture and values, diversity and inclusion, senior management and work-life balance.

Employees are also asked whether they would recommend their employer to a friend, and if their company’s six-month business outlook is positive or negative.

Overall, the best places to work have a strong culture and values, employee-centric practices, are mission-driven industry leaders, and provide plenty of growth opportunities with work-life balance and flexibility, the Glassdoor report notes.

Tech is the most represented industry on the list and makes up 26 of the best places to work; however, its command has been falling over time and is down from 31 companies in 2024. Experts say many tech companies aren’t the dream employers they once were given high-profile layoffs and return-to-office requirements making headlines in recent years.

Meanwhile, more employers in health care, biotech and pharma, and manufacturing are being recognized as great places to work.

Across the U.S., the best places to work are primarily concentrated in San Francisco; Washington, DC; New York City and Boston.

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Hannah Holscher, a registered dietitian and microbiome researcher, teaches classes about nutrition at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She is also the Director of the Nutrition and Human Microbiome Laboratory.

At the lab on the school’s campus in Champaign, Holscher and her team analyze biological samples like blood, stool and urine, and sift through large data sets from existing microbiome research to better understand “how the microbes in our body are able to break down components in foods that our own human enzymes can’t digest,” she says.

Holscher’s work helps inform how one should eat to maintain or improve their health and well-being. She also uses all the knowledge she’s gained studying the human microbiome to shape her own diet.

Here’s what Holscher eats to keep her gut healthy.

As a mom of two young boys, ages three and six, Holscher isn’t the most strict about her diet.

Being too strict about what she eats “just takes some joy away from food for me, and I love the joy of food and cooking and trying new things,” she says.

But Holscher does make sure to get one vital nutrient in as often as possible for optimal gut health: ”[I] try to get my recommended amount of fiber every day, which is going to be right around 25 grams.”

Some foods that are rich in fiber include leafy greens, berries, apples, avocados and chia seeds.

“The gut has a favorite food, and that favorite food is fiber,” says Dr. Kellyann Petrucci, a celebrity nutrition expert and New York Times best-selling author.

American adults typically eat only 10 to 15 grams of total fiber a day, according to Harvard Health Publishing.

“What happens is, if you don’t get enough fiber, then the bugs, or the microbes that are very important [and] that line your entire gastrointestinal system, they don’t get what they need. So they don’t have that good material to chomp on [and] they start chomping on the gut lining,” Petrucci told CNBC Make It last year.

Here’s a look at how Holscher typically eats every day to get enough fiber and keep her gut happy. “I work really hard to try to prioritize consuming different plant-based foods: fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts and legumes.”

Breakfast

Holscher frontloads her day with foods rich in dietary fiber or probiotics. Her first meal of the day typically includes something like:

• Overnight oats with whole rolled oats, chia seeds, flax seeds, milk, berries and honey
• High-fiber cereal
• Yogurt and granola

Lunch

Her days can get busy, so between meetings Holscher typically opts for a snack at lunchtime, instead of a large meal.

She enjoys snacks like:

• Apples
• Oranges
• Bananas
• Celery
• Carrots
• Nuts

Dinner

“Dinner can get really interesting. My husband does all of our cooking in our household. I’m super lucky,” Holscher says. “He likes to experiment with different types of menus, and he’s Pakistani.”

Her husband cooks up dishes with legumes and lots of spices like:

• Chickpeas
• Lentils
• Turmeric

“Just last night, he made chicken burrito bowls. So we had chicken, avocado, black beans and a corn and onion salsa that he made,” Holscher says. “And we had bag salad.”

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During her 15 years at Microsoft, “I was looking at thousands of resumes a year,” says Sabina Nawaz.

Nawaz, who served in roles such as Director of Human Resources, eventually left to start an executive coaching company where she’s been working with senior leaders. She has a book coming out in March, “You’re the Boss,” about how to be a good manager.

Among the resume red flags she suggests job seekers avoid are general statements that give no sense of what the candidate did in previous positions.

And here are two of her top job interview red flags.

Many jobseekers have a hard time adhering to the parameters of the job interview. “I cannot tell you the number of people who simply don’t get the basics right,” says Nawaz.

Those could include:

• Being on time for the interview
• Making sure your camera and audio are working correctly
• Making sure you have researched the people and organization you’re interviewing with
• Dressing appropriately
• Following up with a “thank you” note

These mistakes can come off as inconsiderate or disrespectful of your prospective employer’s time. They can also give a negative impression of “how you show up at work,” she says.

By “not outlining your strengths in the best way possible,” she says, you’ll miss an important opportunity.

The job interview is a chance to flesh out what you can do as a worker with in-depth examples. When Nawaz works with her clients, she tells them to find 20 to 30 anecdotes of projects or experiences that “they’re proud of the results and they enjoyed doing,” she says. These can be drawn from both personal and professional lives.

Once they’ve identified those achievements, she has her clients look for patterns: What strengths do those anecdotes highlight? Pick out the ones most relevant to the job, she says, and reframe them within a story that’s half about the problem and then half about the resolution.

If you can deliver these stories correctly in an interview, you end up “looking like a hero,” she says.

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Your child gets a good grade on a test. “Good job!” you respond. The scenario seems pretty straightforward — but those two words can backfire on you, says child psychologist Becky Kennedy.

If you don’t add a more specific form of praise onto the end, “good job” can be a “conversation ender,” Kennedy said on a podcast episode of “The Tim Ferriss Show” that aired last month. Ask follow-up questions to show your kid that your praise is sincere, and highlight the positive behavior that you want them to build on, she recommended.

The idea is to help build their confidence and prevent them from relying on external validation, helping them become more successful later in life, said Kennedy, who has a PhD in clinical psychology from Columbia University and hosts the “Good Inside” parenting podcast.

“In those moments, we want as parents to double down on building our kid’s confidence. That’s usually the goal we’re optimizing for,” said Kennedy,

To be clear, the phrase “good job” isn’t itself harmful, Kennedy said. But if your school-aged child brings home a research paper they’re proud of, asking specific questions and showing genuine interest is more likely to build their confidence, whether you say those two words or not, she noted.

A parent of three children herself, Kennedy admitted that the advice “sounds annoying at first … [But] anything that helps your kid share more about themself actually ends up feeling better to your kid.”

Specific praise helps kids develop inner efficacy, which means they’ll believe in their own abilities and be more likely to challenge themselves in pursuit of their goals, developmental psychologist and author Aliza Pressman wrote for CNBC Make It last year.

Like Kennedy, Pressman agreed that parents don’t need to eliminate the phrase “good job” from their vocabularies completely — but it should always be followed by specific praise.

“When we say ‘Good job!’ it’s got to be sincere and specific. Tell kids when you recognize their real effort, persistence, creativity, independence, and competence,” Pressman wrote.

As for self-validation — learning how to validate oneself without waiting on generic praise from someone else — Kennedy considers it one of the most important core skills children need to learn to eventually succeed as adults, she said.

Kids who grow up relying on the outside world for validation can be “very empty and very fragile [and] very, very anxious,” Kennedy said. “What’s really helpful down the road is when you produce something — maybe it’s art, maybe it’s a [work] project — and being able to give yourself some estimation of that before others do is very helpful to your whole self-concept and protective of anxiety and depression.”

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Sabina Nawaz knows what turns her off in job interviews.

She is an executive coach with over two decades of experience, and prior to starting her own firm, Nawaz worked at Microsoft for 15 years, including as a senior director of human resources.

Some of her top job interview red flags are not showing up on time, not having the camera positioned correctly if you’re doing a virtual interview and not following up with a “thank you” message.  

“I cannot tell you the number of people who simply don’t get the basics right,” she says. Another major red flag is not being prepared to talk about your strengths — but Nawaz has a simple trick to help people identify and highlight theirs.

When job candidates get asked about their strengths, they often give vague answers that don’t really give a sense of who they are, and what they are capable of.

They’ll say, “I’m smart, I work hard and I get things done,” says Nawaz. “Good for you. You and everybody else.” Instead, you want to figure out what’s unique about you, and how to frame that within stories that really crystalize it.

Nawaz suggests coming up with 20 to 30 examples of personal endeavors or projects, “whether at home or at work, that you did yourself, you enjoyed doing and you were proud of,” she says. These can be as recent as today and can go as far back as when you were a kid. Within those, see which strengths come up the most.

Are you a fast learner? Do you love to build things? And when it comes to the jobs you’re applying for, “which of these set you apart?”

When it comes to how to present your strengths in an interview, break up your anecdotes into two main parts: the problem and the solution. “Spend about 50% of your time outlining the problem and 50% of the time outlining your strength,” says Nawaz.

Start by articulating what your strength is and then explain, in depth, what the problem was. Next, describe how you solved the issue, and connect that success back to your strength.

At the end of your story, make sure to explain the results of what you did as well. Say something like, “we landed the clients in our consultancy firm,” she says. “Not only was it a million-dollar contract, but they renewed for five years straight.”

When Nawaz works with her clients, “we curate a library of stories,” she says. At the end of the process, they have dozens of anecdotes at their disposal.

She highly recommends doing the same. That way, regardless of what you get asked in an interview, “you can plug and play these stories” and choose the one that’s most relevant and best shows you off.

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