Does brand have an influence on employment choice?

There's a difference between brand strength of a product and brand strength of certain work experiences. For example, I just saw a show on the History Channel that said McDonald's is the most recognized brand in the world. That does not mean, of course, that work experience at McDonald's is the most respected in the world. Same goes for many other big brands. Saying you work at Nokia, Coke, or even Gucci or Mercedes Benz really has little bearing on how well respected working at the company would be.

There are companies, however, where work experience is (nearly) universally respected. Is McKinsey & Co. one of the top brands around the world? No, but within the business community, and for any jobs you hope to get in the future almost anywhere around the world, the name is gold. Same applies to the other Big 3 consulting, a handful of the big investment banks, a few CPG and tech companies and a few others. Recruiters respect these experiences because they know how intense the competition is to land a job at Google or Goldman. There's some crossover between product brand and work experience brand - for example I think marketing experience at Coke would be quite valuable down the road; but there's not a direct correlation between brand respect and work experience respect. I'm sure Ford and Wal-Mart are among the most well known brands in the world, but...

We've all heard the statistics that most people these days will change jobs 10 or 15 times over the course of their careers. If that's the case, there is definitely value to having one of those well known universally respected brands somewhere on the old resume. As Lepium pointed out, it can make a difference in certain recruiting situations. I'm thinking there are maybe 10 companies, give or take, that have this type of impact on the resume, and not surprisingly, positions at these companies are among the most sought after (among big companies). They might be McKinsey, Bain, BCG, Goldman, Morgan, Lehman, perhaps Citi (even with their recent troubles), GE, P&G, Google, perhaps Microsoft, and maybe a couple of others that aren't popping to mind right now.