The World’s employers from a Global graduate perspective: research shows latest trends
The employer image of companies has always been closely related to their product images and their general reputation. However, the latest graduate survey results from Sweden-based consulting firm Universum reveals the full complexity of an international labour market. Not surprisingly, large US multinationals with strong brands dominate the top list. This might also be due to the importance International career development has for global top talent.
The latest graduate preference research was carried out in the world’s 12 largest economies covering 144,000 career seekers with business or engineering backgrounds. Opportunities for international travel and relocation are seen as attractive among both business and engineering students. Against this backdrop, the following results are of specific interest: Companies from the automotive industry were climbing on the rankings compared to the previous year. Not only are they global in nature, they also have strong product brands. On the engineering ranking, seven of the top 50 companies belong to this group. The report also shows that several of the oil, gas and energy companies have gained positions on the engineering ranking. General Electric is the highest ranked and is up from place 8 to 6. Shell takes a big leap on 5 positions and also Esso/ExxonMobil and BP were climbing and a total of five from the sector are among the top 30 for engineers. Again, all of them are global players and they are seen to be financially strong. “They also relate to the general trend of sustainability,” adds Diversity expert Michael Stuber who majored in HR Marketing.
More insight about international graduates is provided regarding their online behaviour: 14 % of all students visit online communities every hour (!) and 57 % a couple of times per day! The average time spent per visit is 23 minutes and 71 % believe employers visit their personal profile after interacting with employers on online communities. “Companies can’t expect them to fundamentally change that online behaviour on the day they start a career,” Stuber comments.
European corporations find it difficult to rival the outstanding image of global US firms. For business students, no European player is among the Top 10, but L’Oréal, BMW and Adidas made it to the Top 20. On the engineering side, BMW and Siemens are on the Top 10, and Volkswagen and Shell also among the Top 20. These results are consistent with last year’s European graduate survey.
