Career characteristics of graduating students

Get Complete Project Material File(s) Now! »

Frame of reference

To better explain the empirical findings, theories and previous research in the field will be addressed in this section. This enables the reader to better understand the authors’ connection between graduating students job attributes and their selection of first employer. Finally, the frame of reference will be used when analyzing the collected data.

Career development in the general context

Career management: “a process by which individuals develop, implement, and monitor career goals and strategies” (Gutteridge, 1986).
When talking about career development one talks about an ongoing process by which individuals progress through a series of stages, each of which is characterized by a relative unique set of issues, themes or tasks (Gutteridge, 1986). The fact that careers are constructed by individuals is supported by Brown et al. (2002).
Greenhaus et al. (2000) divided the career development process into five steps including occupational choice, organizational choice, early career: establishment and achievement, midcareer, and later career. Since this paper examines the organizational choice, the second step in the career development process, organizational choice, will be focused upon. Greenhaus et al., (2000) consider the organizational choice to start somewhere in the age between 18-25 years old, with an organizational entry. Thus, focusing on the group graduating students is relevant.
Figure 1: Career development process (Greenhaus et al., 2000)

 Organizational choice

The organizational choice phase starts with several months of job search, and depending on the applicants’ educational background the age of organizational entry varies (Greenhaus et al., 2000). Greenhaus et al. (2000) define a positive outcome of the process as one that satisfies one’s career values and uses one’s talent. A business graduate may therefore experience a positive outcome if one gets a position focusing on accounting or finance within an organization with the desirable attributes. Similarly engineering students will have a positive experience within an organization focusing on e.g. aerodynamics or nuclear fuel. The fact that students search for jobs in organizations where they further can develop their theoretical skills was confirmed by John Burgoyne and Tony Eccles as early as in 1975. Greenhaus et al. (2000) continues to say that it is likely that the applicant will experience dissatisfaction with the organization when the selection is based on incomplete or unrealistic information. For example, if an organization presents themselves as flexible and when the employee start to work he or she strictly has to follow the routines, it is very likely that he or she will become dissatisfied due to the incomplete information.
When graduate students are leaving one organization and entering another one, Greenhaus et al. (2000) views it as a simultaneous process. The identified actors in this process are the individuals and the organizations. Organizations are presenting their values and benefits and the individual looks deeper into the available offerings organizations at the market and search for one that is most likely to meet the career expectations (Greenhaus et al., 2000). For instance a student interesting in accounting has searched among various organizations job offerings and tried to find one that is perceived to match his or her expectations. According to the sociological perspective, the organizational choice is also strongly influenced by what the community finds to be an attractive organization (Brown et al., 2002). Thus, if the organization has a negative image in the society it is according to Brown et al. (2002) likely that the graduate student will disregard the offering even though one likes the actual job. Engineering students holds for the same logic of reasoning when searching for a satisfactory organization.

Organizational entry process

The organizational entry process can be divided into four stages: recruitment, selection, orientation and socialization (Greenhaus et al., 2000).
Figure 2: Organizational entry process (Greenhaus et al., 2000)
Recruitment is an activity from the organizational side when they are about to attract candidates who are qualified and capable for carrying out the job (Dale, 2003). In the recruitment stage, the individuals locate information on job sources and firms (Greenhaus et al., 2000). The next step, selection, is according to Greenhaus et al. (2000) when the individuals assess the organizations, make choices among the job offerings and deal with interviews. Dale (2003) looks into the selection process from the organizational perspective. He characterizes the selection process as the first time the employer meets the applicant face-to-face. This means that a selection activity viewed from the recruiting organizations side can be identified as a company presentation at the university, while the recruitment activity from an organization can be a note about an available position, where there is no physical contact between the employer and employee. The purpose of both the recruitment and selection stages is to gain more information about the candidate and find out whether he or she is suitable for the position (Dale, 2003).
Looking at the job selection from the graduate’s point of view, the consequences of making a wrong organizational choice can severely affect ones self-esteem and result in dissatisfaction and disappointment when the expectations are not met (Greenhaus et al., 2000). From the sociological perspective it is of importance to select the right employer because the choice strongly affects the person’s wealth, earnings, lifestyle and status within the community (Brown et al., 2002). Thus, it is essential for employers to be familiar with graduates’ expectations in order to attract the most suitable candidate for the position and not provide them with unrealistic expectations which make them dissatisfied.

 Drawbacks to career development related to gender stereotypes

Gender stereotypes formed in the rustic society are also still present in the society today (Brown et al., 2002; Amanatullah, 2008). The traditional social norms tell us that men are expected to strongly contribute to the household income, while women are seen as care takers and as the person staying home with the children. Before the society developed into the technical and automatized place it is today, the social roles were naturally ultimate in order to maximize outcome of labor where body strength was necessary (Brown et al., 2002; Amanatullah, 2008).
Both Vroom (1995) and Amantullah (2008) try to explain why people still fall into these old roles. Gender role stereotypes work as expectations of how members of a group should behave, and therefore set the standard of appropriate behaviour. When a person deviates from the societal norm and what is expected of them, social pressure and prejudices will arise, and this can lead to the perception of the individual to lack qualities they ought to have. This in turn leads to intolerance from society and throwbacks of development for the deviating person, and hence societal roles are kept. The implications will be that women do not develop their careers in the same way as men do, even though they would have the ability and qualifications (Amanatullah, 2008).
These stereotypical roles will be kept in mind of the researchers when investigating graduating students at JIBS and JTH, to see to what extent they are present among this group.

Defining the target group, the graduating students:

Generation Y
A model created by B. Schneider (1987, cited in Freeman et al., 2007) argues that “individuals seek organizations which they perceive to have characteristics similar to their own” (Freeman et al., 2007, pp. 507). Therefore, it is important for the employer to have a good understanding of their future employees as people. Generation Y is what the demographic group of people born between 1980 and 2000 are commonly called (Spiro, 2006). Since the majority of graduating students are in their 20s to 30s, they are included in the generation Y. This group has grown up in a high-tech environment and is used to a flexible and constantly changing world. They are defined to be individualistic, inpatient, flexible, and more open towards a changing work place than their foregoer demographic group, called generation X. Generation X are people born from 1960s to 1980s. What defines generation X is that they are family oriented and prioritize having children before loyalty to a firm and work security (Sutton-Bell & Narz, 2007). Because of the importance of family among generation X, they raised a generation used to getting what they want and being able to make claims. This results in a great confidence and self picture, but also very high self-expectations. Studies have shown that people in generation Y are appreciating other factors the previous generations when choosing employer, such as personal development and self-actualization (Spiro, 2006).
When the competition is increasing in the recruitment area (Freeman et al., 2007) it becomes highly important for employers to get to know generation Y in order to know how to best attract talents. Today, the focus is not on the working process and regular working hours but on the result, which makes working flexibility and work tasks given as projects important job attributes (Foreman, 2006). Because the generation Y is impatience and aware of their own value, they tend to change employer more easily than former generations. This is also something recruiters and employers need to be aware of in order to keep the good employees (Sutton-Bell & Narz, 2007). When looking at the career mobility from the sociological view, Brown et al. (2002) explains that change of employer occurs in order to increase one’s own social status that is perceived by the employer brand. Another aspect of the generation Y is their attitudes towards hierarchy and the following relationship with an executive. Generation Y have little respect towards traditional organizations hierarchies, and need communication and personal feedback from their superiors. This leads to a demand of an open and flatter organized company (Foreman, 2006).
When looking at the attributes of generation Y from the employers’ perspective, it is according to Miller (2006) important to have in mind the enormous amount of information this generation has been growing up with. This has given them a natural sense of criticism towards media, and traditional advertising and media space are more likely to pass them by. However, they have a strongly built up network through Internet communities and accessibility to each other through cell phones, and therefore the most successful marketing channel is the “mouth-to-mouth” strategy, or to create a “buzz”. (Miller, 2006)

 Attracting employees by the use of job attributes

Investigations in job related attributes have been done ever since Behling, Labovitz and Gainer in 1968 started to explore strategies for how organizations should recruit college graduates. Different sets of job related attributes have been developed and tested through the years. As cited in Moy and Lee (2002, pp. ) Behling et al. states; “job attributes are the most important factor that affects job choice decisions of job seekers”. The importance for employers to be familiar with job seekers preferences regarding attitudes in various job related areas should not be underestimated. It has been argued by Moy and Lee (2002) that an individual perception of the job attributes determines whether or not they are perceived as attractive employers or not. In practice this implies the need to make separate investigations in the population that one is interested in. Further, differences in preferences of attributes between environmental groups can be derived to the sociological school of thought accounted for by Brown et al., (2002). Thus, different perceptions of attributes are likely to occur when the same set of job-attributes are tested in different populations.
When employers communicate towards graduate students in generation Y, they make use of a concept referred to as Employer Branding. According to Backhouse and Tikoo (2004, pp: 502) employer branding is defined as:
“A firm’s effort to promote, both within and outside the firm, a clear view of what makes it different and desirable as an employer”
Dr. J. Sullivan (2004) has identified the employer branding as a process from the organizational side where the organization consistently putting forth an image surrounding management and business practices that helps the organization to be perceived as an attractive, good place to work at. Further, Sullivan (2004) hopes that this will lead to the reputation and perception of the organization as one of the top employer.
The job search behaviour among graduate students in generation X has been examined by Eddy S.W. Ng, Ronald J. Burke and Lisa Fiksenbaum (2008). They rely on the concept called “employer knowledge” which assumes that job seekers have pre-stated beliefs about potential employers (Ng et al., 2008). Further they are of the opinion that different people are attracted to different attributes of a firm. For instance, they exemplify attributes that attract students as good pay and benefits, and good co-workers. Thus, examining what attributes communicated through employer branding activities that graduating students of generation Y prefer when they are in the organizational entry process for their first full time job after graduation is relevant.

Classification of job attributes

To be the preferred organization in what Burke and Ng (2006) call the ”war for talent” it is essential for employers to be familiar with what job-attributes the next generation at work, the graduating students prefer. Research shows that students select organizations based on factors such as working conditions, flexibility and human resource policies (Ng et al., 2008). The organizations offerings communicated through the concept of employer branding therefore needs to be sticky in order to attract the students that are the most suitable candidates for the organization. To classify and divide various attributes that graduating students have towards future employers is one way of employers to see what organizational attributes that attract students. Based on a study made by Moy and Lee (2002, pp. 342) the division into the following job attributes will be used for this study.

1 Introduction
1.1 Background
1.2 Problem discussion
1.3 Purpose
2 Frame of reference
2.1 Career development in the general context
2.2 Defining the target group, the graduating students: Generation Y
2.3 Attracting employees by the use of job attributes
2.3.1 Classification of job attributes
2.4 Previous research
3 Method
3.1 Research Approach
3.2 Method of collecting data
3.3 Pilot study
3.4 Data collection
3.5 Analyzing the data
3.6.1 Generalizability
3.6.2 Reliability
3.6.3 Validity
4 Results and Analysis
4.1 Positioning of Respondents
4.2 Career characteristics of graduating students – Empirical findings
4.3 Analysis of the results
4.4 Analysis of missing data
5 Conclusion
6 Discussion
6.1 Limitations
6.2 Implications
6.3 Further research questions
References
Appendices
GET THE COMPLETE PROJECT