This hardly comes as a big shock, but guess where the younger generation wants to work?
If you said Google, Apple and Facebook, you win the prize.
The Wall Street Journal reports that according to a survey by employment data and consulting firm Universum, some 6,700 young professionals (defined as college graduates under the age of 40) with one to eight years of work experience chose their ideal employers from a list of various companies. Here are the top 10:
- Google — named by 19.67 percent;
- Apple — 12.74 percent;
- Facebook — 8.90 percent;
- U.S. Department of State — 7.89 percent;
- Walt Disney Company — 7.67 percent
- Amazon — 6.63 percent;
- Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) — 6.59 percent;
- Microsoft — 5.76 percent;
- Sony — 5.14 percent; and,
- Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) — 5.04 percent.
The strength of Google’s brand
Some of the companies at the bottom of the list? Sears was No. 137 (0.44 percent), Campbell’s Soup was No. 134 (0.45 percent), Salesforce.com was No. 136 (0.44 percent), and Qualcomm was No. 142 (0.39 percent).
Last on the list was Capgemini at No. 150 and named by only 0.12 percent. It’s a consulting and outsourcing company based in Paris with 115,000 employees In North America, Europe, and the Asia Pacific region.
Although there has been a lot written about Google perhaps hitting a wall now that the company is a little older, more mature, and past the go-go growth stage, it still seems to have an incredible and hard to match brand when it comes to attracting smart, young talent.
“Google has “established a very strong brand in what its culture is, in what it’s like to work there,” says Chris Cordery, Universum’s director of Americas. Based on the responses to the survey, Mr. Cordery says, candidates “look at Google as compensating employees well and offering challenging work but at the same time it will be a fun and strong culture.” …
Meanwhile, many young professionals are interested in leaving their current jobs, the study found, with some 61% hoping to leave their jobs within the next two years. Given the rough economy, “they’ve hung onto jobs probably longer than they would have liked,” says Mr. Cordery.
Nonetheless, 40% of respondents also said that among potential employers job stability was very important, especially in this layoff-prone environment.
“Stability is still very much a concern and people equate government jobs with stability,” he says, noting that the State Department, Federal Bureau of Investigations and Central Intelligence Agency were in the top 10 slots.”
Another message about employee engagement
Yes, more and more workers — young or not — want to leave their current jobs and move on to something better. This isn’t surprising given the steady drumbeat of studies showing how fed up workers are with their current employers and the lingering resentment over how they were (and in many cases continue to be) treated during the worst of the Great Recession. Any uptick or improvement in the economy and job market and they’ll be on their way.
This is the ongoing downturn of employee engagement that all too many companies want to ignore. I know there are naysayers out there who keep saying “where are they going to go?” but eventually, the economy WILL start to improve. When it does, the migration of these disengaged employees, along with the slow but steady departure of the baby boomers into retirement, will finally force that “new” war for talent that so many have predicted for so long.
So take a good hard look at this Journal story and ask yourself, “what can my organization do to make itself more attractive to younger workers?” If you’re not asking that, well, you should because it is going to become more and more critical in the not-too-distant future whether we like it or not.