Job Seekers Want An Interesting and Challenging Job

Accenture – a management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company – surveyed more than 4,100 people looking for jobs in 21 countries in an effort to figure out the career goals of job seekers. It found the most important thing job seekers look for in prospective employers is that the work is challenging and interesting (60%). Fifty-eight percent of respondents said being rewarded for their accomplishments was the most important trait of prospective employers.

The desired characteristics of employers mentioned were (in order):

• Offer opportunities for fast career growth, 44%
• Indications that the employer is well established and is likely to have long-term prosperity, 42%
• Indications that a company has a particular focus on its people, 42%
• Offers flexible work arrangements, 41%
• Innovative, 33%
• Approachable, 27%
• Team-oriented environment, 27%
• Global company, 26%

Ranking at the very bottom of the list of concerns was diversity and corporate citizenship, with 16% of job seekers saying the two are important when looking for an employer.

“Interestingly, we found that what is considered important to potential recruits was remarkably consistent across geographies,” said John Campagnino, Accenture’s global director of recruitment, in an Accenture news release. “Also notable was the fact that while we know from our own employees that corporate social responsibility and diversity are important employer characteristics – things our employees demand and place high value in – the research also validated what many of us intuitively know: namely, that more tangible benefits such as rewards and recognition are most important from an external recruit’s perspective.”