Job advertisements for the target group of university graduates | staff

Do the company’s job advertisements address what university graduates want? An ad analysis looked into this question and found that factors such as feedback, meaning and satisfaction, which are important to young people, hardly play a role in job advertisements.

Companies can find staff without worrying about the specific expectations of their target audience. However, this is not recommended. Because every target group has a clear idea of ​​what is important to them in an employer.

Study of job advertisements for the target group of university graduates

Companies that want to address university graduates should therefore know what they value. Job advertisements are a way of signaling to job seekers what the company offers for the target group being addressed. An analysis of job advertisements therefore looked at the communicated content in job advertisements for university graduates and looked into the question of whether potential employers emphasize in the advertisements what the younger generation of employees can expect.

Generation Z’s expectations of employers

Generation Z has now arrived on the job market and represents a significant part of the potential workforce: According to Statista, 11.32 million people were born in Germany between 1996 and 2009 in 2019. Most of the people who are currently leaving universities come from this generation.

It is obvious that Generation Z, like the previous generations, cannot be lumped together. In the generation typology, the focus is on the characteristics typical of the generation, without assuming that all members of this cohort are like that. Not all people from the young generation of employees are supporters of “Fridays for Future” and not all – to put it exaggeratedly – rate the failure of the WLAN as a life-threatening situation. However, there are characteristics that are typically attributed to this generation. This means that these properties occur significantly in this cohort.

What are the specifics related to the work? After a meta-analysis of various surveys, expectations in the upper ranks of Generation Z can be filtered out. People from this generation therefore attach particular importance to working life (in alphabetical order):

• a pleasant working atmosphere
• plannable and flexible working hours
• (reasonable) income
• Development opportunities
• Feedback
• (Workplace Health Promotion
• Job security
• Meaning / creation of meaning / meaningfulness (of work / corporate purpose)
• Compatibility of life and work
• satisfaction

The ten factors mentioned were prioritized differently in the individual surveys; there were also differences in preferences between men and women and in different branches of education.

Dax companies’ job advertisements under the microscope

Do the company’s job advertisements live up to these expectations? Are there any differences between large companies and companies with fewer employees? These two questions were the starting point for a job advertisement analysis. From May 3 to 7, 2021, positions for graduates were selected on the websites of the 30 DAX companies. The criteria were:

From the displayed positions, the first one that met these criteria was selected. Suitable positions were found at 24 DAX companies, 16 for (business) IT specialists and eight for business administration graduates in finance and accounting. Of the 24 positions, 18 were for direct entry and six for trainees.

How meaningful are job postings from smaller companies?

For comparison with large companies, advertisements from companies with up to 1,500 employees were filtered out in two searches on Stepstone.de during the same period. The distribution of jobs was identical to that of the DAX companies in terms of fields of activity and type of employment. The number of employees of the employers examined was between 50 and 1,500 employees.

The evaluation related exclusively to the job advertisements. Further information, for example on the homepage, was not included. During the evaluation, it was determined which of the above ten expectations of the young generation of employees are addressed in the job advertisements. The focus was also on abnormalities between Dax companies and companies with fewer than 1,500 employees (U1500).

In the evaluation, synonyms were taken into account in the expectations. The terms “work-life balance” or “compatibility of family and work”, for example, were equated with the expectation “compatibility of life and work”.

Sense and satisfaction are rarely discussed in job advertisements

Of the ten expectations that Generation Z has of employers, the DAX companies and the U1500 most frequently address flexible working hours, income and development opportunities. All other expectations are relatively rarely discussed in job advertisements for the U1500. The factors health promotion, meaning and satisfaction could not even be found in any of the 24 U1500 ads.

The discrepancy with the DAX companies is particularly noticeable when it comes to health promotion: Nine DAX companies mention this in their advertisements. The factors sense and satisfaction are rarely mentioned in the job advertisements, even with the DAX companies. The feedback desired by Generation Z is only mentioned once for both types of company. The compatibility of family and work is mentioned in seven ads of the DAX companies, but only in three ads of the U1500.

Smaller companies respond less to the wishes of the target group

In the overall consideration of this non-representative analysis of the job advertisements, the following can be determined:

• In their job advertisements, the U1500 address the expectations of Generation Z less than the Dax companies. In the 24 job advertisements of the U1500, the expectations of Generation Z were addressed 47 times, in the 24 job advertisements of the DAX companies 65 times.
• In ten job advertisements from the U1500, only one of the expectations of Generation Z was addressed; this occurred three times in the DAX companies. This means that the overall picture of these job advertisements offers little of what the younger generation of employees can expect. This contrasts with the job advertisements that take into account many of the expectations of Generation Z. In the Dax area, the top value was seven hits, with the U1500 there were a maximum of five mentioned expectations.
• Both for the DAX companies and the U1500, feedback, meaning and satisfaction play almost no role in the texts of the job advertisements.

Existing services are often missing in job advertisements

In particular, the low number of hits in the feedback can be seen as an indication that the factors mentioned in the job advertisements only reflect the reality in the company to a limited extent. Many of the DAX companies have classic feedback instruments such as employee appraisals, but also instruments of a modern feedback culture. But feedback is only mentioned explicitly in one of the 24 job advertisements. If the young generation of employees is to be enthusiastic about the job advertisement for the company, it is advisable to address such a point.

The same assumption applies to the zero hits in terms of health promotion for the U1500. Since health promotion is not associated with any major entry barriers due to the variety of possible measures, it is assumed that there is more in the company than stated in the job advertisements.

In summary, this means that there is room for improvement in both company categories – Dax and U1500 – when it comes to the content of their job advertisements. The need for optimization is even more pronounced among the smaller companies than among the DAX companies. If companies want to attract university graduates, they should know their expectations, take them into account and then express them in the job advertisements. This is all the more true if existing personnel instruments correspond to what is expected.

All articles on our online theme weeks “Trends in Recruiting 2021” can be found here.

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