Young jobseekers prefer PSUs, domestic companies

Samidha Sharma, TNN | Jun 2, 2012, 03.11AM IST: The Times of India Report

MUMBAI: Indian students are veering towards public sector jobs and domestic firms to find a cushion against an uncertain economy, which clocked its lowest quarterly growth rate in nine years at 5.3%. This trend, visible globally as well, reflects on how youngsters are looking at job security as one of the most important parameters while choosing their future employers.

While the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and State Bank of India (SBI) emerged as the most preferred employer for under-graduate business students in the country, engineering and MBA students chose technology giant—Google as their ideal employer in a survey conducted among 8,356 students across Indian colleges by Universum, a global consulting firm that helps companies improve their attractiveness to prospective jobseekers.

The rankings also show that Indian business students (under-graduate) associate banks with greater level of responsibility, secure employment and high future earnings. Also, more women find banks to be an attractive workplace compared to men while in most other markets it is the opposite, said the survey.

"In a flight to safety we see globally as well as in India that students want to work with domestic employers, so for instance, in Germany a lot of young students are opting to work for the automotive sector which is one of the biggest industries in the country. We see a clear trend that banks and professional services are more attractive as employers among business students in India," said Joakim Strom, Universum's APAC managing director.

While security is a big factor driving students to opt for a job in the public sector as well as in Indian firms, a chance to grow their careers is another reason why youngsters get attracted to these companies. "The career advancement that one can manage in the Navratnas, the best PSUs in the country, is great for young employees. Whether it is a BHEL or an ONGC these are great learning grounds and they hire in big numbers as well," said Nishchae Suri, MD, Mercer India, a global HR consulting firm.

Among engineering and IT students, technology firms dominated the top rankings with Microsoft and IT bellwether Infosys taking second and third place, respectively.

The average expected monthly salary for undergraduate students was Rs 49,729, while it was Rs 51,161 for management students.

What stood out significantly was that there was a gap in salary expectations of anywhere between Rs 7,000-13,000 (monthly) for women compared to men at both undergraduate and post-graduate levels, according to the survey.

"The IT companies have been popular for many years now and we are not surprised to see that a newcomer, Facebook, takes the fifth place on the engineering/IT ranking this year," said Raghu Krishna, Universum's country manager for India. MNC firm Hindustan Unilever stood out as the only FMCG employer in the top ten choices for Indian students.