NEW YORK – Google, IBM and Microsoft topped the list of “The most attractive employers 2012,” according to a global survey among engineering students conducted by Universum, a Stockholm-based company.
Perhaps, there are no surprises here. Students go for known brand names, and as Universum says, the company does the survey every year to “highlight the world’s most powerful employer brands, those companies that excel in talent attraction and retention.”
"The World's Most Attractive Employers Index" is based on the employer preferences of students from Brazil, Canada,China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Russia, Spain, U.K., and United States. Universum asked students to select the employers they would consider working for and then choose the employers they would most like to work for, i.e. the companies that they perceive as being “Ideal”.
In a broad brush stroke, the survey tells a global trending story, in which the automotive industry is becoming increasingly popular; oil, gas and energy attracts engineering students; and many students are longing for an international career. The last statement, however, doesn’t apply to Japanese engineering students. Japan, it turns out, is the only country where not a single non-Japanese companies made the top 10 ranking list of ideal employers.
The global study was based on the total of 144,000 career seekers, according to Universum. That number also includes both business students and engineering students. Universum issued the index split in two – one in the “business” category and another showing preferences of engineering career seekers.
Apple shows up in every top 20 national list -- except for Germany and IndiaSeparately, Universum also issued “national editions” of the same survey, ranking the most popular employers picked by local students in each country.
Apple showed up in almost all of the top 20 rankings in such national editions as Brazil, China, France, Japan, U.K. and in the United States. Curiously, Germany, whose most popular employer among engineering students is Audi, chose neither Google nor Apple in its top 20 index. In India's list, Apple didn't make it to its top 20 list, either.
Chinese engineering students, on the other hand, selected Apple as its number one favorite; and Google as its number four. In the Chinese list, Huawei came in the number two, but ZTE was nowhere to be seen among its top 20.
Japanese engineering students chose Panasonic as its number one, and Sony as the number two.
Below is the top 20 ranking of this year’s World's Most Attractive Employers 2012, voted by engineering students worldwide. In subsequent pages, we show the results of national studies on the United States, China, Brazil, India, France, Germany and Japan.
The World's Most Attractive Employers Index 2012