Employer Branding

Russian students are looking for the easy road

Based on more than 37,400 employer evaluations, reflecting the opinions of over 13,000 university students, Russian giants remain on top of the Ideal Employer rankings.

Universum announced today the results of its annual employer image survey for Russia: the leaders are the same as last year with Gazprom, Lukoil, and Sberbank holding on to their positions as ideal employers for business students. Gazprom, which tops the list for the fourth year in a row, is the ideal employer for an unprecedented 33 per cent of students.

Similar to business students, engineering students also opt for big stable companies, with Gazprom, Lukoil, and Russian Railways on top. The ranking reflects the level of employer attractiveness of an organisation, based on the number of nominations it receives as an ideal employer.

“Russian students’ choices seem to be based on the financial success and prestige of the companies leading the list,” commented Andriy Khrupa, Universum’s employer branding specialist in Russia.

Career preferences
In Universum’s research, students are asked to choose their most important career goals and are able to select up to three options. ‘To be secure or stable in my job’ has emerged as 2011’s most important career goal, being stated by 51 per cent of students. ‘To become a technical or functional expert’ remains a core aspiration for 41 per cent, especially those in engineering, while ‘To have work/life balance’, which is valued now by only 33 per cent, is overall losing importance.

Employer reputation and image
Russian students selected ‘Financial Strength’ (62%), ‘Market success’ (46%) and ‘Good reputation’ (34%) as the three most attractive qualities of an ideal employer. Interestingly, ‘High ethical standards’ came in last from a list of 10 attributes with 9 per cent.

Andriy Khrupa commented on this year’s rankings, “Russian students choose financially-stable employers, which can provide ‘Good prospects for high future earnings’ and a ‘Clear path for advancement’ (important for 50 per cent and 36 per cent of student respectively). With 48 per cent of students wanting to work for large companies (500+ employees), they also count on ‘Professional training and development’. Thus, to attract top Russian talent, employers must work and communicate on these attractive qualities.”

The top 10 ideal employers by field of study are:

Business: 1. Gazprom, 2. Lukoil, 3. Sberbank Rossii, 4. BMW, 5. Russian Railways, 6. VTB24, 7. Google, 8. Toyota, 9. The Coca-Cola Company, 10. Rosneft Oil Company

Engineering: 1. Gazprom, 2. Lukoil, 3. Russian Railways, 4. BMW, 5. Rosneft Oil Company, 6. Microsoft, 7. Schlumberger, 8. Intel, 9. Nokia, 10. Siemens

To view the Universum Top 100, click here