Europe’s top students now disregard CSR & High Ethical Standards. Above all, they favour well-known, successful and prestigious employers. Europe’s Top 100 Ideal Employers elected by 19,890 students.

The continent’s most ambitious career-seekers and presents their choice of Ideal Employers. Based on 60,700 employer evaluations, reflecting the opinions of 19,890 students studying at Europe’s top academic institutions, Apple and Google are respectively no. one for business and engineering students.

Universum announced today the results of its annual Pan-European employer image survey. In the business ranking Apple beats Google (no. 2) and McKinsey and Company takes third place away from L’Oréal. In the engineering ranking, Google comes first followed by Audi and EADS, pushing back BMW and Apple which were respectively no. two and three last year. For natural sciences, IT and humanities students, Google continues to be the employer of choice. Nevertheless, Apple is a serious contender, taking second place in nearly all rankings except in the IT category where it’s Microsoft. Based on the number of student nominations that a company receives as an ideal employer across Europe’s most prestigious academic institutions, Universum produces a ranking dubbed the Universum Top 100. The Pan-European rankings reflect the level of employer attractiveness that organisations have overall in Europe’s interconnected graduate recruitment of top talent. Interestingly, Europe’s most exclusive group of university students associate their favourite employers mostly with good reputation (72%), market success (70%) and prestige (66%), and the least with CSR (33%) and high ethical standards (30%) – a confirmation that students are thinking strategically about their career and are focused on building their personal brand foremost as opposed to concerns over responsible or sustainable business per se.

“The prestige and market success of an employer is important for today’s young career-seekers who are studying at Europe’s best universities; it’s all about vanity and one’s external image, the personal brand…´how can I impress my peers?’ is the obsession for this ambitious class of students. In fact, attractive employers have certain common attributes for them. They are known to provide challenging work, a good reference to a future career, and recruit only the best…but their general public reputation and market success clearly puts them in the limelight”, said Petter Nylander, Universum’s CEO.

With 135 nationalities represented in the Pan-European survey, the multicultural and diverse composition of the top academic institutions in Europe is well reflected. Interestingly, having asked students about their chances of getting a job with their favourite employer, i.e. within 6 months after graduation, the most optimistic students were the Germans (57%), Norwegians (56%) and Ukrainians (54%) – more than half of each nationality were confident to very confident about landing a job with their ideal employer. At the other end, the least positive students, as can be expected due to dismal economic conditions back home, were the Italians (29%), Irish (27%), Greeks (26%), British (25%) and Spanish (18%) – where less than a third truly believed in arriving at their ultimate career destination.

To view Europe’s Top 100 Ideal Employer by field of study, click on the link below:

http://www.universumglobal.com/IDEAL-Employer-Rankings/The-Pan-European-Student-Survey

Students favour employers that provide challenging work and a good reference to a future career
The top employers for business students are strongly associated to challenging work and a good reference to a future career.  On the other end, they are least associated to high ethical standards and secure employment. For example, 84 per cent and 83 per cent respectively associate BCG and McKinsey and Co. to challenging work and 85 per cent think both employers provide a good reference to a future career.