Universum today (November 2) hosted its 14th annual virtual event to reveal the world’s most attractive employers as well as employment trends and predictions.
In short, while 2022 was a banner year for job-seeking students with high demand and record talent shortages, 2023 is looking, well, a bit less rosy.
“We expect that 2023 will be a year of rebalancing. Over the past 12 months, when talent demand outpaced supply in many regions, employers inflated their employment promises to attract young people,” says Universum CEO Mats Röjdmark.
“Given the likely reduction in hiring and increased pressure on company resources in the coming year, we expect a return to more balanced employment deals, where what you ‘get’ as an employee is more evenly balanced against what you’re expected to ‘give’.”
THE 10 MOST ATTRACTIVE EMPLOYERS
Universum, a data-driven employer branding specialist, surveyed 185,067 business, engineering, and IT students for its World’s Most Attractive Employers 2022 ranking. Students came from nine of the world’s largest economies and were asked which employer characteristics are most important when considering their future and which employer brands they most admire.
For business students, Apple was the most attractive company in 2022, up from No. 3 a year ago. The company scored highly in both offering challenging work problems for its workers as well as flexibility and work-life balance.
“Despite the increased focus on high pay, flexibility, and work-life balance, our survey suggests it is rare to find a company that offers all of these — with the exception of a small group of Big Tech firms. The perception that Big Tech offers both high pay and quality-of-life benefits is no doubt one of the reasons they continue to dominate the employer rankings across all student groups,” the report finds.
Google dropped to No. 2 in 2022 (down from No. 1 in 2021) followed by Microsoft at No. 3.
In fact, FAANG companies -- Meta (formerly Facebook), Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Alphabet (Google) -- are among the most popular companies for business students. Three of the five best-performing American tech stocks made it into the top 10 of Universum's list of most attractive employers (see above table).
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