Singapore firms fail to get into Asia’s top 50 ideal employers

Singaporean job hunters are salary conscious while HongKongers and Japanese are not.

UNIVERSUM gave away the first annual Universum Awards Asia earlier today. Google, well recognised for its open culture and advocacy of creativity & innovation, was honoured Asia’s Most Ideal Employer.

Determined by over 65,000 undergraduate students across the region who participated in online survey conducted between November 2011 and May 2012, the awards also saw 49 other international and Asian brands* including Sony and Huawei being applauded for their employer branding efforts.

Findings reveal different preferences among talent across different fields of study and
geographies

While professional training and development is an equally attractive attribute about an employer to students from both business and engineering, those in business tend to value a good reference for their future career and a friendly work environment more than their engineering counterparts who seek challenging work in a creative and dynamic work environment.

Rachele said, “Engineering students tend to gravitate towards employers that provideopportunities to work on projects in teams, as well as develop new and innovative products or technology. Business students however are more focused on prospects of taking on a leadership position and in turn, the remuneration. Despite this, we are seeing increasing interest in the financial services sector among engineering students because of the relatively more attractive remuneration packages.”

Comparing the responses across different markets reveal further disparities among the students – for example, business students in India, China and Singapore deem high future earnings as one of the most attractive attributes of a future job but those in Hong Kong and Japan don’t perceive remuneration to be important factor at all. Those in India also place significantly greater emphasis on the employer reputation & image than the rest.

“Talent in certain Asian markets such as China are starting to get more opportunities with better
remuneration, which contribute towards the ongoing issue of talent retention among employers.
Once they become more comfortable with the heightened level of remuneration across the
markeet, talent will be able to focus on other drivers such as an employer’s workplace culture
and employer reputation & image. Students in India, on the other hand, believe working with a
good employer brand would contribute towards higher future earnings,” Rachele added.

Top 50 Ideal Employers

A.) Business
Google
KPMG
Procter & Gamble
Unilever
Microsoft
IBM
Apple
Deloitte
McKinsey & Company
PwC
Sony
J.P. Morgan
Goldman Sachs
Citi
IKEA
L'Oréal
Morgan Stanley
The Coca-Cola Company
Accenture
Nestlé
Johnson & Johnson
Ernst & Young
The Boston Consulting
Group
HSBC
Nike
Standard Chartered Bank
Deutsche Bank
Toyota
Bank of China
BMW
CICC
China Mobile
Bank of America Merrill
Lynch
adidas
The Walt Disney Company
Intel
Lenovo
Huawei
LVMH
Bain & Company
General Electric
Volkswagen
Siemens
HP
UBS
PepsiCo
Nokia
Oracle
Kraft Foods
McDonald's

B) ENGINEERING

Employer

Google
Microsoft
IBM
Sony
Apple
Toyota
Intel
Siemens
General Motors
Procter & Gamble
Unilever
General Electric
Johnson & Johnson
Volkswagen
BMW
The Coca-Cola Company
Huawei
Goldman Sachs
McKinsey & Company
Cisco Systems
Lenovo
China Mobile
Nestlé
Bosch
Oracle
Philips
Ericsson
ABB
Ford Motor Company
Bank of China
Shell
Boeing
Schneider Electric
HP
Nike
IKEA
L'Oréal
Bayer
Daimler
BASF
Samsung
Nokia
3M
Esso/ExxonMobil
BP
Pfizer
Volvo Cars
The Boston Consulting
Group
Morgan Stanley
J.P. Morgan