College Student’s Workweek Preferences: Are Recruiters Missing the Mark?
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the employment sector needed to immediately adapt and create flexible workweeks, fast-tracking a process that had been only slowly emerging throughout the past few decades. As these new workweeks continue to evolve and organizations continue to adopt them, college students are graduating into a new and exciting workforce that is eager to hire. However, many current college students have dealt with a non-traditional, often stressful college experience, being forced to learn in a different environment than before. The preferences of these recently graduated college students about flexible workweeks may be vital in the hiring process and could be something that hiring managers and organizations alike may be overlooking.
Flexible and alternative workweeks continue to be discussed weekly throughout the world. Countries such as Iceland, have partially adopted shorter workweeks, and the hybridization process that was delivered alongside the pandemic has led to an increase in hybrid work throughout the United States. These flexible workweeks are commonly discussed and viewed as a possibility for potential positive effects, such as increases in job satisfaction, productivity, and employee retention. These factors are extremely important, especially for entry-level positions that college students typically get hired for, and could benefit the companies that increase their use of flexibility in the workplace as a recruitment strategy and understand the associated positive externalities.
The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted today’s college students and their experiences, from online and hybrid classes to changes in class times and locations. There is little-to-no empirical data investigating college students’ preferences on workweek types, and these preferences have changed throughout the last two years due to the pandemic. Nearly all students throughout the pandemic have taken classes in a variety of settings, from online to hybrid to in-person, and these students have had to adapt and change their personal schedules to adhere to these classes. The adaptation that students had to go through during their college experience could have led to the creation of workweek preferences for their professional futures and may have even changed their preferences as they near graduation.
But how does flexibility in the workplace relate to current college students and their resulting, experienced-driven preferences? Organizations need to understand the link between meeting people with flexibility in the workplace and the possibility of increased job satisfaction behind this link. Both formal and occasional use of flexibility is positively associated with employee engagement and expected retention, leading to higher organizational output. By understanding the flexibility preferences of soon-to-be graduates, especially those with an atypical college experience by traditional standards, companies and recruiters will be able to hire more students with better yield ratios and the likelihood of higher retention. Through proactive recruitment strategies, companies can achieve more efficient processes and greater success in their hiring practices.
This study develops an understanding of the workweek preferences that current college students looking to obtain post-graduation. Using information gathered through a survey along with information found on a job board specifically for college students, we can analyze the preferences and see if they match up to what is currently offered by organizations that target them with specific individual job postings.
Figure 1 displays the answers to the question regarding how important a flexible workweek is to the individual in a job. The majority selected moderately important, which means it is important, but most likely not a deal-breaker. Nearly two-thirds of students selected moderately, very, or extremely important, suggesting that to this percentage of students, flexible workweeks are important.
Later in the survey, a question about the general workweek preferences of current college students post-graduation was asked. The results of these findings are summarized in Figure 2. Each color correlates to a different workweek preference: Purple represents a hybrid workweek, red represents a traditional workweek, green represents a compressed workweek, and yellow represents other types, which were either personal based, 4-day workweek, fieldwork, or none. This confirms the expected result that students generally prefer a non-traditional workweek, as over 60% of students responded that they would prefer a flexible workweek. Given the consistency in these differently phased questions with comparable content, reliability is established. These results are interesting when compared to the results of the external job post research, which can be seen in Figure 3.
The results found in figure 3 answer the question of the mention of flexibility, displaying that current job posts overwhelmingly exclude the mention of flexibility and/or the type of workweek in the job post description. While over 60% of future job-seeker respondents indicated a preference for a non-traditional work schedule, only an average of 32.8% of organizations used flexible work schedules as a recruitment tool after being corrected for those organizations that do not have the structural latitude to do so. This comparison is somewhat consistent with the fact that nearly two-thirds of all respondents said that flexible work schedules were moderately to extremely important, compared again to only 32.8% of organizations using that flexibility as a recruitment tool. This is an example of a missed opportunity for employers operations and recruiting in a cutthroat labor market.
Regardless of the limitations, this study highlights the disconnect between current college students’ preferences for workweeks and the availability of these workweeks in job posts offered to them. Students are looking for jobs that suit their needs and preferences, and many job posts fail to include these needs in the individual posts. Employers need to ensure to the best of their ability that they are including information about potential workweek, flexibility, and alternative arrangements to attract high-functioning college graduates. The positive externalities of flexible workweeks also provide a point of interest for employers, and by following these recommendations, there is a possibility of higher retention, productivity, and organizational fit that will benefit both employers and college students alike. Regarding the question, “are college recruiters missing the mark? – the answer is a resounding, “yes!”.
Zachary Kibel is a senior at Indiana University, majoring in Public Affairs with a concentration in Management. If you have any questions or would like a copy of this research paper, feel free to contact him at zkibel@iu.edu.
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