Fundamentals of Management 7th Edition by Ricky Griffin

Exercise 28

What Do Students Want from Their Jobs?
Purpose: This exercise investigates the job values held by college students at your institution. Then it asks the students to speculate about employers' perceptions of college students' job values. This will help you understand how college students can be recruited effectively. It also gives you insight into the difficulties of managing and motivating individuals with different values and perceptions.
Introduction: Employees choose careers that match their job values. Employers try to understand employee values to better recruit, manage, and motivate them. Job values are important therefore, in every HR process, from job advertisements and interviews, to performance appraisals, to compensation planning.
Instructions:
1. Complete the following Job Values Survey. Consider what you want from your future career. Using Column 1, rank the 14 job values from 1 to 14, with 1 being the most important to you and 14 being the least important.
2. In your opinion, when potential employers try to attract students, how much important do they think students give to each of the values? For Column 2, respond with a 1 (plus) if you think employers would rank it higher than students or with a 2 (minus) if you think employers would rate it lower. This is the employers' perception of students' values, not of their own values.
3. In small groups or a class, compute an average ranking for each value. Then discuss the results.
Discussion Questions
1. How much variation do you see in the job value rankings in Column 1? That is, are students' values quite different, moderately different, or very similar overall?
2. If there are significant differences between individuals, what impact might these differences have on the recruiting process? On the training process? On the performance evaluation and compensation process?
3. How much variation do you see in the responses for Column 2? That is, does your group or class agree on how employers perceive college students?
4. Is there a large difference between how you think employers perceive college students and your group's or class's reported job values? If there is a large difference, what difficulties might this create for job seekers and potential employers? How might these difficulties be reduced or eliminated?