Eva Peters

As a Masters student at the International School of Management in Hamburg, Germany, Eva obtained a Master’s Degree in Business Psychology. She received her Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration from the University of Cologne in Germany.

Eva wrote her Master’s thesis under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Ulrike Weber of the International School of Management. Her research focused on job attributes and job choice decisions. In her thesis, she identified the relative importance of seven selected job features on the job choice decision of college students. Thereby, she focused on the next generation to enter the workforce, born after 1995, which are referred to as Generation Z.

Eva applied Sawtooth Software’s Adaptive Choice Based Conjoint method to identify the relative importance Generation Z college students today place on job attributes when making a job choice decision. This method allowed the opportunity to measure the relative importance of job attributes in a decision scenario, as it occurs in real-life. Individuals need to consider attributes jointly and weight them against each other when choosing between job options. Moreover, the study explored potential trade-offs future employees are willing to make between different job attributes and their levels when presented with a series of (imperfect) multi-attribute alternatives.

The results indicate that overall, the three most important attributes when considered simultaneously were work-life-balance, salary and location, followed by job security, positive impact on the world, advancement opportunities, and lastly, learning opportunities.  It was further found that gender as well as the field of study and the preference group (e.g. “Salary-oriented”) significantly impacted the job attribute importance. In terms of trade-offs, the results show that trade-offs are easily made between job attributes of more and less importance, while trades between equally important attributes are less readily made. Also, the preference group, gender and demographic criteria cause different trade-off behaviors.

The results of the thesis are of value for organizations as well as for individual job applicants. Companies can derive practical implications regarding employer branding and recruiting efforts targeted at the future Generation Z workforce. For the next generation of job seekers, the insights generated about their own preferences can help them preselect the right jobs to apply for. Furthermore, it can lead to a higher satisfaction with their final job choice decision and to a higher level of motivation. Additionally, the findings on Generation Z job preferences through the application of adaptive choice based conjoint analysis serve as a basis for future research in this field.