What Do European Employees Look For in a Job Offer?

New findings released by our sister program, CLC Human Resources, say some interesting things about how candidate preferences vary across Europe. The implications for Recruiting are clear, and highlight the importance of tailoring your employment value proposition (EVP) and candidate outreach to account for geographical differences.

For many European employees, compensation is what they look for first in a job offer:

• Top three candidate preferences in Europe overall: Compensation, development opportunity, future career opportunity.
• Top three candidate preferences in France: Compensation, development opportunity, work-life balance.
• Top three candidate preferences in Germany: Compensation, development opportunity, collegial work environment.

However, there are some notable differences:

• In the Netherlands, Spain, and the United Kingdom, work-life balance is the top employee preference.
• In the Netherlands and Spain, compensation is not even ranked amongst the top three employee preferences.
• In Germany and Italy, meritocracy ranks among the top four employee preferences, but in most other European countries it does not rank within the top ten employee preferences.

As you can see, trying to manage a globally uniform EVP can potentially backfire, as it may not necessarily resonate within all your labor markets. It is a good idea to allow for some customization locally—the organizations that are most effective at this tend to focus on three or four globally consistent EVP attributes, with an additional one or two attributes that may vary across geographies. This tends to strike the right balance between global consistency and local flexibility.

The results come from CLC Human Resources’ recent 40,000-person survey on EVP preferences in Europe. For more information, CLC Human Resources members can visit the EVP solutions site, which contains a wide variety of resources for designing and managing an effective EVP.