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.

We’re Changing Our Name!

We love the Recruiting RoundtableTM and all it has stood for across the decade we have been around, and today marks another exciting milestone: We are changing our name.

Across the years we have heard clear feedback that our product offerings are best-in-class and trusted by our members every day, but there remained some confusion about how the Recruiting Roundtable relates to our sister program, the Corporate Leadership Council (CLC).

In response to our members’ request for greater clarity into our family of CLC programs and to better delineate how we serve HR functions we decided to simplify our program names. Specifically, our CLC program and all of our functionally-specific Roundtable programs are now renamed as follows:

· Corporate Leadership Council (CLC) is now CLC Human Resources
· Benefits Roundtable (BR) is now CLC Benefits
· Compensation Roundtable (CR) is now CLC Compensation
· Learning and Development Roundtable (LDR) is now CLC Learning and Development
· Recruiting Roundtable (RR) is now CLC Recruiting
· HR Leadership Academy (HRLA) is now CLC Leadership Academy

Our new names will begin appearing today on our website, logos, newsletters and materials. The name change will not affect our membership value proposition, the terms of membership, or the products and services within each program.

We look forward to continuing to serve our recruiting members as the CLC Recruiting team!

Thinking About Offering Unpaid Internships?

As BusinessWeek reports, the rapid growth of unpaid internships by for-profit employers in the United States is driving regulators, universities, and students to question whether the internships are legal.

Unpaid internships seem like a win-win in this economy. With college hiring and recruiting budgets down, employers get to maintain their employment brand on campus and their pipeline of student talent. Meanwhile, with fewer jobs out there for college graduates, students get the opportunity to jumpstart their careers.

Yet, the U.S. Department of Labor warns there are very few instances where a for-profit employer can offer an unpaid internship. Every unpaid internship must meet six criteria to escape legal penalty. For instance, the internship must be similar to training given by an academic institution, and the employer can derive no immediate advantage from the intern.

As Roundtable members know, we recommend employers use internships as realistic job previews for students. Consider making pay part of that job preview if you don’t already do so.

A Troubling Trend Underlying Job Market Optimism

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released the jobs report for March this morning. Unemployment held steady at 9.7%, with other indications of a slow recovery in some sectors.

As the Wall Street Journal reports, the most troubling trend is this: Over 40% of the 15 million unemployed are considered "long-term" unemployed (meaning they have been without a job and looking for more than 27 weeks), which is more than double the number from March of last year. The stagnation of the long-term unemployed is unlike other recessions, the Journal reports, and for the following reasons:

• The unemployed are less mobile in their pursuit of work. They cannot afford to sell their houses, finding the spouse another job is difficult in a two-income family, and the usual destinations are the areas hit hardest by the recession.
• The unemployed have skills less relevant in today’s economy. Finding a new job often means acquiring new skills first.

So, what are the implications for Recruiting? Our estimate: more of the same.

Application volume will continue to be high. The large number of long term unemployed will continue to send in their applications. Not surprisingly, most applications will be unqualified due to job seeker desperation and misalignment of skills with today’s economy.