What Millennials Want In A Job

Young professionals and graduates are increasingly looking for personal fulfilment rather than money or managerial positions in their careers, a recent survey on SA’s most attractive employers shows.

- Natalie Greve And Jana Jacobs

With an increasing number of millennials entering the job market, the priorities of young professionals and graduates when considering employers are markedly evolving towards employment opportunities that allow for self-actualisation and personal fulfilment.

Overtaking previously critical job aspects such as remuneration and leadership opportunities, the largest proportion of respondents interviewed as part of employer branding group Universum’s 2017 survey of South Africa’s most attractive employers, which surveyed the opinions of 46 981 tertiary students and 22 321 professionals, described a favourable work/life balance as their most important career goal.

“Work seekers want greater work/ life integration, where work is something that you do and is part of who you are rather than something you go to,” Universum country manager Jenali Skuse tells finweek.

“Employees want to feel as though they have freedom of movement and can incorporate their lives into traditional working hours by, for example, running errands or going to the dentist.”

The Human Capital Group managing director Brian Wasmüth adds that, in the modern work context, career often becomes integrated with the identity of an individual, especially when the individual holds particularly aspirational and ambitious goals.

“While people certainly make an effort to separate work and their private lives, often the separation becomes blurred. Modern technology contributes to that blurring in that you can be contacted 24/7,” he says.