Women become more confident on the job

Women are becoming more confident, says Universum Talent Research. Young female IT professionals, for example, prefer vertical training opportunities: Training, creativity, innovation, flexibility, an attractive base salary and "recently" a high income. The study reveals a thesis: the so-called "soft factors" are becoming less and less relevant for women, while hard factors are gaining in importance.

Change in the "soft factors

Compared to last year, women are less interested in the "soft factors". Thus, the attribute "respect for one's co-workers" has fallen out of the top 10 preferences of the survey (last year #5). The importance of "a creative and dynamic work environment" has also dropped. Also interesting: "support for gender equality" is not chosen at all, already last year not.

Salary and career opportunities" are significantly more important to female students. Women attach importance to an employer "paying for their future education" (not even in the top 10 for men) and an "attractive basic salary" is also important to them. So women have had enough of the gender gap and demand more.

Less interesting to them is the prospect of "a high income in the future," which is definitely important to men (#4). A "good reference for future career" is very important to both men and women, but "diverse work tasks" in the job are even more important to women.

 Different preferences

"Women focus more on the first job and weight current preferences slightly higher than future preferences. This could be related to the fact that women are out of patience and want to have a career before starting a family and thus have less patience," Marty said.

"Professional training and development" is more important to female students (#5) than male students (#9). "Diverse work assignments" is also more important to female students (#1) than to male students (#7).

"Women have probably realized that they can demand more and also have to contribute to the issue of equality themselves. So they are focusing more on the hard factors around salary, promotion opportunities, further training and less on soft factors such as respect among colleagues or a creative and dynamic working environment when choosing an employer," says Leo Marty, Managing Director Switzerland & Austria at Universum.

 Taking a closer look at the top 10 preferences, one observes that for men "salary & promotion opportunities" are still somewhat more important and primarily occupy the ranks 1-4 and for women the ranks 6-8.

Women are idealists and harmonizers ...

Among Swiss female students, the career profile of Idealists is particularly pronounced at 18% (men 9%) and that of Harmonizers at 17% (men 11%).

So-called harmonizers attach great importance to loyalty, a sense of responsibility and team spirit. Idealists want to deliver feasible solutions that serve a good purpose. At the same time, they want to be valued and respected.

Idealists and harmonizers increase over the course of a career. Among Swiss professionals with an academic background, 12% of working men and 23% of working women are Idealists. Harmonizers account for 13% of working men and 21% of working women in Switzerland.

IT-ers now primarily demand (#1) "professional training & continuing education" (last year #5). "Flexible working conditions", a "high income in the future" and "payment for future training" are all three new in the top 10 preferences of IT-ers. IT students also care about "innovation" and "attractive & interesting products & services." "Innovation" is even more important than an attractive base salary. Or rather, innovation is not a matter of course for Swiss IT people, but a good salary is. This is a good sign for the booming start-up scene, which is also desperately looking for IT people, but is not solvent.

You can find out more about the "Universum Talent Research" study on the site of universumglobal.com