Career intentions of engineering undergraduates in Singapore : relationships with Generation Y’s work values & industry perceptions.

• Main Authors: Cheong, Jervelle Weizhen., Soh, Yan Bin., Ng, Jacinda Wee Ping.
• Other Authors: Olexander Chernyshenko
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2012
• Subjects: DRNTU::Business::General::Careers and profession
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/48142
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Generation Y is the fastest growing and upcoming segment of today’s workforce. This generation has unique characteristics and values, and thus hiring managers find it increasingly difficult to attract and retain them. One sector which faces numerous attraction and retention challenges is the engineering industry. Researchers have indicated the importance of aligning the expectations of Generation Y and their work values with the organization culture and practices. At the same time, Yurtseven (2002) suggests that the challenge in recruiting Generation Y comes from the negative perception of the engineering industry and the occupational image of an engineer. Our aim is to understand the gap between a high supply of engineering undergraduates and a high demand of engineers based on their preferred work values and perceptions towards the industry. 250 NTU engineering undergraduates were approached individually to participate in our questionnaire. Results showed that all work values hypothesized, except for salary, influenced local engineering undergraduates’ decision to enter the engineering industry. Two groups of undergraduates were identified from the results - the high tenure group and the low tenure group. High tenure group held a more positive image of the industry and the occupation as compared to the low tenure group, and they would generally choose to stay in the industry for more than four years. On the other hand, the low tenure group would only be interested to stay in the industry for less than three years or would not even enter the industry, as they acknowledge a lack of interest in an engineering job. Hence, our study highlights the importance of recognizing the work preferences of Generation Y graduates and the need to constantly review companies’ HR policies and practices to attract the low-interest undergraduates, to retain the mid-interest undergraduates and to engage the high-interest undergraduates. In addition, we suggest that more efforts have to be spent to make the image of the engineering industry more attractive and to correct any misconceptions of the industry that Generation Y may have.