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A view from the entry level: student perceptions of critical information systems job attributes

Published: 01 April 2001 Publication History

Abstract

Globalization and the expanding digital nature of today's business environment have resulted in skyrocketing demand for qualified IT personnel. Organizations are increasingly turning to recently graduated IS students as a critical source of supply. In light of this, the objective of this paper is to identify the relative importance of job attributes considered by IS students when evaluating a job. Drawing on content motivation as a general theoretical foundation, this paper surveyed 243 IS students at two large southwestern universities to determine what job attributes they find most appealing when assessing potential positions and organizations. Prior research was aggregated to compile a comprehensive list of job attributes. Two methods were used by respondents to evaluate these attributes; rank ordering, and points allocation (weighted measure). The results provide insight into the relative importance that IS students attach to specific job attributes. This information may be used by organizations to provide relevant information to potential employees, resulting in improved alignment between employee preferences and organizational reality, with a subsequent effect on job attitude and turnover.

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  • (2005)A Structural Model of the Information Systems ProfessionalInformation and Communication Technologies and Real-Life Learning10.1007/0-387-25997-X_27(243-253)Online publication date: 2005

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        cover image ACM Conferences
        SIGCPR '01: Proceedings of the 2001 ACM SIGCPR conference on Computer personnel research
        April 2001
        224 pages
        ISBN:1581133634
        DOI:10.1145/371209
        Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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        Published: 01 April 2001

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        Author Tags

        1. IT labor shortages
        2. IT workforce
        3. job attributes
        4. recruiting strategies
        5. recruitment

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        SIGCPR '01 Paper Acceptance Rate 22 of 41 submissions, 54%;
        Overall Acceptance Rate 300 of 480 submissions, 63%

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        • (2005)A Structural Model of the Information Systems ProfessionalInformation and Communication Technologies and Real-Life Learning10.1007/0-387-25997-X_27(243-253)Online publication date: 2005

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