The existing fierce competence in the current labour market is causing company managers to be increasingly more demanding when filling a specific job. Moral, social, intellectual, aesthetic, and personal values of the applicants are thoroughly analysed by company owners when hiring new employees, according to the study by Gabriel Carmona Orantes and Pilar Casares García, professors in the Department of Pedagogy of the University of Granada (Universidad de Granada). Their work reveals that the trait that company managers most value in their employees is honesty, followed by tidiness, personal hygiene, and sincerity.
Researchers have compiled these data from a survey of 370 company managers from the metropolitan area of Granada. Those surveyed included both sexes and different ages: 61% of the owners of small companies, 25% of the owners of medium-sized companies and 14% of the owners of big companies. The goal of the research was to determine the profile of new workers most sought by company owners—that is, the most demanded aspects for a job applicant.
According to percentages, 65.3% of company managers prefer to hire applicants which arereliable, trustworthy, and malleable —“someone to be trained according to the company rules, beliefs, and values”, state the researchers—, while only 5.3% of company managers opt for a high level of technical and professional knowledge as their first preference. Managers place more importance on the intelligence and personal qualities of the applicants than on their academic training, and consider values such as verbal fluency, cooperation, and support of the common interest as the most important attributes for the company.
Less stressed values
Regarding the consideration company managers give to these values, it is important to point out that personal hygiene is the second most demanded value, just after the applicant integrity. Even sincerity or will to learn are deemed less important. On the other hand, the personal values least appreciated by company managers are independence, emotion, love, and religious values, the researchers explained.
According to the data compiled by Gabriel Carmona and Pilar Casares in their study, “the profile of the potential employee is determined to a great extent by reliability criteria, up to a point where managers —from small, medium-sized or big companies— prefer above all that their workers be reliable and keen on adapting to the company requirements and culture.”
UGR professors point out that sincerity, availability, interest in the offered job, collaboration, adaptability, and will to learn are more of the appreciated elements in the profile of an applicant. The researchers also stress the need for “more actions to shape students in capacities such as knowing how to behave, how to adapt to the situation, how to learn, and learning moral values, because these are matters that have been generally passed over in favour of technical knowledge in university training.”
Reference:
Prof. Gabriel Carmona Orantes and Pilar Casares García.
Department of Pedagogy of the University of Granada.
Phone numbers: +34 958 248 952 – +34 958 243 758. E-mail: gcarmona@ugr.es, pcasares@ugr.es
