KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 20 — For women looking for their first job after graduating, salary and bonuses come first, and career development comes second while it is the reverse for men, according to a survey conducted recently by graduate recruitment outfit, TALENTBANK.

The survey shows the two are the top five factors undergraduates looked for in their first job, besides learning and development opportunities, flexible working hours as well as company culture where the preference for both genders is the same, said TALENTBANK founder and chief executive officer Ben Ho in a statement, here, today.

The parallel survey was conducted by the recruitment company when 28,000 undergraduates voted in the 2nd Annual Graduate Choice Awards (GCA) where they picked the Top 5 Most Attractive Employer Brands — Maybank, Petronas, Maxis, Samsung and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).

Undergraduates from more than 100 universities voted for their preferred employer brands from a total of 83 companies across 23 categories.

Ho noted that the big number of votes for employers this year compared with 11,000 last year indicated undergraduates were beginning to discover the importance of their voice in signalling to the industry the importance of employer branding.

"From an employer’s perspective, the higher participation by undergraduates is an indication that young people are paying more attention to what companies do to brand themselves,” he said.

The statement said the 2019 GCA Ceremony was held last Friday at Sunway Hotel Resorts and Spa and was launched by Selangor Youth Community (SAY) Trustee, Syed Haizam Hishamuddin Putra Jamalullail and Higher Education deputy director-general Prof Mohd Cairul Iqbal Mohd Amin.

Ho said beginning in early 2019, over 28,000 graduates with 55 per cent of them from Klang Valley and 45 per cent from other states voted for their award-winning employers over a seven-month period.

"The selection ended with an audit checkpoint that saw 15 board members from various universities inspecting the results to ensure a fair selection process,” he said. — Bernama