Abstract:
The objective of the study is to examine the factors influencing the preferences of job choices
and its attributes among undergraduates who are related to millennial generation at their first
job in Vavuniya campus in Sri Lanka. Total of 100 undergraduate students from third and
fourth years who are following business management degree program in the campus were
selected during the period of 2019/2020 as the sample of millennial generation in the study.
Frequency of choices on degree programs as well as job choices reveal that, 43% of the students
are following special degree in accounting and finance whereas, only 8% of them following
special degree in marketing management. 18% of them following business economics
specialization and 13% of them following human resource management as their specialization
degree program in the campus. Frequency of job choices implies that, 40% of the students
choose manufacturing sector as their first job while 19% of them preferred banking and
academic sectors. Multinomial logit model was used to identify the impact of job attributes on
four types of job choices such as, banking sector, apparel manufacturing, audit firm and
academic sector which was taken as dependent variable with the five explanatory variables
namely, basic salary, contract types, career path, job location and reputation in the study. Its
results reveal that salary, types of contract, career path and reputation have significantly
affected the job choices whereas job location is insignificant in the model. Findings of the study
is important for academics to revise their curriculum towards job oriented as well as suggest
the managers for designing jobs to attract and retain the best talented workers in labour market
in future.
