Recent college graduates are looking more for flexible hours than they are for money in the quest for a job.
That's according to a survey from Toptal, a network of freelance software engineers and designers. The survey found that while 62 percent said salary was their highest priority, 80 percent would like flexible work hours.
And while recent grads may rely heavily on the internet and social media for many things, including job hunting, that's not the case for job interviews. Seventy-eight percent of recent graduates would rather have an in-person job interview than try to get a job via a phone (40 percent), e-mail (22 percent), or even a Skype (22 percent) interview.
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Fifty-nine percent start job hunting right out of the gate, while 21 percent are planning on taking a gap year and just 14 percent are looking at grad school. Most will look online for that perfect position, with 58 percent relying on such search engines as Monster, Craigslist, and CareerBuilder, but there are some traditionalists among the group; 32 percent do job fairs and 25 percent still look at newspaper classifieds. Otherwise, company websites are the choice of 44 percent, while LinkedIn gets 32 percent, and social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter get 29 percent.
In addition, 48 percent would like the whole process to be more transparent, from the status of their application to letting them know as quickly as possible if they don't get the job (46 percent) and being upfront about how much the salary range is (44 percent).
There aren't that many traditionalists when it comes to what they're looking for in a job, though. Half of those grads would prefer to work from home, but only 35 percent are looking for a traditional 9-to-5 office job.
They are more interested in salaried jobs (33 percent) than in an hourly wage (16 percent), but 73 percent said that freelancing is a good way to make money in addition to their full-time job. A whopping 87 percent said they plan eventually to freelance full time. And 37 percent said they most want to be able to use their degree and skillset, regardless of salary or flexibility.
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