Factors influencing career choice: the Romanian business and administration students’ experience

Abstract

The paper aims to identify and rank the factors influencing Romanian business and administration students’ career choice. The main assumptions refer to: (a) good university education is critical factors influencing career choice; (b) business and administration students’ career choices are influenced by extrinsic factors; (c) students’ early exposure to profession contribute to successful careers. The paper findings are based on data collected from 496 undergraduate and master programs students enrolled in business and administration university education programs at Bucharest University of Economic Studies (BUES) during 2014/2015 academic year. BUES undergraduate and graduate students were distributed a questionnaire with 17 questions. Cross-tabulation, frequency analysis and descriptive statistics were used for processing data collected. The survey conducted had broader objectives; therefore, there will be presented only results obtained after processing some of the questions of the survey which considered relevant for the aim of this paper. The findings indicate that extrinsic and interpersonal factors are significantly influencing career choice of business and administration students. Results are relevant for the university management: successful integration of graduates is becoming part of the quality assurance for any university. Accurate knowledge about factors influencing students’ career choice is needed to university staff so that to design and implement tools to support students to make the “right” career choice and to contribute to sustainable insertion of its graduates to the labor market. Thus, university staff has to identify perceptions and factors influencing students’ career choice so that to design and implement tools to support students’ career development.