ASU students remark on importance of pay, work culture as they enter workforce

Yahoo

25-04-2025

The Brief
We're hearing from ASU students who are about to enter the workforce and have some non-negotiables for employers.
Many students say they value the culture and work-life balance in jobs rather than a high salary.
TEMPE, Ariz. - FOX 10's Nicole Krasean headed over to ASU's Tempe campus on April 24 to hear more about what students are saying about the job market.
The biggest takeaway was, that while pay is important, there are a lot of other factors they consider non-negotiable when it comes to the job search.
What they're saying
"Good pay. I highly value that because with inflation going up and all that."
"High five figures."
"I'm saying at least $50,000 first year."
"Maybe like $50K, $60K."
"This might sound like high standards, but a minimum of $70K."
"Ideally you want $20 an hour just to live."
"$70,000. That's the base."
"For real estate development, I'm going to look for more than $90,000 and ideally some stake in the project, so non-salary compensation would be interesting."
"For a starting computer science job, I would hope for something around $80,000-$100,000 as a starting job, and then you can kind of build off of that."
Dig deeper
A ZipRecruiter survey shows 82% of students expect to start working within three months of graduating.
Some Sun Devils said they are confident in their job prospects.
"I'm engineering management, and so there's a lot of engineering fields opening up. I'm not necessarily worried about a job, per se," a student said.
While others are a little on edge about job availability.
"I actually do get a little nervous because I know there's people who have better degrees than I'm gonna get who are struggling to get jobs, so it makes me a little nervous," another student said.
"I am concerned because of AI and all that. They could be taking over our businesses and even our jobs," a worried student remarked.
When asked what some non-negotiables are for a first job, responses centered around culture rather than money.
"In general, like a nice work environment, like no toxic stuff," a student said.
Another one said, "I'm not hoping to work 80-hour weeks. I'm assuming I'm going to work a lot, but I don't want to work 80-hour weeks."
Remote work is important to them, too.
"It has to be remote, has to be flexible, it has to be a good team. I wanna really get to know my supervisors, my elites, the people I'm gonna be working with. I want them to be people I like," a student said.
"I don't want to be treated poorly. I don't think any worker wants to be treated poorly, so good management, being on the same page with your manager," a student explained.
Another said, "Something where it's very inclusive, like a lot of opportunities for people to work their way up."
Do they care more about the culture or the pay?
"I would say the pay," a student answered.
Another answered by saying, "Yeah, I mean, it's like if the pay is really good and the culture is really bad, alright, but if the pay is not great and the culture is still bad, then I would say that has to be evened out."
One of the students explained the term "job creep."
It's when employees see additional duties, not in their job description, creep into their workload, especially after staffing is cut down.
That is an example of what they say is toxic in the workplace.