Hiring for the green economy: Employer perspectives on sustainability in the business curriculum

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how recruiters at a college career fair perceive sustainability and the knowledge business graduates should have about it. It reports on how recruiters understand sustainability and perceive their organization’s engagement and resulting expectations for new hires. The results indicate that recruiters neither understand sustainability well, nor are suitably informed of their organizations’ needs with respect to this topic. Educators, as a consequence, face a dilemma of how to craft adequate educational experiences, as employer needs are not clearly expressed. The paper concludes with suggestions on how educational institutions can nevertheless proceed with offerings in sustainability education.

Design/methodology/approach

The study was performed by conducting personal, structured interviews at a college career fair.

Findings

While most respondents considered sustainability to be an important topic, there appears to be a lack of thorough understanding of sustainability. Recruiters were not overly informed about their organizations’ position and efforts toward sustainability. They considered it to be important that students learn about sustainability, but preferences for educational tools were not aligned with expected depth of knowledge. This leaves educators in search of guidance on how to align educational offerings with organizational needs.

Research limitations/implications

As a pilot study, the total number of interviewed organizations was low, and therefore, the results should not be over-interpreted. The findings nevertheless point to a clear disconnect between organizations’ expressed needs for adequate trained personal and their ability to define what they are looking for. These results encourage more research to develop a better link between company strategy toward sustainability, recruiter’s know-how of it and concise expectations in new hires that could be mirrored in educational offerings.

Practical implications

Human resources play a critical role in providing organizations with the capabilities to become more sustainable. Organizations need to develop concise recruitment policies that better communicate what they are looking for, as well as educational programs for recruiters to ensure future hiring fulfills critical needs.

Originality/value

This paper closes a gap in the literature as it includes a thus-far ignored stakeholder group, namely recruiters; into the research on how to align organizational needs with the development of adequate educational offerings that generate future leaders and managers well-versed in sustainability.

Citation

Klingenberg, B. and Kochanowski, S.M. (2015), "Hiring for the green economy: Employer perspectives on sustainability in the business curriculum", Journal of Management Development, Vol. 34 No. 8, pp. 987-1003. https://doi.org/10.1108/JMD-06-2014-0058