Castrén & Snellman broke into the top three most desirable legal sector employers behind only the courts and the Ministry of Justice in the 2020 Universum student survey. The survey is conducted every year to evaluate the image of various employers among students.
For the past few years, the three most popular employers have been in the public sector, but this year, C&S took third place, passing last year’s third, the European Union. Our firm is the most popular private sector employer in the legal sector for the twelfth year running.
‘We have been systematically developing our work with students and universities for a long time. Our goal is to help students lay the groundwork for a career as a legal expert while they are still studying. Our role as a responsible employer is also becoming increasingly important, and we feel it is our task to support aspiring legal experts and give them a positive picture of the field from the very start of their careers’, said HR Director Outi Ruohola.
‘We put a great deal of effort into the trainee experience and in the continual development of the applicant experience, and it is wonderful to see this work bear fruit. The students in our trainee programmes not only get to develop their skills, but also meet new people and build their professional networks. In addition to the Universum survey, we collect feedback from students for each trainee period, and trainees also take part in our annual personnel survey. According to our feedback, our trainees are happy to recommend us as an employer’, Ruohola said.
Generation Entering the Workforce Appreciates both Hard and Soft Values
In addition to ranking the most popular employers, the Universum survey also charted student attitudes to working life. Among most groups of students, pay, esteem and development opportunities—in addition to diverse work duties—were important features of an ideal employer. However, students also value respect and a friendly work environment. According to the survey, the values of the generation that is now entering the workforce is a hybrid: alongside traditional working life values, employers are expected to take of people and the workplace culture.
The results of the survey were published on 14 May. A total of 14,109 students and 512 law students participated in the survey this year. In addition to law students, Universum surveys students in the engineering, health/medicine, business and IT sectors.
We’d like to thank the students for this recognition!