Since 1997, a study of McKinsey & Co. has coined a phrase “war for talent” to conclude and predict an increasingly competitive trend for employers to attract and retain talents in labor market who have the competencies and commitment needed for their positions in the next twenty years (Michaels, et al., 2001; Ulrich, 2006). This idea entered into public to summarize the global talent crisis in this era which has been characterized globally by the gradually increasing demand of talents (Cohen, 2001; Faulconbridge, et al., 2009).
In China, the war for talent is as fierce as ever and is one of the biggest challenges to competitiveness of employers in the country (Raynaud & Watkins, 2011). A study published by Hays indicates that the demand for talented employees will continue for years and the competition for talents in all sectors of the economy in China will become increasingly fierce (Hays, 2017).
The high demand of talented employees is only one aspect of the war for talent. On the other hand, the shortage in talents are keeping broadening and deepening in a host of reasons. Firstly, the demographic change in the population like the large size of the “Baby Boomer” generation is driving an unprecedented shift in the age distribution of the labor pool supply since there will not be enough younger workers to replace the Boomers as they reach retirement age. The increasing longevity and declining birthrates inevitably leads to an aging society which means slow workforce growth, less supply in talents and thus more competition (Dychtwald, et al., 2006; Beechler & Woodward, 2009).
On top of that, due to the redefined industry and the emerging new technology, the educational systems, which governs not the amount of workforce but what they can do, are trying to keep up with the development of technology but there remains to be a stagnating qualification level. (Duerksen, 2012; Van Hoye & Lievens, 2009) The huge demand of skilled employees for quick production cycles in some Hi-tech sectors cannot be reached (Brown & Stuart, 2009). What’s more, the globalization increases talent mobility, transforming the “war for talent” between employers to that between nations (Beechler & Woodward, 2009).
Following these arguments, experts regarded today’s talent as oil, which means that its demand far outstrips supply (Heidrick and Struggles, 2007). Finding talent has become the main challenge for the employers in contemporary labor markets because “the world’s most valuable commodity is getting harder to find” (The Economist, 2006). In response to this, what has become evident is that there is a continuing need to attract workers from a variety of different sources to fill the increasing number of vacancies. HR practitioners need to search for talents rather critically and compare them carefully before giving an offer (Van Hoye & Lievens, 2009).
In order to achieve the leading position in the talent war, more and more employers focus on graduate students who have just left the campus. College graduates have a systematic accumulation of professional knowledge. They are dynamic and innovative, thereby bringing new ideas to the organization, which is highly valued by employers. What’s more, the average salary of college graduates is generally lower than that of social candidates, which can save a lot in budget for employers. In recent years, an increasing number of companies have started campus recruitment to seek appropriate candidates among graduates.
Many big-name companies have already established its own recruitment program for graduate students for years. These programs can help employers find talents that match their job descriptions through multiple rounds of interviews and assessments in a short period of time and quickly get them offered. However, relevant academic research shows that the campus recruitment programs of many companies in China have not achieved good results.
Some companies have spent huge budgets on campus recruitment arrangements, but they have not recruited the right talents; some companies have offered the right talents, but the new staff feel hard to adapt to the work environment after entering the job, which leads to high turnover; some students turn down job offers during the employment phase, making it difficult for companies to find replacements quickly (Dong, 2015). These phenomena have increased the recruitment cost and seriously affected the employer’s efficiency in war for talent.
In addition, internship is another way for employers to acquire talents, as it provides companies with a means of screening and recruiting potential hires (Gabris & Mitchell, 1989; Gault, et al., 2000; Hurst, 2008; Coco, 2000). After assessment, students are permitted to enter the company for a short-term internship. During the internship, students are able to know about his/her roles in many aspects and enhance employability (Knouse & Fontenot, 2008), and the employer has sufficient time to determine whether the intern possesses the qualities vital to adapt to the company’s culture (Hurst, et al., 2012).
Compared with campus recruitment, the period for both employers and students to know about each other is longer, which potentially leads to more careful consideration in the process of offering. On the students’ side, the internship programs help students enter the workforce, complete a placement experience, understand the context of business and decide what field of activity is most suitable for their career life. On the employers’ side, it’s beneficial that they can observe lower turnover rates, when they give their interns offers for full-time positions (D’Abate, et al., 2009; Leslie, 1991; Zopiatis, 2007).
What’s more, a significant amount of money can be saved in both hiring and training costs (Nielsen and Porter, 1983; Pianko, 1996); interns are a partially trained workforce that can contribute to the organization immediately (Dixon et al., 2005); and interns typically experience higher levels of job satisfaction than non-interns (Gault et al., 2000) Ko (2008). For the above reasons, many organizations have high expectations of hiring from their intern pool(Sessions, 2006) (Gault et al., 2000).
However, sometimes internship programs are not well organized and will negatively influence the students’ final perception of internship experience. A bad internship experience that fails in meeting students’ expectations can just as quickly turn a young person away from the industry. Fox (2001) Waryszak (1999) Unfortunately, internship programs are often considered as unstructured and poorly organized so that students generally complain about the quality (Jenkins, 2001).
In this case, it is necessary to assess the internship satisfaction and its relationship with intern’s retention willingness because interns’ perception about the internship program can offer employers particular suggestions for improving their internship experiences (Rothman, 2003), based on which the employers can provide interns with satisfying experiences and raise their willingness to accept the offer upon graduation.
There are many theoretical frameworks focusing on the job satisfaction in the literature. However, when considering internship satisfaction, there are few methods to follow. Most studies and questionnaires on job satisfaction are developed with full time employees as the testing object. When analyzing the job satisfaction of interns, we need to at first admit the differences of interns and full-time employees.
Regarding their job roles, interns have less organizational commitment with employing company than formal employees and the company cannot guarantee any benefits such as insurances and fully-paid sick leave because of intern’s short-term working periods. What’s more, in most cases, employers often pay less attention on the training and career development of short-term interns which always leads to a great deal of expenses. On top of that, research indicates that temporary workers like interns are often inclined to be assigned tasks with low work autonomy and limited space to give full play to their capabilities (De Cuyper, et al., 2008).
Despite these differences between interns and full-time employees, there exist researches which suggest that theories of job satisfaction are transferable from permanent workers to temporary workers and job satisfaction levels do not differ between them (Torka & Schyns, 2007; Guest, et al., 2006) Rothman (2003), who surveyed undergraduate students about their favorite and most annoying part of the internship in open questions, found robust results in the data involving internship satisfaction and suggested that what interns find satisfying in an internship position shows consistency with what employees find satisfying in a paid position.
She also recommended that Job Characteristics Model of Hackman and Oldham (1980) was a useful framework for guiding organizations in the development and management of their internship program. These findings indicates that the research results about job satisfaction for full-time employees can continue to apply to interns despite differences in their roles.
Although many companies have already established their internship projects and admitted the value of internships, there is a paucity of empirical research that deals with the topic of internship (Gault, et al., 2000). Tackett (2001) pointed out that many of the relevant extant analyses are grounded on observation, anecdotal evidence or suggestions to enhance the overall quality of internships. One study conducted by Taylor (1988) examined the impact of internships on students in terms of their options for employment and their experiences with the transition to full-time work. Job satisfaction was considered as one factor, but she concentrated on the job satisfaction with the new full-time position, not the internship satisfaction.
There were several studies in the literature that considered internship satisfaction as a dependent variable, and looked at the relationship between job characteristics and satisfaction. However, they focused solely on internships in specific industry like retailing industry (Hurst, et al., 2012) (1990, Feldman and Weitz), hospitality and tourism industry (Stansbie & Nash, 2016), which represents an incomplete segment of the wide-range of internships in other industries. With the findings from Rothman (2003), D’Abate (2009) built his research in the use of JCM-model to test empirically job characteristics factors’, work environment factors’ and contextual factors’ impact on interns’ job satisfaction and found meaningful results and instructions. Compared with western studies, there is a serious lack of research on job satisfaction of Chinese interns.
In China, the related researches mainly focus on the internship satisfaction in the hospitality and tourism industry, which mainly train students for service work, and the current literature leaves ambiguity about internship in enterprise. In addition to that, among the existing studies in topic of internship in China, most of them studied the influencing factors of internship satisfaction and less research focused on its impact on other variables. The extant literature does not explicitly assess the motivating factors that enhance the likelihood of intern’s retention willingness.
In this case, the study relies on existing theory and research from the literature to help to identify the variables and attempts to extend prior research on internship by adopting model.
In response to this general lack in analysis about internship, this study analyzes the influencing factors of interns’ job satisfaction and its relationship with retention willingness in enterprise based on past researches at home and abroad, so as to address the shortcomings of the researches that has been done so far in China. In addition, this study uses internship motives as the moderating variable and work engagement as the mediating variable to explore whether they have impact on the relationship between the internship satisfaction and retention willingness to further enrich the research results.
The paper is organized in 6 sections. Section 2 describes the statement of the problem while some related works are presented in Section 3. Research methodology of the study is presented in Section 4. Section 5 illustrates and discusses results and findings of the study while Section 6 introduces the conclusions of the study.
