Job Selection Priorities of Accounting and Finance Graduates: An Empirical Evidence from Pakistan

This study aims to evaluate the impact of six independent variables namely; professional growth, financial earnings, organizational repute, job environment, job security, and interest in the subject on one dependent variable i.e. job selection priorities of accounting and finance graduates in the perspective of Pakistan. The data of the study comprises 900 responses from final year graduates of 15 universities of Pakistan. The study used a structured questionnaire technique consisting of three parts (Part I= Demographic Characteristics, Part II and Part III= Assessment information of independent and dependent variables respectively) with 28 close-ended questions. Each item of the questionnaire was assessed using a 5-point Likert scale. The study employed demographic analysis, scale analysis, and inferential analysis. The empirical findings evidenced a positive correlation of all independent variables with dependent variables whereas no correlation was found among independent variables, and only three independent variables have a significant impact on the dependent variable of the study.


Introduction
In the past, choosing a career was not a difficult task as mostly the career line was determined on the basis of the family background. A child usually adopts the profession or job of his parents. But now time has changed. Today people have more options to get education in their interested subject and choose a career accordingly. A clear research is required to provide assistance to the graduating students in right selection of a career. A rightly selected career also influences the future growth and professional life of an individual. The career selection of the graduating students must be on the basis of proper guidance, their subject of interest, their future growth perspective, their personality type, strong and appropriate information, prevailing market trends, job scope of various sectors of the economy and many other extrinsic and intrinsic factors. Universities also play their vital role by guiding the graduating students in right selection of a career through their career counselling departments. They also conduct seminars and conferences on regular basis to gather students and professionals under one roof. The job satisfaction of young professionals relies on the right selection of a career. Job satisfaction is how well a job provides those things that are important in an employee's perception (Tella et al., 2007).
In this era of post-industrialization and globalization, accountancy profession has great significance especially for a developing country like Pakistan. To walk with fast growing professional environment and to meet the need of rapid economic growth, Pakistan needs more accountants. One of the major dilemma in this regards is that although, educational institutes produce thousands of accounting and finance graduates every year but not all become or choose to become accountants (Yusoff et al., 2011). Therefore, according to Demagalhaes et al. (2011) the major challenge faced by accountancy profession, is how to attract competent accounting and finance applicants. There is a shortage of accountants in Pakistan. Although, statistics of universities show no shortage of students joining accounting and finance programs. Shortage of accountants is not a big issue. Nasir et al. (2009), evidenced that some developed countries as UK, Australia and U.S.A also suffer from this. It is important to know why this situation happens. Different countries have different situations due to which they face shortage of accountants. As according to Levy (2004) due to fall in ratio of students enrollment in the accounting programs, there is a shortage of accountants in U.S.A.
Accounting firms have tough competition to attract competent accounting graduates (Bundy and Norris, 1992) but they lack the understanding of various extrinsic and intrinsic factors an accounting or finance graduate considers important in selecting his first job. Job selection priorities are greatly affected by many extrinsic factors as professional growth, financial earnings, job environment and security etc. and many intrinsic factors as organizational culture and repute, professional life goals, interest in subject etc (Ahmed et al., 1996;Gul et al., 1989;Jackling and Calero, 2006). However, these factors work differently in every country (Ozbilgin et al., 2005).
Various studies evidenced various factors that influence job selection priorities of a graduate in the selection of his first job. Bundy and Norris (1992) found that job security is most important factor in job selection process. Collins and Stevens (2001) found the impact of organizational fame on job selection preferences. The findings of Montgomery and Ramus (2003) indicated that salary and other financial benefits had effected more than 90% of MBA students from three North American and two European business schools in their first job selection. In Pakistan, Ahmed et al. (2017) found that interest in subject is the most important factor affecting job selection preferences of all business students in Karachi, a city of Pakistan, by collecting data from 120 respondents. Besides, Ahmed et al. (2017), all the above mentioned literature was not conducted in the context of Pakistan. Some of the past studies have either focused on a single dimension or kept their set of variables limited. Apart from Collins and Stevens (2001) and Montgomery and Ramus (2003), none of the past studies focused on the perception of accounting and finance students. Moreover, the respondents those studies chose, were either the MBA students or the job seekers.

Scope and Significance of the Study
The present study will help the career advisors, faculty members of finance and business recruiters to comprehend the reasons due to which students of accounting and finance prefer job of one company over other. This understanding will help them better guiding an accounting or finance graduate in the selection of his first job. Moreover, organization recruiters can use the same information to polish their job offers to attract more competent applicants in accountancy profession. The study will also help professional bodies of accounting and finance of Pakistan in formulating their policies and strategies to attract more and more accounting and finance graduates to join them.

Theoretical Framework
From the theoretical perspective, the research model of this study is an extended model of that of Liu (2010) by including more variables. Moreover, the dependent variable of Liu (2010) study was in negative form (i.e. intentions to refuse job offers) but the dependent variable of the present research is opposite (i.e. job selection priorities). Expectancy theory is related with this research prior developed by Vroom (1964) and then extended and improved by Porter and Lawler (1968) and Pinder (1998). Expectancy theory is a motivational cognitive process and is based on the notion that if people believe that their efforts and struggle for good work will lead to good performance and rewards, they will be motivated. This theory further explains the affect of various intrinsic and extrinsic factors on the career selection priorities of a person. The motive of this study is to evaluate the impact of factors influencing the finance and accounting students in searching for their first job, therefore, expectancy theory also applies here.

Review of the Literature
This section deals with the review and explanation of prior literature work that discussed the factors impacting job selection priorities of graduate students.

Job Selection Priorities
According to Iacovou et al. (2004) job selection priorities can be defined as students priorities to accept a firm's job offer over another. Job preferences of people to accept or reject any job are affected by psychological factors as a person's personality, perception, beliefs, congnitive and ideas; as well as by social factors as their social relations, environment, family background and their parents (Ozen, 2011). Dossajee et al. (2016) through a descriptive crosssectional study in Kenya found that intrinsic and extrinsic factors affect the job decision making of a medical student. Its vital for an organization to comprehend how to attract competent job applicants and how to make their job offers more acceptable (Michaels et al., 2001) as this will reduce high employee turnover (Novick et al., 2005) and increase their work performance (Evers et al., 2005). In this way, organizations can diminish their recruiting costs.

Professional Growth
Professional growth is an ongoing process. This concept is related with how the firms provide their workers the opportunities of future promotion and progress (Moy and Lee, 2002). Lim and Soon (2006) by employing general specifications and Wald tests on 307 respondents data indicated that long-term job prospect affect the job selection priorities in Malaysia. Opportunity for future professional growth is the most important factor affecting the job selection process proved by Demagalhaes et al. (2011) using Chi-square test in university of North Dakota. Iacovou et al. (2004) applied Mancova test on 241 MBA students and found that professional growth opportunities impact the job selection preferences. Moy and Lee (2002) explained financial earnings as the remuneration to an employee on hourly, daily or weekly basis. Ghani et al. (2008) using t-test on the data of 802 respondents found a relationship between financial earnings and students job preferences in Malaysia. Financial earnings impel a person to shift from one job to another (Mahony et al., 2006). By using multiple regression analysis on data of 427 faculty members in North America, their study revealed a strong relationship between financial earnings and job selection priorities. Aycan and Fikret-Pasa (2003) found remuneration as most important factor to effect job priorities using simple t-test on data of 1213 students of management studies in Turkey.

Organizational Repute
Organization repute is the image of a firm held by either the members of the firm or external people as stakeholders (Clardy, 2005). Liu (2010), revealed that good reputation of a firm increases the chance to accept the job offer by a competent applicant by utilizing simple t-test on data of undergraduates of University of Missouri. Chan and Ho (2000), found that in Hong Kong business graduates with higher cgpa were more concerned about the organizational repute by using factor analysis technique on 167 respondents.

Job Environment
The surroundings of the workplace and conditions related to the job surroundings as free uniform, flexible working hours and paid holidays are known as job environment (Moy and Lee, 2002). Bathula and Karia (2011) found that a good workplace environment impacts the selection of job by employing simple t-test on the data of 92 international students. Ramasamy et al. (2008), using conjoint analysis revealed that friendly working environment influenced the job selection priorities of Chinese students. Aycan and Fikret-Pasa (2003), found same relationship in Turkey using t-test on data of 1213 management studies students. Probst (1998) defined the job security as continuance and stability of a job. Job security is the general perception of the workers whether they will keep their jobs or not (Moore, 2011). Ahmed et al. (2010), took a sample of 300 students from different universities of Islamabad and employed mean and standard deviations descriptive statistics. Their study found job security as an important factor affecting job selection preferences of students towards small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and Multinational Corporations (MNCs). Tang (2009), evaluated the impact of job security in China by taking sample of 165 Chinese students and employed simple regression technique. The findings suggested the existence of a relationship between job security and job selection priorities.

Interest in Subject
Students interest in a specific subject leads to change the job selection priorities of students. They usually select a job that is related with their subject of interest (Alexander et al., 2011;Edwards and Quinter, 2012;Shertzer and Stone, 1976;Zhang, 2007). Christine (2005) used partial correlations to prove the impact of interest in subject on job selection preferences in South Africa by taking data of 770 students.

Hypotheses
In this section, the study has hypothesized six independent variables will be significantly related with one dependent variable of the study.
H 1 : Professional growth is significantly related with job selection priorities. H 2 : Financial earnings are significantly related with job selection priorities. H 3 : Job environment is significantly related with job selection priorities. H 4 : Organizational repute is significantly related with job selection priorities. H 5 : Job security is significantly related with job selection priorities. H 6 : Interest in subject is significantly related with job selection priorities.

Data and Methodology
This section briefly discusses the data collection, population procedure, sampling procedure and research design of the study.

Data Collection
The study collected the primary data in February and March 2021 from the third and fourth year final students of accounting and finance from 15 different institutes of Pakistan; namely: Punjab University Lahore, Government College University Lahore, University of Engineering and Technology Lahore, Lahore University of Management Sciences, COMSATS Lahore, Quaid-i-Azam University Islamabad, Pakistan Institute of Development Economics Islamabad, National University of Modern Languages Islamabad, Air University Islamabad, Bahria University Islamabad, Institute of Business Management Karachi, Karachi Institute of Economics and Technology, Iqra University Karachi, Aga Khan University Karachi and Hamdard University Karachi. The final year students were selected as targeted respondents because of their higher interest to choose a job after the completion of their graduation (Borchert, 2002). 900 questionnaires consisted of Part I: demographic information and Part II & III: 28 close-ended questions (each question has four items) to assess the response regarding independent and dependent variables respectively; were distributed to and collected from students both physically and electronically.

Population and Sampling Procedures
Final year students of accounting and finance in Pakistani universities were selected as the population of the study. According to Higher Education Commission of Pakistan, the average of passing out business students is approximately 30393 students per year. Due to huge population size, the sample size of this study consisted of 900 students from 15 different universities of Pakistan.

Research Design and Methodology
This study is a quantitative and cross-sectional research aims to investigate the impact of professional growth, financial earnings, organizational repute, job environment, job security and interest in subject (independent variables) on job selection priorities (dependent variable) of accounting and finance students in Pakistan. Structured questionnaires was used consisting of three parts. Each item of the questionnaire was assessed using 5-point Likert scale; where 1 was strongly disagree; 2 was disagree; 3 was neutral; 4 was agree and 5 was strongly agree. The sample of questionnaire is given in Appendix A.
For data analysis, descriptive technique, scale measurement and inferential analysis were used. Multiple linear regression model was employed to test the significance of the hypotheses. The regression equation of the study is as follows: JP = â 0 + ç 1 PG + ç 2 FE + ç 3 OR + ç 4 JE + ç 5 JS + ç 6 IS + û 0 -(1) Where JP (Job selection priorities) refers dependent variable; PG (Professional growth), FE (Financial earnings), OR (Organizational repute), JE (Job environment), JS (Job security) and IS (Interest in subject) represent independent variables. While ç 1 , ç 2 ,…,ç 6 are coefficients of independent variables and û 0 is the error term.
Before employing regression analysis, this study first evaluated normality, reliability and multicollinearity of all variables. Normality was checked using multivariate and univariate normality of kurtosis and skewness. To test reliability of the questionnaire, Cronbach's Alpha was used. Multicollinearity was checked among independent variables through correlation matrix.

Empirical Estimations
This section deals with empirical results and their discussion. This section is divided and explained into three parts as descriptive analysis, scale measurement and inferential analysis.

Descriptive Analysis
This part elaborates results of demographic characteristics of the respondents and central tendency measurement of all variables.

Demographic Characteristics of Respondents
Demographic characteristics of the respondents include age, universities, course program and year of the study. Table 1, 2, 3 and 4 shows the results of demographic characteristics. These results represents that among 900 respondents 350 (39%) respondents are in range of 20 to 22 years of age and 550 (61%) are in between of 23 to 25 years old.   The results show that amongst 900 respondents, 390 (43%) are third year final students and 510 (57%) are fourth year final students of accounting and finance program.  Table 5 shows the results of mean and standard deviation for dependent and independent variables and explains the tendencies of the responses of 900 participants towards each item of the questionnaire.

Measurement of Central Tendencies
According to the results, highest mean for PG is 3.3246 and lowest mean is 2.8123. This range shows that responses have a tendency from -disagree‖ to -agree‖ with lowest S.D 0.0761 and highest S.D 0.3421. Highest mean for FE is 4.2712 with highest S.D 0.7219 whereas lowest mean is 3.6147 with lowest S.D 0.4210. The range of mean 3.6147 to 4.2712 depicts positive responses of participants for all items of FE. Highest and lowest means for OR are 3.5214 and 2.7316 whereas highest and lowest S.D are 1.0672 and 0.5130 respectively. The range of mean 2.7316 to 3.5214 shows that participants are in range of -disagree‖ to -agree‖ for all items of OR. Highest mean with highest S.D for JE are 3.7014 and 1.0801 whereas lowest mean with lowest S.D are 3.0978 and 0.5318 respectively. The range of mean 3.0978 to 3.7014 indicates neutral responses. Lowest and highest means of JS are 3.8140 and 4.2469 whereas lowest and highest S.D are 0.3719 and 0.6892 respectively. The range of mean 3.8140 to 4.2469 shows positive responses. Highest mean with highest S.D for IS are 4.5333 and 0.7271 whereas lowest mean with lowest S.D are 4.2173 and 0.4568 respectively. The mean range 4.2173 to 4.5333 indicates that respondents are agreed with all the items of IS. Lowest and highest means for JP are 3.1271 and 3.7249 whereas highest and lowest S.D are 0.7232 and 0.3214 respectively. The mean range depicts that responses are from -neutral‖ to -agree‖ for all the items of JP.

Scale Measurement
Under scale measurement, normality and reliability tests were executed to check the distribution of sample data and reliability of the questionnaire.

Normality Test
Multivariate normality test was evaluated using kurtosis and skewness. According to Hair et al. (2010) to evaluate multivariate normality, univariate normality is a compulsory condition. Kline (1998), described the acceptable kurtosis range of ±10 with skewness range of ±3. If values fall in this range then data of the study will be normally distributed. Table 6 shows the results. These estimations show the critical values range of kurtosis for all the variables is from -1.7283 (JS 3) to 1.6428 (PG 2) whereas critical values of skewness range from -1.4061 (PG 2) to 0.7923 (OR 4). The results of both kurtosis and skewness depict that data of the study is normally distributed.

Reliability Test
To test the reliability of the questionnaire, Cronbach's coefficient alpha test was employed. The questionnaire is not reliable if Cronbach's coefficient alpha is below 0.70 (Nunnually and Bernstein, 1994). Table 7 shows the results.

Inferential Analysis
Under this section correlation among independent variables as well as among dependent and independent variables is checked. Moreover, a multiple regression analysis is executed to evaluate the significant relationship among dependent and independent variables.

Pearson Correlation Matrix
The study employed Pearson Product Moment Correlation Analysis to find the correlation among independent variables as well as among dependent and independent variables. Belsley et al. (1980) and Barkan (2007) declared that when critical values of Pearson correlation coefficients among independent variables are 0.90 or more then there exists multicollinearity problem. Table 8 shows the results. The results show that coefficient of correlation are less than 0.90 so, there exists no multicollinearity problem among independent variables. The results further show that professional growth (PG) and interest in subject (IS) are highly correlated; financial earnings (FE) and organizational repute (OR) are moderately correlated; job environment (JE) and job security (JS) are weakly correlated with job selection priorities (JP). Table 9 indicates the results of multiple regression analysis. The results show that p-values of three independent variables (PG, OR and IS) are less than 0.0001 or below the significance level of 0.05. So, they are significantly related with dependent variable of the study (job selection priorities-JP). R-square of model is 0.7129 which shows that 71.29% change in JP is due to independent variables of the study. The remaining 28.71% change in JP is due to error term (other factors).

Conclusion and Implications
This study aimed to evaluate the impact of six independent variables (professional growth, financial earnings, organizational repute, job environment, job security and interest in subject) on one dependent variable (job selection priorities) of the study. The data of the study consisted of 900 responses from students of 15 different universities of Pakistan. The study used structured questionnaire consisting of three parts (Part I = demographic characteristics, Part II & III = assessment information of independent and dependent variables respectively) and 28 close-ended questions (each question has four items). Each item of the questionnaire was assessed using 5-point Likert scale. The study employed demographic analysis consisting of demographic characteristics of respondents (age, universities, course program and year of the study) and central tendencies measurement of all variables towards the responses of the questionnaire. The study further employed scale analysis comprising of normality and reliability tests to evaluate data distribution of the study and reliability of the questionnaire respectively. Inferential analysis was used to find correlation problem and regression relationship among independent and dependent variables.
The normality test results showed that data of the study is normally distributed whereas central tendencies measurement showed agreed, positive, disagree to agree and neutral to agree responses of the participants towards the items of the questionnaire. Reliability test results showed that the questionnaire is reliable as value of Cronbach's coefficient alpha exceeds 0.70. Pearson correlation test showed that there exists no correlation among independent variables whereas all independent variables have positive correlation with dependent variable. Multiple regression analysis showed that only three independent variables (professional growth, organizational reputation and interest in subject) are significantly related with dependent variable of the study (job selection priorities). These results are consistent with Lim and Soon (2006), Iacovou et al. (2004), Demagalhaes et al. (2011), Liu (2010, Chan and Ho (2000), Shertzer and Stone (1976), Zhang (2007), Edwards and Quinter (2012), Alexander et al. (2011) andChristine (2005).

Policy Implications
The findings of this research will help the student counsellors and accounting and finance faculty members of the Pakistani universities in better guiding their students in the selection of their first job. Moreover, organizational recruiters can polish their job offers in order to attract more competent job applicants. This study will also facilitates the professional bodies of accountancy in Pakistan to formulate effective strategies and policies in order to invite competent accounting and finance graduates to join them.

Recommendations
Future researchers may use many other variables as parental influence, nature of work and location of the firm in the similar study to find their influential relationship with job selection priorities.

2: Financial Earnings (FE)
Definition: Financial earnings are the payment to an employee for his or her services. It may include healthcare, retirement plan, sick pay, vacation, insurance, etc that are provided to an employee in addition to salary (Moy and Lee, 2002).

3: Organizational Repute (OR)
Definition: Organizational repute is a perceptual representation accompanying past actions and future prospects that describes the firm's overall appeal to various stakeholders and constituency groups (Fombrun, 1996).

Items Questions Strongly Disagree
Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree OR 1 It would prefer to select an organization with good repute.

4: Job Environment (JE)
Definition: Job environment is the conditions relating to the job environment of the workers, including working hours, paid holidays, safety, rest periods, free uniforms, etc (Moy and Lee, 2002). Definition: job security is the employees' perception of whether or not they will keep their job (Moore, 2011).