Soft-drink maker is the most attractive employer for Irish undergraduates, according to a Europe-wide survey, writes Robin O'Brien Lynch

The tests are over, the forms are filled out and the results are in. The summer is here and Irish third-level students can relax after all the hard slog. Following months of preparation and meticulous revision, a definitive answer has been reached: Coke is it.

Coca-Cola is the most attractive employer for final-year business undergraduates in Ireland, according to the European Student Barometer (ESB), which has just been published and for the first time includes Irish students.

When they start working for the world's most famous brand, they expect to earn €30,000 a year, work 42.5 hours a week and will have consulted their family before making any decisions. If they don't get a job at Coke, that's not a problem because they are optimistic about the economy and don't anticipate extreme difficulty in getting a job after college, regardless of gender.

Now in its fourth year, the ESB is a wide-ranging survey of students about to enter the workforce and offers employers a comprehensive database for recruitment across the continent. This kind of information is invaluable for big multinationals looking to pick the best graduates, and the survey is good news if you make consumer goods.

Cosmetics manufacturers L'Oreal tops the European wish list for European business graduates, followed by Adidas, BMW Group, Ikea and the Irish number one, Coca-Cola.

The study, which is carried out by German marketing research firm Trendence, is divided into two sections: business, which covers students of economics and business management; and engineering, which focuses on engineering, physics and computer science students.

Financial services firms only made two out of the top 10 for business students and four out of the top 20, but ESB project manager Dr Glen Murrell doesn't feel that this is unusual.

"I do not consider this an especially low representation," he says. "One must consider that this survey is based on holistic principles and as such the rankings you have seen reflect the opinions of students from throughout Europe, each of whom has his/her own set of biases and perceptions."

He continues: "One might expect that business students would naturally be highly attracted to some typically high-profile financial services companies and indeed in some countries [ such as the UK] they are.

"But the survey also contains the responses from countries where this is simply not the case. In Germany, for example, the rankings are typically dominated by automobile manufacturers, in Finland Nokia heads the rankings while in Norway Statoil is tops.

"Ultimately, when we take a pan-European viewpoint we average out these biases. The net effect is that companies with strong brands or associated with strong brands [ including but not limited to consumer goods companies] score consistently high in most countries and as such have the highest pan-European rankings."

Perhaps one of the more surprising findings is that Irish students are not more bullish in their expectations. The majority of current final-year undergraduates have grown up in a healthy economic environment, with major multinational employers knocking on their door and bright prospects ahead - but this has not prevented them from taking a realistic view of working conditions.

Irish students' expectations of salary and working hours are very close to the average.

Once gainfully employed, they count on clocking in for 42.5 hours, similar to the French, Italians and our neighbours in the UK. The Germans top the chart here, with almost 47 hours a week, but the lowest is still very close to the average (Spain, with 41).

However, apart from France's dalliance with the 25-hour week, brought to an end in 2005, the European working week tends to operate on the same model. After all, there are only so many hours in a day and the punishing work culture employed in the US and the Far East has yet to gain a foothold here.

There was a much greater disparity between the nations when it came to salary expectations. After they have finished their 42.5 hours, Irish students expect to be drawing from a starting salary of €30,000 a year, while respondents in the Nordic countries (Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland) were looking forward to a starting salary of €36,600 and their counterparts in the Mediterranean area reckoned on something between €22,000 and €24,000.

Given that they were prepared to put in the most hours, it is no surprise that the Germans came in highest again, banking on €37,500 for their first year in the job.

The overall average was €31,400 in the business section and €30,500 in engineering. The business figures have levelled off for the past three years, while engineering slows a slow decline, but there was a significant drop after 2003, when the global economy suffered a slight downturn, partly due to the invasion of Iraq. The corresponding figures for that year were €34,000 and €33,100.

Although Irish respondents are not expecting the biggest pay cheques, they are among the most optimistic in Europe. Irish students felt that the quality of education was better here than in other countries, that their retirement pension was extremely secure, that the current economic situation was very good, that they took their career very seriously, that university education had left them well prepared for the working world and that it would not be difficult to find employment after graduation.

In the first four of those categories, there was a significant difference between the Irish response and the European average.

There was an interesting difference of opinion when it came to cultural views as well. Continental Europeans have long supported the ideas of work-life balance. There is a popular opinion that work isn't worth sacrificing your family and friends for. However, in recent years Irish workers have shown a tendency to veer towards the US culture, where a successful career and a complete home life are not always viewed as compatible. This could be because of the effect of American investment in this country or the belief that that we are culturally closer to Boston than Berlin.

It seems, though, that we are still divided on the topic in this country. In response to the statement: "Nowadays, in order to have a successful career, one must make concessions as regards private life", Irish business students neither agreed nor disagreed whereas Irish engineering students mostly agreed.

Respondents in this country were much more positive about career opportunities for women than their European counterparts.

On the topic of the EU, most respondents were against Turkey joining the EU, although the Irish were less so than the European average. And Irish students from both sections felt much more strongly that the existence of the EU improved their chance in the job market.

The contrasts here are to be expected, given our peripheral location, our political isolation until relatively recently, our reliance on American investment and our dependence on technology and light manufacturing as opposed to the heavy industry found on the Continent.

One of the more telling responses was that regarding national identity. Irish students agreed much more readily that they consider themselves specifically Irish rather than European.

The countries surveyed were all from "Old Europe", relatively stable economies with well-established industrial and technological infrastructure: Germany, France, the UK, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland. Trendence eventually plans to broaden the catchment area of the ESB eastward.

There may be a slight skew in the Irish figures in that there were no respondents from the country's biggest university, UCD, but Trinity College Dublin, NUI Galway, DCU and University of Limerick took part, as well as the institutes of technology at Dundalk, Tralee, Waterford, Dublin, Sligo and Galway Mayo.

Given the large scale of the project, there are severe logistical constraints and it was not possible to include UCD in time, but it is expected to be involved next time round.