Samenvatting

The portal of the Foundation for Regional Branding Twente—twente.com, aims to help attract talented employees via its online platform. However, some factors make it difficult to attract international talented employees to the Twente Region. Therefore, this research project aims to figure out which factors would attract international students to work in the Twente Region. The central question is formulated as: Which factors influence international talents of the Twente Region to make a career choice when they search for a vacancy online?
Semi-structured interviews are used to address the central question. Next, the data collected is analyzed through a qualitative analysis procedure. The main findings are as below:
l  Enschede/the Twente Region is not the first preferred option for international talents to work after their graduation
l  For international talents, objective job and organizational attributes such as compensation and location are the most important type of factors in making a career choice; the other two types of factors, subjective considerations like corporate image and critical recruitment contact like recruiting process, are ranked second and third respectively
l  Visiting recruitment websites is the most popular way for international talents to look for a job vacancy
l  For international talents, compensation and development & learning opportunities are the first two factors to be considered in making a career choice
l  The content of recruitment websites like objective job and organizational attributes is more important than any other aspects like the web page design
Based on the findings of this research, twente.com should carry out a series of operational actions to enhance workforce diversity within its project team and to facilitate communication between Twente-based organizations and international talents.