HOW MUCH WILL I EARN? EXPECTATIONS VERSUS REALITY

When choosing a career, the issue of the following employment on the labour market and related level of the salary plays an important role. There are many studies which deal with the findings with respect to students’ expectations. The benefit of our work is that we compare these expectations to the real offer by potential employers. In the framework of our research, we have chosen two different fields of studies, on the one hand the students of economics, who find their employment in the entrepreneurial sphere, the second group was composed of students from social work, who target their careers at the area of social services and their employers will be predominantly nonprofit organisations. We took a look as to whether there are differences between the expectations and the reality concerning both the starting salary and its increase during the first three years of employment and thereby grouped into two sections (profit and non-profit). Our conclusions reveal that the level of the salary depends on the field studied. The levels of the salary offered in the profit and non-profit sectors significantly differ. A significant difference is also obvious in the possible salary advancements in the course of the first three years of employment. The students of economics are more likely to estimate the level of their starting salary, but they count on faster advancements. On the other hand, potential employers of economics graduates do not offer such an increase. In the area of social work, i.e. in the non-profit sector, the difference between the students’ expectations and the offers by their potential employers is even greater. The students from social work see their odds for higher salaries and their advancements more optimistically, than their potential employers are prepared to offer.