Assessment of Creativity on the Job Market

Our study was inspired by the fact that both authors work as university professors. The aim of our research was to map the creativity related expectations that recently graduated students face. To achieve this, we generated three sample groups. For the first group, we obtained an EU creativity research database on Hungarian high school teachers, 337 persons. In our second sample we asked university students, 292 persons, their opinion about the creativity-related statements taken over from the EU research. In the third sample group we surveyed the opinion of 112 HR experts via personal enquiry and online about the importance and measurability of creativity, the statements of the EU project and the definition of creativity. Thus in our analysis three different groups – high school teachers, university students and HR experts interested in fresh graduates – evaluated the 13 creativity-related statements drawn up by EU researchers. In our study we analysed the HR experts’ responses in most detail. First we present the results along three research questions. We examine how important HR experts representing companies deemed creativity when hiring fresh graduates, in which field they regarded creativity important, and what tools they used most often to measure it. In the second part of our analysis we compare the responses of the university students, the high school teachers participating in the survey, and last but not least those of the HR experts regarding the 13 creativity-related statements of the EU research.