Answer: Intrinsic attributes (noted by over 55% of participants)

I like the question because student answers should vary greatly as they talk about pay, prestige, the type of work involved or who their workmates will be. it gives you an opportunity to categorize these various attributes of a job into intrinsic (focused on tasks involved with the job itself) and extrinsic (external attributes of the job, such as the workplace or pay associated with the job) factors. Here's some good definitions from Monster to make these differences even clearer: 

• Intrinsic: "These are the intangible rewards, those related to motivation and satisfaction at work on a daily basis. They provide the inner satisfaction and motivation that make people say, "I love getting up and going to work!"
• Extrinsic: These are the tangible rewards or conditions you find at work, including the physical setting, job titles, benefits and earnings/earning potential. 

Graph below comes from the book I-Gen, which I highly recommend, and is based on data from the Monitoring Your Future survey given to high school seniors. Apologies for the challenging graph. Reading the lines going from top to bottom are Intrinsic, Extrinsic, Social and Leisure. It is fascinating to see how these trends change over time and yet stay within a pretty narrow band (+ or - 10%):

Here's the ready-to-use slides for this Question of the Day!

Questions:

• What is most important to you in choosing a job? 
• Which attribute has experienced the biggest change since 1976? Any theories on why this has happened?
• A friend tells you that it seems like everyone only cares about pay when it comes to jobs. Agree or disagree with her statement based on date from the chart. 
• You are interviewing for a job and tell the interviewer that you are one of the 25% of high school seniors who really cares about leisure time when it comes to a job. Good idea or bad idea to tell them this? 

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About the Author

Tim Ranzetta

Tim's saving habits started at seven when a neighbor with a broken hip gave him a dog walking job. Her recovery, which took almost a year, resulted in Tim getting to know the bank tellers quite well (and accumulating a savings account balance of over $300!). His recent entrepreneurial adventures have included driving a shredding truck, analyzing executive compensation packages for Fortune 500 companies and helping families make better college financing decisions. After volunteering in 2010 to create and teach a personal finance program at Eastside College Prep in East Palo Alto, Tim saw firsthand the impact of an engaging and activity-based curriculum, which inspired him to start a new non-profit, Next Gen Personal Finance.