Abstract:
The purpose of this study is to illustrate and discuss the expectations of Thai students who are going to apply for a job in high- tech companies. The group of Thai students whom we study is the Thai ETM student group in Portland State University. Qualitative analysis was the way to approach this study. The ideas of expectations were gathered by interviewing nine students based on the balance of genders, the similarity of academic background, and the expected term of graduation. More importantly, none of them has a working experience in a high tech company. By following the qualitative method, a frequency matrix was used as one of the tools to determine and choose the top issues that the majority of students concerned. Along with gathering data, we constructed an affinity diagram in order to categorize and group the related ideas and placed them under the same header. The results from nine interviews had been identified by using the frequency matrix, which is shown the total number of people who valued the same issue. There were thirty five issues arisen and top eight issues which were in the highly concerns and selected to be discussed. The most popular issue was getting working experience and knowledge followed by a flexibility of work schedules issue, a training program issue, a high skill level required issue, a promotion issue, an award issue, and a language barriers issue respectively. According to data from the interviews, we were able to point out the consistency and described the discrepancy between the interview results and the literature researches which related to this case study, such as US working culture, Thai working culture and high-tech company culture. Consequently, we discussed those issues and addressed our recommendations by hoping that this study will be used as a valuable guide for Thai students who considering to work in high tech companies
