Retail kept its position in terms of employer attractiveness

This article is available for reading in Trade magazin 2025/6-7.

Guest writer:
Sándor Baja
managing director
Randstad Hungary

Randstad has interviewed 170,000 employees in 34 countries beforehand, including 7,291 in Hungary. In general we can say that the most important criterion when choosing a job is salary, which is interesting because globally work-life balance has pushed forward.

If the average selection criterion is 100, then salary stands at 173 in Hungary, which is a two-point increase compared to last year. 17% of employees changed jobs in the six months prior to the survey, which is a sharp rise compared to last year.

One in five blue-collar workers (operational) has a new job, while for white-collar workers (professional) the figure is only one in six.

Retail trade: a sector of extremes

How workers see the different sectors has changed significantly. Although IT, service centres (BSS) and telecom remain the most popular – plus telecom is also the best-known sector as an employer – it is alarming that that 11 of the industries have lost some of their appeal and only 2 were able to increase it (finance and telecom) – while one managed to maintain its position; the good news is that the latter is retail trade.

In 2025, Randstad Employer Brand Research found Deutsche Telekom IT Solution Hungary’s to be the most attractive employer

However, it is very important to note that we are talking about averages and retail is precisely the area where there is a twofold difference between the most popular and the least popular employer, meaning that the field is very broad. FMCG, which fought its way back to above-average popularity in 2024, has lost popularity once again. Retail and FMCG now have new competitors in the area of sales and marketing jobs: global companies operating service centres (BSS) in Hungary are rapidly expanding.

Sectoral champions

Last but not least, we must congratulate the champions of our sectors.

The Randstad Awards were presented to Hungary’s top employers for the twelfth time

From the 22 FMCG companies surveyed Coca-Cola was the most attractive employer this year – the company does a lot to attract, retain and motivate its employees. Nestlé’s second place is no surprise, as the Swiss company has won several times, but Hell Energy’s third place shows that Hungarian-owned companies also take employer branding seriously and manage it professionally.

From the 22 FMCG companies surveyed Coca-Cola has been the most attractive employer this year

From the 35 retail companies Mediamarkt was the best this year.

From among the 35 retail companies, Mediamarkt proved to be the best this year

When we asked employees about the best-known retailers, it was perhaps no coincidence that the market-leading retailer Lidl was the clear winner, closely followed by Tesco.

Lidl has been the absolute winner in terms of awareness

It is very important to emphasise that in both sectors almost 100% of companies are building their employer brands using a professional approach, tools and team.