The Roundup: What job seekers want to know, female Fortune 500 CEOs drop, and the upside to internet use at work

Here’s what job seekers really want to know about employers

A new survey from online job site Indeed provides details on the five things U.S. job seekers consider most when they are researching a company.

The survey, which provides insights from 500 workers, cites the following as the top five:

• Company stability (47%)
• Insights around benefits and perks, flexibility and salary ranges for relevant roles (45%)
• Information about growth opportunities (41%)
• Company management (34%)
• Company mission and vision (31%)

Further, “95% of respondents said that if they were considering a new job opportunity, insight into the company’s employer reputation would be somewhat (33%) or extremely (62%) important.” An interesting related finding is that 70% of job-seekers said that if they don’t find enough online information about a potential employer, they automatically distrust the company.

Related: Three ways to deliver a stand-out recruiting pitch

The share of female CEOs on Fortune 500 list dropped 25% this year

Fortune reports that the number of female CEOs on its Fortune 500 list has decreased this year by 25%. The number of women on the list hit a high in 2017 with 32, while this year, the number is 24.

According to Fortune, “The drop is due primarily to a number of powerful women leaving their corner offices. In the past year alone, more than a third of those women (12) have left their CEO jobs, including a few long-time veterans of the ranking.

HR Dive says that the report seems to illustrate a setback, albeit temporary, for women and companies that want to increase diversity in their leadership suites.

Also worth noting is that only 12 of the companies on Fortune’s list have boards that are all-male, which Fortune concedes is trending in the right direction, considering that five years ago, there were 42 Fortune 500 companies without women directors.

Surfing the ‘net at work could help with counterproductive behavior

A recent study published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior finds that using the internet recreationally at work isn’t necessarily harmful to getting work done.

The study examined “cyberloafing,” which is, essentially, personal use of the internet at work, and how it relates to both workplace boredom and stress.

Researchers studied 463 university employees, and found that those who had a lower workload said they felt bored during the day, which was associated with using the internet recreationally at work more often. Study author Shani Pindek told PsyPost, which reported on the study:

“Cyberloafing is a rather natural response to workplace boredom and it is different from other (more harmful) forms of counterproductive work behaviors.”

Pindek added that a different, upcoming study in the researchers’ lab found that a benefit of cyberloafing is that it can “partially [buffer] the negative effects of workplace stress.”

Pindek further noted two (unsurprising) caveats – cyberloafing could post a threat to cybersecurity, and spending too much time on the internet during work hours can harm performance.