Data from the 2008 Alumni Perspectives Survey Report reinforce the notion that job fit—more so than salary—is fundamental to employee satisfaction and retention. Alumni were asked to select all relevant items from a list of factors that might influence how satisfied they were with their job. As the chart below shows, overall, alumni said that achieving something they personally value, doing challenging and interesting work, and having the chance to do what they do best were the three most important factors in their job satisfaction.

Good pay ranked a distant sixth as a measure of predicting employee job satisfaction or, in other words, achieving something personally valued is three times more important than salary in predicting on-the-job satisfaction.
   
Key Drivers of Employment Satisfaction