Students in the Netherlands would prefer a job with a company regarded for its high environmental standards over employment with an establishment firm, the annual survey of the most attractive employers by Swedish consultancy Universum.

The Swedish group polled 23,000 students in the Netherlands about jobs with 130 companies. US-based green car maker Tesla stormed up to sixth place beating Dutch establishment companies such as Shell and Philips, the Financieele Dagblad said on Monday.

Tesla, which has its European headquarters in Amsterdam and assembles vehicles in Tilburg, was a favourite of engineering students. Universum said students identified with Tesla founder Elon Musk’s ‘aura of disruption and innovation’. Tesla spokesman Kim Liebregts said it received hundreds of CVs for every vacancy, the FD reported.

Other relatively new employers were also favoured. Internet shop Cool Blue came in tenth, while travel site booking.com was ranked 19th. These companies are popular because of their less formal, enterprising culture and lack of hierarchy.

Banks and acccountancy firms continued to lose favour among students. Years of negative publicity and the role of the sector in the crisis fuelled their decline on the Universum list, the FD said.

The most popular employer for Dutch graduates for two years running is brewer Heineken, followed by KLM. Google was ranked third followed by Nike and Apple. The last three have relatively few employees in the Netherlands but are popular because of positive associations with their products and services, the FD said.