Companies unhappy with student skills

<p>Employers</a> Say College Graduates Lack Job Skills - Students - The Chronicle of Higher Education</p>

<p>I wish there was more specific info in the article. The video probably explains the findings, but it’s too long to watch.</p>

<p>I have a D who has an incredible work ethic, fantastic work references, AND graduated magna cum laude from a top school. Maybe if someone (besides Starbucks) would hire her, that would be one less graduate for employers to complain about …</p>

<p>Many employers aren’t hiring … and it seems that articles such as this brief one from Barron’s and a recent extended article regarding law professionals in the New York Times … have simplistic answers – to solve the “problem” of unprepared candidates, poor training, etc. This is at best a revisionist self-serving view.</p>

<p>In professions (especially software engineering) where the demand for new graduates is currently very high the discussion of job readiness is muted and mostly absent. Employers are ready to mold and train. They look for smart candidates with very solid grounding in engineering and with the making of a lifelong work ethic.</p>

<p>To ask colleges to become trade schools is not the solution. Employers benefit from bringing new graduates and molding them to their needs. They need to take more “risk” in their hiring. That’s what they’ve done in the past and it worked.</p>

<p>As a parent and an employeer, here are the deficiencies that I see when interviewing new grads for employment:</p>

<p>Zero or little work experience.
An unwillingness to work their way up from the bottom.
A complete disconnect from their value to the company and their expected pay.
A lack of maturity when compared to previous generations.</p>

<p>I agree with you, jacket. However, I’m willing to give entry-level “kids” the benefit of the doubt on lacking work experience. It’s been very tough finding work for the last 3.5 years. Many of the typical teen/young adult jobs are taken by grown adults trying to feed their families. Internships are the logical fallback to that, and I urge my kids and their friends to seek them tirelessly. </p>

<p>On your other three points, I think parents share some (most?) of the responsibility for moving kids from the fantasy world to real world.</p>

<p>DougBetsy, I have hired several entry-level “kids” this year. The retention rate for
the “kids” is 50% vs 100% for my other hires this year. I agree with your assessment that parents bear most of the responsibility for this issue. If the kids are never allowed to “fail” while growing up, they will be ill-prepared to deal with the real world.</p>

<p>^nailed it jacket…although I am considered a pretty new grad (have been in the workforce for 3.5 years) I see all of these things in my many of my peers…honestly most of my peers (despite the fact that we have fantastic comp for our age) believe they should be making $250K and running the company…but they don’t want to put in the work to one day get there.</p>

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<p>The reality is that it is very hard for recent graduates who do NOT suffer from the listed deficiencies to find entry level jobs that DO correspond to their skills. </p>

<p>As far as comparisons to previous generations, you might want to also evaluate the changes in “expectations.” Did the previous generations really need to build r</p>

<p>I have to add an example: I interviewed a person in the Emory MBA program who wanted $100K for a salary. He had no work experience - had gone directly from his undergrad into his MBA. :eek:</p>

<p>Work isn’t fun every day- that’s why it’s called work. Your colleagues are depending on you-- that’s why when we break a project down into pieces and you get your chunk, you’re expected to ask for help when you need it or fall behind. If you don’t, and you show up at a meeting without your stuff completed, people go ballistic. Not because they’re mean- because they depend on you. You aren’t supposed to use the company phone to call your GF in Australia. Not because we care about the cost- it costs about a penny a minute anywhere in the world. Because when you’re here you’re supposed to be doing something of value for our shareholders and our shareholders don’t care about your GF in Australia. When a meeting is scheduled for 8 am, that means you show up at 7:55 am ready to start. Not roll in at 8:15, apologize that there was a long line at Starbucks, and then proceed to boot up your laptop and check your Facebook page before paying attention.</p>

<p>Etc. I should write a book.</p>

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<p>Probably needed that much salary to pay his student loans…</p>

<p>Many companies are far less willing to train and develop young talent in the current employment climate. They know, if the look around, they can find someone with the “skill set” they are looking for. Unfortunately, recent grads haven’t had the time to develop their Excel and Access monkey skills because they’ve been spending their time learning traditional college curriculum.</p>

<p>I’ve often thought if you could obtain a Bachelor’s degree in MS Office that you would be employable to 95% of companies.</p>

<p>Companies do need to revise their hiring and training processes right now. They’ve had a 2 or 3 year run of being able to take their own sweet time and select almost anybody they want. That will change sometime in the future, and there will be a large gap in the market because the baby boom generation will have retired, and few people have been trained to replace them.</p>

<p>Also, jobs are commodities right now. People with jobs don’t want to train somebody that may one day do their job better (and may take it over in the future).</p>

<p>Additionally, many people are overworked right now because companies cut back (workforce) during the recession. But these overworked people don’t have the time to train somebody to come in and help them. That’s why they want somebody they can just throw behind a desk and run Excel all day…without asking any questions.</p>

<p>And in rare instances, companies that are inexperienced and growing rapidly, alienate their most capable employees. :(</p>

<p>Jacket, my team leader is half my age physically and twice my age maturity wise (I’m the 50+ engineer whose cubicle is decked in Angry Birds paraphernalia)</p>

<p>Work experience? well, a lot of interns come thru the same routes (under-represented, relatives, stellar 4.0 GPA’s that won’t even think to come back, etc). We finally got a ‘real’ intern this year…</p>

<p>Disconnect between value and pay? true - but that’s due to everyone lying thru their teeth about salaries, or everyone aiming for Google salaries. </p>

<p>Work their way up? until the next round of layoffs, actually. If a company is not loyal to its employees, why should the opposite be true? I’m in my 27th year with the company btw.</p>

<p>Employers expect way too many purple squirrels, find none, then complain that it is so difficult to find purple squirrels in this country, so we’ll import/outsource them.</p>

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<p>Purdue Computer & Information Technology figured this out a decade or two ago, awesome curriculum…</p>

<p>What skills exactly? And where are they hiring these students from? </p>

<p>Universities were designed to educate people. To give them an education, to expand their view of the world, engage in critical thinking, make more informed judgments, be well read deeply in a field, and more lightly read across others. So employers could hire people with educations, train them in their first job and let them learn the ropes as they move in up positions within the organization (with the foundation of a broad education under their belt). Those with a rigorous university education in any field are going to be more educated and more trainable with a degree than without, just like those with a highschool education are going to be more educated and more trainable than those with just elementary school education. </p>

<p>They were not designed to provide practical skills and hands on job training for entry level jobs. That is the role of vocational schools and technical colleges- to provide a hands on and more narrow training for workers to go into one occupation straight from school, and stay within it. It is not clear why these disappointed employers aren’t hiring from trade schools.</p>

<p>Son’s company spent 3 months training him before he could be productive (software). Math/computer science courses in college can’t cover the proprietary knowledge needed for a company to make its specific product others will purchase. Other hires in the company for other positions also had extensive training in what the company is about. </p>

<p>I think companies could complain if their new hires couldn’t learn what they need, not that they lacked the nonuniversity skills. Mastering office skills is a tech school thing. In the old days did college grads have the same skill set as the secretaries? How many men knew how to type?</p>

<p>My understanding is that most business majors should get practical work experience before an MBA, unlike some fields where the higher degrees are expected without time out for bachelor level work.</p>

<p>I don’t see many of the points made above…but then we don’t hire kids who have zero work experience and we have enough that have internships and HR makes sure they understand the starting salary before they make the first cut. I do think fewer kids actually “work” these days and I think many parents underestimate just how valuable those punch the clock jobs really are for young people. I also think sometimes kids don’t want to believe starting salaries…even though there is much credible reporting on salary ranges these days. They generally have an inflated sense of what an entry level person is worth. In my previous company the starting pay was just a tad higher in per hour dollars than internship pay…although the salary has bennies on top of the salary. Finally I’ve met some very impressive mature recent grads…but then again immature or socially weaker kids probably don’t make it past HR to the point where I might have the opportunity to talk to them. If kids have the proverbial goods they will get a job…but it’s oh so more than a college GPA.</p>

<p>I recently hired a couple of new college grads - computer science majors. I’m very happy with both of them. They have a good work ethic, are quick learners, are personable, and were productive very quickly despite having to learn some new technical skills and come up to speed on the projects. I’m impressed with them.</p>

<p>I think there are still plenty of new college grads with very good capabilities and every bit as good as any grads ever were. However, given that a higher percentage of people are graduating with degrees (I think), including sometimes with degrees that can’t vouch for their skill set or work ethic (“BA in Obscure Studies”), there’s bound to be some issues with some grads holding degrees that don’t have quite the capabilities to jump right in.</p>