18 ms·

The real reason new graduates can't get hired

37 points by hccampos 11y ago

argo12 11y ago
"schools are going to have to pay more attention to careers and what employers want". India being one of the countries focussed on, this is definitely a huge problem. Most students aren't sure of what the real world applications of what they learn are. Compulsory 6 month internships, exposure to a lot of companies and the work that people with their educational qualifications do and of course very simple interpersonal skills can go a long way. I run my own company and I still get resumes in .doc format, which were forwarded to me after being sent to another employer! Recommendations have proven to be the best way to hire for us even though those resumes have not been too impressive to begin with!
cryoshon 11y ago
"“I know I am a creative person who can do many of these jobs, but I think employers have these expectations that an applicant must bring a mid-level professional’s work experience and technical skills — even though it’s only an entry-level job,”" High expectations from employers for not enough pay. No willingness to train people to spec, instead expecting everyone to be ready to go out of the box. It's easy to forget that people are messy, and not machines. EDIT: I beat this drum all of the time on HN... you will never have enough "technical skills" or "in demand skills" or "communications skills" to cheat your way out of the ability for someone to turn you down for the unicorn (who, ideally, will then be underemployed in the position) they're looking for.
- noir_lord 11y ago
  Yep, I'm an excellent programmer but I still don't fit the mold for a lot of the postings I see (not that I'm looking since I run my own business). They are either insanely broad or insanely specific, which I think is insanely short sighted since you will either get liars or narrow your search down to those with only the exact skills you are looking for while missing candidates with more generally applicable skills. If/when I get around to hiring my job post is going to look something like (off the cuff), "Web developer wanted, experience equal to a couple of years building production systems any of the following a plus SQL, JS (any framework), PHP (any framework), Python (any framework), broad understanding of how the internet/web works, Linux experience (any distro)" I'm not going to exclude an incredible candidate because they don't have experience of FooJSFrameworkOfTheWeek.js v9.1.2.11.2, if I have to go through 5-10 times as many CV's so what, a little bit of my time now will save me a shitload of time down the line by hiring the wrong person.
  - vonmoltke 11y ago
    > They are either insanely broad or insanely specific, which I think is insanely short sighted since you will either get liars or narrow your search down to those with only the exact skills you are looking for while missing candidates with more generally applicable skills. I'm starting to think that the reason the available candidate pool is viewed as being so poor is that the only people making it though the resume screening stage are the true unicorns and the bald-faced liars. Edit: forgot a word.
  - fancy_pantser 11y ago
    Isn't your proposed job posting "insanely broad"?
    - noir_lord 11y ago
      In a different way. Job postings are either broad in the sense they want a unicorn (massive often unachievable in reality skillset). Must be able to debug kernel drivers, write ruby, be CCNA certified and a qualified first aider. The kind of posting where you know they actually need two sometimes three people and are trying to get one.
- savanaly 11y ago
  >"“I know I am a creative person who can do many of these jobs, but I think employers have these expectations that an applicant must bring a mid-level professional’s work experience and technical skills — even though it’s only an entry-level job,”" For someone to have this position, they have to explain what changed in the past few decades compared to the decades before those. What caused expectations of employers to become higher than the qualifications of the applicants? If anything, more applicants have more qualifications in terms of degrees than ever before, right?
  - vkou 11y ago
    A slowdown in economic growth. There's more people fighting over fewer jobs (Outside of tech), which lets employers be picky... And then offload their responsibilities to universities.
  - rhapsodic 11y ago
    > If anything, more applicants have more qualifications in terms of degrees than ever before, right? Yep, and that's the problem. College has been dumbed down over the past few decades, to accommodate the push (at least here in the US) for everyone to go to college after high school. There are more people with degrees, but on average they're less capable than the fresh graduates of 30 years ago. People today are getting bachelors degrees in animation, FFS.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
      - rhapsodic 11y ago
        I searched both of those pages for "bachelor" and came up empty. In any case, my larger point, about college being dumbed down over the past few decades, still stands.
        deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
- SAS721 11y ago
  > "No willingness to train people to spec" Absolutely 100% this. There has been an unsettling trend for employers not wanting to invest in their employees. This includes training as well as compensation. Now employers in general expect colleges / university to adapt their degrees into job preparation programs and do all the training for them. In some ways I can understand that employers are much more reluctant to spend money on developing employees as programs such as pensions that used to create a long term relationship between the employee and employer no longer tend to exist.
  - fweespeech 11y ago
    > In some ways I can understand that employers are much more reluctant to spend money on developing employees as programs such as pensions that used to create a long term relationship between the employee and employer no longer tend to exist. 1) Just provide tuition assistance with a payback period if an employee spends less than X years at the company. 2) Similarly, provide bonuses after X years for positions you need to train for. Its not hard to get people to stick around 5+ years if you pay well and aren't toxic culturally with a 10% bonus every X years. My boss basically prices me out of the market every year so there isn't even a point in looking for a job. I think the real problem is the CEO/CTO/etc in large companies are focused on what I can do this quarter/year that will make me look good. They aren't focused on X years down the road.
- jt2190 11y ago
  This is where those who understand how to sell themselves have an edge: The convince the employer that the skills they have are sufficient, and the salary they're demanding is a fair price. (This is also why companies don't sell you their products by replying to your 'user seeks product' post with a product's 'resume'.)
cousin_it 11y ago
I thought the real reason was that fewer and fewer industries are labor-intensive? New grads aren't the only ones who can't get hired. There's only one solution, give everyone free food/housing/healthcare/jobs. (Not just money, because that will just bid up the price of everything.) If you're unemployed, vote for a stronger social safety net. That will not only yield free stuff for you, but also reduce the amount of hungry people competing with you for every job. Total no-brainer.
- e40 11y ago
  If we also give people free money, in addition to paying for housing and healthcare, it will entice some people to not work, leaving the jobs market for people that want to work. Just imagine all those government jobs filled with people that don't really do anything.
  - cousin_it 11y ago
    My point exactly. There will be more businesses as well, because people will be less afraid to fail. Handouts are just a great idea in so many ways, I don't know how people can be against them in a capital-heavy economy with scarce jobs.
    - e40 11y ago
      I know too many really good people that vote Republican solely because they hate it when people get something for nothing. Welfare the main thing that pissed them off. It's so hard to fathom, because many of these people are religious and are very caring people (with their time and money). I think the GOP has done a great PR job against BI.
rayiner 11y ago
Education is irrelevant. It's not like entry level candidates of yesteryear were any more skilled in "written communications" or "critical thinking skills." Yet it was much easier to get an entry level job back then. This sort of focus on the content of education, as if that means anything, ignores what is fundamentally a supply and demand problem.
- jstanley 11y ago
  Agreed, exactly this. > “I know I am a creative person who can do many of these jobs, but I think employers have these expectations that an applicant must bring a mid-level professional’s work experience and technical skills — even though it’s only an entry-level job,” Well if they can find people who do have that experience and skill level, why would they hire you instead? It's simply a matter of supply and demand.
  - vonmoltke 11y ago
    > Well if they can find people who do have that experience and skill level, why would they hire you instead? It's simply a matter of supply and demand. The issue is that when they can't, instead of compromising and training up someone with less applicable skills they simply crow about a "talent shortage".
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
  Much like the price of goods go up when there is too little supply, the requirements of jobs go up?
- cousin_it 11y ago
  Here's a random idea, why doesn't the government just pay companies to employ people? (Obviously the payment should be lower than the salary, and it should be a fixed payment rather than a percentage tax break.) This way unemployed folks don't get the handout, which makes right-wing folks happy, and employers become more willing to hire minorities, which makes left-wing folks happy. Has it been tried?
- phatmanace 11y ago
nvader 11y ago
Answer: "Is the problem that employers have unrealistic expectations or that universities and students are failing to develop critical skills? A little of both, most workplace experts say."
rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
Said it a million times and I'll say it a million more: you don't learn how to work by sitting in class, you learn to work by going to work. College is expensive and it isn't right for everyone. We need publicly funded apprenticeships starting at 16 so anyone can get a job and real training at a reduced cost to the employer. I'm not a big fan of Reagan but when he was right, he was right: "The best social program is a good job."
- nooron 11y ago
  How would you feel about University/work cooperative programs? I see that as a plausible way to balance the trade offs of each system. Northeastern and Kettering have had a lot of success with both.
  - rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
    I went to RIT. A year of co-op is required for most majors. I wouldn't have had my great experience at Apple or such a fantastic job now if it weren't for that degree requirement. I still think college isn't for everybody. My grandfather was a combat engineer in WWII but the GI Bill college track wasn't doing it for him so he started a successful restaurant instead. That being said, co-ops are the only reasonable strategy for colleges to expect job placement upon graduation.
    - nooron 11y ago
      I think college isn't right for everyone. I also think that individuals don't realize a lot of potential benefits from it. It would be economically beneficial on an individual level for many more people to learn math up to Calc II in undergrad, and I suspect that would represent a public good. But most affordable state U's operate their low level math classes as weeders, not opportunities to educate students. So I don't think I would want to aggressively make policy to reduce college attendance without experimenting in improving their outcomes. (And I agree with your last point.)
      - 11y ago
mlamat 11y ago
... said Nguyen-Cat, who has been working ...
e40 11y ago
Supply and demand. It's as simple as that.
forgottenpass 11y ago
As the job market gradually improves, businesses say they aren’t finding enough savvy graduates who can start contributing from day one on the job. Can someone decode this euphemism? Even people that have been working at the same company as I am can't transfer to my project and start contributing on day one. Hell, they'll drag down my productivity for a while to get ramped up. So all I see is a desire to have the ramp shorter... So you can see why I'm struggling to find any point in this article that doesn't boil down to "I want someone with industry workspace experience, at the cost of someone with zero experience."
- jt2190 11y ago
  > Can someone decode this euphemism? Here's how it was explained to me: Imagine that you sell Mercedes cars for 50 000 USD or more. Now imagine that a customer comes in one day and asks for the best model with all of the features, for only 10 000 USD. Is it _wrong_ for the customer to ask? No. Will they be able to buy a Mercedes for 10 000 USD? No. What will happen is the customer will reset their expectations based on the current market. They may decide to not buy a car. They may decide to buy a cheaper car. Same in the labor market. Employers can ask for anything they want. Whether they _get_ it is another matter entirely.
  - SilasX 11y ago
    That wouldn't explain the observed phenomenon, involving that unrealistic expectation never being reset. The error persists against evidence. The story is, "Gosh, we can't seem to find anyone to fill the positions." It's not, "Well, we had trouble, then realized we were offering too little, so we (worked around not filling it|budgeted more and found someone)."
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
sklogic 11y ago
Another unwarranted push of the higher education, which is by definition all about science and ivory towers, into the totally irrelevant "employability" bullshit. Please stop undermining the value and the role of the universities.
- cousin_it 11y ago
  Agreed. The more we push job seekers to seek extra education, the more employers will raise their requirements.
gtf21 11y ago
> schools are going to have to pay more attention to careers and what employers want I think it's time that we stopped seeing education as the means to get a job. Education != training and universities shouldn't exist just to get graduates employment. We used to have technical colleges for this sort of thing. I think it would be a shame if universities started adapting themselves to fit what employers want. Having said that, if it is true that "they rate young applicants as deficient in such key workplace skills as written and oral communication, critical thinking and analytical reasoning", then this is a serious problem with the education system. Not because it doesn't train students to get a good job, but because their minds are clearly not being trained to think properly.
rtl49 11y ago
There are jobs to be had, but you keep getting rejected. Are employers expectations unrealistic or are university grads really ill-equipped for the real world? Not unlike many BBC articles, this one begins with a question presenting a false dichotomy. Why are you being rejected? Perhaps there are simply more people seeking work than there are jobs, and that however "well prepared" you are, the probability of being chosen for any particular job is therefore lower. Perhaps it's a mixed blessing that our generation has faced such sobering difficulty in finding stable and meaningful employment. At some point as a result, our society might be prepared to recognize that the freer a market is, the less it guarantees a satisfactory way of life for its participants.
- ArkyBeagle 11y ago
  People aren't really hiring. They're going through Kabuki theater of the process. It might be as simple as this reinforces the ego of the hiring team. in a company there might be two narratives - we're all WORKING SO HARD ( you're probably not, really ) and WE CAN'T FIND ANY HELP ( because we're too special.) This being said, I make a good living cleaning up after mishires/onboarding failures. They economy is divided into Big Player high profile firms and firms milking some old cash cow into a middling slow Schumpeterian/thermodynamic death.
  - rtl49 11y ago
    I'm not sure I entirely agree. Having been on the "other side" I can say with confidence that at least some employers truly dislike the hiring process and would be eager to hire the first candidate who shows signs of competence. Unfortunately, at least in the tech sector, competence can be more difficult to ascertain than in other industries. Even lengthy resumes often come affixed to very incompetent candidates. I suppose one could subject them to the indignity of an actual "coding test," but the whole process of finding a test that accurately reflects competence is itself quite difficult. The result is that we've ended up doing "trial runs" with contractors with the promise of full employment after some time, many of whom clearly demonstrate a real lack of preparedness after the first two weeks at the cost of a few thousand dollars.
riskable 11y ago
> “Now, we need to design curricula that are more aligned with employer expectations...” What would that be? Classes in blame management? Email necromancy? How to beat your peers in stack ranking? How to obtain mandatory technical skills without training? How to live cheaply when your employer doesn't pay enough? How about employers just admit that their problems are not unique (even though their software might be) and that training and retaining general-purpose employees is far more useful than hiring a bunch of (expensive) niche experts for every little project.
- gluggymug 11y ago
  Blame management is super important! Faking passion is what the grad in the article needs to work on apparently. I don't think unis are equipped to teach everything. The article says that internships are where grads can get workplace experience but I've never handed real problems to any interns. Who would? Important stuff needs actual employees. Frankly they'd learn more by watching me do my thing than solving their little intern assignments.
VOYD 11y ago
"Employers say students don’t have the ability to … think critically, innovate, solve complex problems and work well in a team." otherwise known as "work place experience".
malandrew 11y ago
I think part of the issue here is that back in the day with less automation, you could prove yourself useful merely with the skills that come along with having a pulse and a functioning brain. Your utility one just doing the unskilled parts of your job would let you keep a job long enough to learn the hard skills to really be useful within a few months to a year. Automation of all these menial tasks has gotten so good that you no longer have low hanging fruit to justify employment that the level of skill a recent college grad has coming out of school. Take some of the skills cited like statistics. Most people in the workforce have atrocious practical stats skills, but enough to get by. For recent grads, it's abysmal to non-existent. A few years ago to back in the day, you wouldn't have been expected to apply such skills on day one. You'd have enough time to realize your skill gap and address it. Not anymore. Anyone thinking about university is best served by choosing schools like University of Waterloo, where there is a strong culture of having kids do real work during the summer months at real companies (instead of summer school). Any school where kids are doing summer school or goofing around all summer are going to be left behind.

37 points by hccampos 11y ago

"schools are going to have to pay more attention to careers and what employers want". India being one of the countries focussed on, this is definitely a huge problem. Most students aren't sure of what the real world applications of what they learn are. Compulsory 6 month internships, exposure to a lot of companies and the work that people with their educational qualifications do and of course very simple interpersonal skills can go a long way. I run my own company and I still get resumes in .doc format, which were forwarded to me after being sent to another employer! Recommendations have proven to be the best way to hire for us even though those resumes have not been too impressive to begin with!

cryoshon 11y ago

"“I know I am a creative person who can do many of these jobs, but I think employers have these expectations that an applicant must bring a mid-level professional’s work experience and technical skills — even though it’s only an entry-level job,”" High expectations from employers for not enough pay. No willingness to train people to spec, instead expecting everyone to be ready to go out of the box. It's easy to forget that people are messy, and not machines. EDIT: I beat this drum all of the time on HN... you will never have enough "technical skills" or "in demand skills" or "communications skills" to cheat your way out of the ability for someone to turn you down for the unicorn (who, ideally, will then be underemployed in the position) they're looking for.

noir_lord 11y ago
Yep, I'm an excellent programmer but I still don't fit the mold for a lot of the postings I see (not that I'm looking since I run my own business). They are either insanely broad or insanely specific, which I think is insanely short sighted since you will either get liars or narrow your search down to those with only the exact skills you are looking for while missing candidates with more generally applicable skills. If/when I get around to hiring my job post is going to look something like (off the cuff), "Web developer wanted, experience equal to a couple of years building production systems any of the following a plus SQL, JS (any framework), PHP (any framework), Python (any framework), broad understanding of how the internet/web works, Linux experience (any distro)" I'm not going to exclude an incredible candidate because they don't have experience of FooJSFrameworkOfTheWeek.js v9.1.2.11.2, if I have to go through 5-10 times as many CV's so what, a little bit of my time now will save me a shitload of time down the line by hiring the wrong person.
- vonmoltke 11y ago
  > They are either insanely broad or insanely specific, which I think is insanely short sighted since you will either get liars or narrow your search down to those with only the exact skills you are looking for while missing candidates with more generally applicable skills. I'm starting to think that the reason the available candidate pool is viewed as being so poor is that the only people making it though the resume screening stage are the true unicorns and the bald-faced liars. Edit: forgot a word.
- fancy_pantser 11y ago
  Isn't your proposed job posting "insanely broad"?
  - noir_lord 11y ago
    In a different way. Job postings are either broad in the sense they want a unicorn (massive often unachievable in reality skillset). Must be able to debug kernel drivers, write ruby, be CCNA certified and a qualified first aider. The kind of posting where you know they actually need two sometimes three people and are trying to get one.
savanaly 11y ago
>"“I know I am a creative person who can do many of these jobs, but I think employers have these expectations that an applicant must bring a mid-level professional’s work experience and technical skills — even though it’s only an entry-level job,”" For someone to have this position, they have to explain what changed in the past few decades compared to the decades before those. What caused expectations of employers to become higher than the qualifications of the applicants? If anything, more applicants have more qualifications in terms of degrees than ever before, right?
- vkou 11y ago
  A slowdown in economic growth. There's more people fighting over fewer jobs (Outside of tech), which lets employers be picky... And then offload their responsibilities to universities.
- rhapsodic 11y ago
  > If anything, more applicants have more qualifications in terms of degrees than ever before, right? Yep, and that's the problem. College has been dumbed down over the past few decades, to accommodate the push (at least here in the US) for everyone to go to college after high school. There are more people with degrees, but on average they're less capable than the fresh graduates of 30 years ago. People today are getting bachelors degrees in animation, FFS.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
    - rhapsodic 11y ago
      I searched both of those pages for "bachelor" and came up empty. In any case, my larger point, about college being dumbed down over the past few decades, still stands.
      - deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
SAS721 11y ago
> "No willingness to train people to spec" Absolutely 100% this. There has been an unsettling trend for employers not wanting to invest in their employees. This includes training as well as compensation. Now employers in general expect colleges / university to adapt their degrees into job preparation programs and do all the training for them. In some ways I can understand that employers are much more reluctant to spend money on developing employees as programs such as pensions that used to create a long term relationship between the employee and employer no longer tend to exist.
- fweespeech 11y ago
  > In some ways I can understand that employers are much more reluctant to spend money on developing employees as programs such as pensions that used to create a long term relationship between the employee and employer no longer tend to exist. 1) Just provide tuition assistance with a payback period if an employee spends less than X years at the company. 2) Similarly, provide bonuses after X years for positions you need to train for. Its not hard to get people to stick around 5+ years if you pay well and aren't toxic culturally with a 10% bonus every X years. My boss basically prices me out of the market every year so there isn't even a point in looking for a job. I think the real problem is the CEO/CTO/etc in large companies are focused on what I can do this quarter/year that will make me look good. They aren't focused on X years down the road.
jt2190 11y ago
This is where those who understand how to sell themselves have an edge: The convince the employer that the skills they have are sufficient, and the salary they're demanding is a fair price. (This is also why companies don't sell you their products by replying to your 'user seeks product' post with a product's 'resume'.)

cousin_it 11y ago

I thought the real reason was that fewer and fewer industries are labor-intensive? New grads aren't the only ones who can't get hired. There's only one solution, give everyone free food/housing/healthcare/jobs. (Not just money, because that will just bid up the price of everything.) If you're unemployed, vote for a stronger social safety net. That will not only yield free stuff for you, but also reduce the amount of hungry people competing with you for every job. Total no-brainer.

e40 11y ago
If we also give people free money, in addition to paying for housing and healthcare, it will entice some people to not work, leaving the jobs market for people that want to work. Just imagine all those government jobs filled with people that don't really do anything.
- cousin_it 11y ago
  My point exactly. There will be more businesses as well, because people will be less afraid to fail. Handouts are just a great idea in so many ways, I don't know how people can be against them in a capital-heavy economy with scarce jobs.
  - e40 11y ago
    I know too many really good people that vote Republican solely because they hate it when people get something for nothing. Welfare the main thing that pissed them off. It's so hard to fathom, because many of these people are religious and are very caring people (with their time and money). I think the GOP has done a great PR job against BI.

rayiner 11y ago

Education is irrelevant. It's not like entry level candidates of yesteryear were any more skilled in "written communications" or "critical thinking skills." Yet it was much easier to get an entry level job back then. This sort of focus on the content of education, as if that means anything, ignores what is fundamentally a supply and demand problem.

jstanley 11y ago
Agreed, exactly this. > “I know I am a creative person who can do many of these jobs, but I think employers have these expectations that an applicant must bring a mid-level professional’s work experience and technical skills — even though it’s only an entry-level job,” Well if they can find people who do have that experience and skill level, why would they hire you instead? It's simply a matter of supply and demand.
- vonmoltke 11y ago
  > Well if they can find people who do have that experience and skill level, why would they hire you instead? It's simply a matter of supply and demand. The issue is that when they can't, instead of compromising and training up someone with less applicable skills they simply crow about a "talent shortage".
TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
Much like the price of goods go up when there is too little supply, the requirements of jobs go up?
cousin_it 11y ago
Here's a random idea, why doesn't the government just pay companies to employ people? (Obviously the payment should be lower than the salary, and it should be a fixed payment rather than a percentage tax break.) This way unemployed folks don't get the handout, which makes right-wing folks happy, and employers become more willing to hire minorities, which makes left-wing folks happy. Has it been tried?
phatmanace 11y ago

nvader 11y ago

Answer: "Is the problem that employers have unrealistic expectations or that universities and students are failing to develop critical skills? A little of both, most workplace experts say."

rm_-rf_slash 11y ago

Said it a million times and I'll say it a million more: you don't learn how to work by sitting in class, you learn to work by going to work. College is expensive and it isn't right for everyone. We need publicly funded apprenticeships starting at 16 so anyone can get a job and real training at a reduced cost to the employer. I'm not a big fan of Reagan but when he was right, he was right: "The best social program is a good job."

nooron 11y ago
How would you feel about University/work cooperative programs? I see that as a plausible way to balance the trade offs of each system. Northeastern and Kettering have had a lot of success with both.
- rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
  I went to RIT. A year of co-op is required for most majors. I wouldn't have had my great experience at Apple or such a fantastic job now if it weren't for that degree requirement. I still think college isn't for everybody. My grandfather was a combat engineer in WWII but the GI Bill college track wasn't doing it for him so he started a successful restaurant instead. That being said, co-ops are the only reasonable strategy for colleges to expect job placement upon graduation.
  - nooron 11y ago
    I think college isn't right for everyone. I also think that individuals don't realize a lot of potential benefits from it. It would be economically beneficial on an individual level for many more people to learn math up to Calc II in undergrad, and I suspect that would represent a public good. But most affordable state U's operate their low level math classes as weeders, not opportunities to educate students. So I don't think I would want to aggressively make policy to reduce college attendance without experimenting in improving their outcomes. (And I agree with your last point.)
    - 11y ago

mlamat 11y ago

... said Nguyen-Cat, who has been working ...

e40 11y ago

Supply and demand. It's as simple as that.

forgottenpass 11y ago

As the job market gradually improves, businesses say they aren’t finding enough savvy graduates who can start contributing from day one on the job. Can someone decode this euphemism? Even people that have been working at the same company as I am can't transfer to my project and start contributing on day one. Hell, they'll drag down my productivity for a while to get ramped up. So all I see is a desire to have the ramp shorter... So you can see why I'm struggling to find any point in this article that doesn't boil down to "I want someone with industry workspace experience, at the cost of someone with zero experience."

jt2190 11y ago
> Can someone decode this euphemism? Here's how it was explained to me: Imagine that you sell Mercedes cars for 50 000 USD or more. Now imagine that a customer comes in one day and asks for the best model with all of the features, for only 10 000 USD. Is it _wrong_ for the customer to ask? No. Will they be able to buy a Mercedes for 10 000 USD? No. What will happen is the customer will reset their expectations based on the current market. They may decide to not buy a car. They may decide to buy a cheaper car. Same in the labor market. Employers can ask for anything they want. Whether they _get_ it is another matter entirely.
- SilasX 11y ago
  That wouldn't explain the observed phenomenon, involving that unrealistic expectation never being reset. The error persists against evidence. The story is, "Gosh, we can't seem to find anyone to fill the positions." It's not, "Well, we had trouble, then realized we were offering too little, so we (worked around not filling it|budgeted more and found someone)."
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

sklogic 11y ago

Another unwarranted push of the higher education, which is by definition all about science and ivory towers, into the totally irrelevant "employability" bullshit. Please stop undermining the value and the role of the universities.

cousin_it 11y ago
Agreed. The more we push job seekers to seek extra education, the more employers will raise their requirements.

gtf21 11y ago

> schools are going to have to pay more attention to careers and what employers want I think it's time that we stopped seeing education as the means to get a job. Education != training and universities shouldn't exist just to get graduates employment. We used to have technical colleges for this sort of thing. I think it would be a shame if universities started adapting themselves to fit what employers want. Having said that, if it is true that "they rate young applicants as deficient in such key workplace skills as written and oral communication, critical thinking and analytical reasoning", then this is a serious problem with the education system. Not because it doesn't train students to get a good job, but because their minds are clearly not being trained to think properly.

rtl49 11y ago

There are jobs to be had, but you keep getting rejected. Are employers expectations unrealistic or are university grads really ill-equipped for the real world? Not unlike many BBC articles, this one begins with a question presenting a false dichotomy. Why are you being rejected? Perhaps there are simply more people seeking work than there are jobs, and that however "well prepared" you are, the probability of being chosen for any particular job is therefore lower. Perhaps it's a mixed blessing that our generation has faced such sobering difficulty in finding stable and meaningful employment. At some point as a result, our society might be prepared to recognize that the freer a market is, the less it guarantees a satisfactory way of life for its participants.

ArkyBeagle 11y ago
People aren't really hiring. They're going through Kabuki theater of the process. It might be as simple as this reinforces the ego of the hiring team. in a company there might be two narratives - we're all WORKING SO HARD ( you're probably not, really ) and WE CAN'T FIND ANY HELP ( because we're too special.) This being said, I make a good living cleaning up after mishires/onboarding failures. They economy is divided into Big Player high profile firms and firms milking some old cash cow into a middling slow Schumpeterian/thermodynamic death.
- rtl49 11y ago
  I'm not sure I entirely agree. Having been on the "other side" I can say with confidence that at least some employers truly dislike the hiring process and would be eager to hire the first candidate who shows signs of competence. Unfortunately, at least in the tech sector, competence can be more difficult to ascertain than in other industries. Even lengthy resumes often come affixed to very incompetent candidates. I suppose one could subject them to the indignity of an actual "coding test," but the whole process of finding a test that accurately reflects competence is itself quite difficult. The result is that we've ended up doing "trial runs" with contractors with the promise of full employment after some time, many of whom clearly demonstrate a real lack of preparedness after the first two weeks at the cost of a few thousand dollars.

riskable 11y ago

> “Now, we need to design curricula that are more aligned with employer expectations...” What would that be? Classes in blame management? Email necromancy? How to beat your peers in stack ranking? How to obtain mandatory technical skills without training? How to live cheaply when your employer doesn't pay enough? How about employers just admit that their problems are not unique (even though their software might be) and that training and retaining general-purpose employees is far more useful than hiring a bunch of (expensive) niche experts for every little project.

gluggymug 11y ago
Blame management is super important! Faking passion is what the grad in the article needs to work on apparently. I don't think unis are equipped to teach everything. The article says that internships are where grads can get workplace experience but I've never handed real problems to any interns. Who would? Important stuff needs actual employees. Frankly they'd learn more by watching me do my thing than solving their little intern assignments.

VOYD 11y ago

"Employers say students don’t have the ability to … think critically, innovate, solve complex problems and work well in a team." otherwise known as "work place experience".

malandrew 11y ago

I think part of the issue here is that back in the day with less automation, you could prove yourself useful merely with the skills that come along with having a pulse and a functioning brain. Your utility one just doing the unskilled parts of your job would let you keep a job long enough to learn the hard skills to really be useful within a few months to a year. Automation of all these menial tasks has gotten so good that you no longer have low hanging fruit to justify employment that the level of skill a recent college grad has coming out of school. Take some of the skills cited like statistics. Most people in the workforce have atrocious practical stats skills, but enough to get by. For recent grads, it's abysmal to non-existent. A few years ago to back in the day, you wouldn't have been expected to apply such skills on day one. You'd have enough time to realize your skill gap and address it. Not anymore. Anyone thinking about university is best served by choosing schools like University of Waterloo, where there is a strong culture of having kids do real work during the summer months at real companies (instead of summer school). Any school where kids are doing summer school or goofing around all summer are going to be left behind.