11 ms·

Overconfident Students, Dubious Employers

111 points by sylvainkalache 9y ago

thedudemabry 9y ago
While I agree that a problem is exposed by these findings, let's not judge college grads by their ability to judge how well they fit employers' privately-held expectations of an entry-level employee. Companies suck at training, balk at its costs, but lament its effects on the sourcing of young employees.
nostrademons 9y ago
I'm always a little skeptical of these sorts of surveys because it's hard to tease out what people believe about themselves because it's true vs. what people believe about themselves because it's useful. I remember that when I was a new grad, there was a very large part of myself that held a realistic appraisal of my abilities and was therefore scared shitless about my ability to make it in the working world. I was very careful to never let that part of me out in interviews - or, for that matter, to anyone. Confidence only works if you keep up the illusion so thoroughly that it ceases to be an illusion. And it worked. I got a job at a financial software startup, and then was put in charge of projects that no new grad should ever have been put in charge of. I grew into the role. I left to go found a startup, which is also something that someone with 2 years of work experience had no business doing. That worked too - I may not have been qualified to found a startup, but when I folded it up, I was a lot more qualified as an engineer than most of my other peers with 4 years of work experience. So Google hired me to work on the front page of the search engine, and I grew into that role too. The majority of my classmates let their accurate perceptions of what they were actually qualified to do govern what they applied to do, and as a result, many were still struggling to get into a career 10 years later. By that point, your self-perception has become reality, and it's much harder to convince potential employers to take the risk that you'll grow into the position. Then they wake up and realize that everybody's faking it and their new manager isn't actually all that much more skilled than them, but (barring a career reset like going to grad school) it's difficult to reset people's perceptions.
- Zanni 9y ago
  Related: these aren't even the competencies that employers have selected as most important, only the ones that the firm doing the survey selected. So how important are they really? Where do, for instance, "Career Management" and "Global/Intercultural Fluency" stack up against "Can actually do the job we're hiring them to do, e.g. program a computer"?
  - sandworm101 9y ago
    Intercultural fluency is code for people that are less likely to say the stupid things, either to customers or coworkers, that result in lawsuits. Career managment is code for people who can maintain professional qualifications without supervision, who book the course for themselves before something expires.
    - toomuchtodo 9y ago
      Code words for sussing out leaders vs those who need direction. Know how to grow, know when to bite your tongue.
- kartan 9y ago
  > Confidence only works if you keep up the illusion so thoroughly that it ceases to be an illusion. This was the same for me as new manager. I was less confident that I let interviewers see. But in the end I got that confidence for real. "Fake it till you make it"
- JCSato 9y ago
  Had the exact same thought coming here, couldn't have said it better.
- ericmcer 9y ago
  "What is your greatest weakness?". Everyone is expected to lie or warp reality a bit on this question. Interviewing is just a game and people learn pretty quickly to give the answers interviewers want to hear. The alternative to overconfidence is not great.
araes 9y ago
Implied in finishing university is the expectation that you have been taught what you need to make it in the work place. Its part of the social contract. Its what I paid you for right? Naturally, they answer with high confidence in their readiness. People who have worked a long time are in part answering for themselves. They look back at how much they've learned, changed, and developed. How much they had to learn on the job that was never taught in school. Were they actually unprepared, or are they just judging new grads based on a viewpoint that's colored by several years? When I was a hiring mgr, this could be one of the most frustrating things in a room. Trying to push to take a chance on a new grad, and having several others tell me they'd prefer the industry veteran who's lateraling. Even for "entry level" positions. Amazing how many people with really good CV's were applying for "entry level" jobs. On a last thought, there also seems to be a strong lack of faith that people can learn on the job from hiring folks. Maybe its just the above mentioned flood of high CV talent. Software for example: You know: c, c++, java, javascript, haskell, and perl. Ah, but you don't know Ruby, and we're really looking for Ruby. But, I know 6 other languages, I can learn one more...
- expertentipp 9y ago
  There is lack of faith that people can learn another Angular version even. You have experience wih 1.6?! We do TS+Angular 4 over here, sorry mate! Such companies are simply not hiring - bragging, teasing, probing the market perhaps - but certainly not hiring. Not only the framework landscape is broken but as well people are extremely anal about their preferences and choices.
  - walshemj 9y ago
    And what is the half-life of the latest and greatest frame work any way :-)
- rootlocus 9y ago
  > But, I know 6 other languages, I can learn one more... I doubt you professionally know 6 languages. There's a lot more to learn about the runtime, frameworks and tools of a language than there is syntax.
borntyping 9y ago
This means almost nothing without a baseline to compare it to. I'd suggest it's very likely that you'd get similar results if you surveyed any other age group - that individuals give higher estimates of their ability than someone else would is hardly surprising.
- austincheney 9y ago
  I disagree. There are unique personality traits that qualify the millennial stereotypes which are not present in older age groups. Young people will always believe they are ready for the world if all their elders tell them such no matter that this messaging is baseless and inaccurate. The problem is a level of personal fragility and lack of contrary frame of reference. Fortunately there is a minority population in that demographic that either studied appropriately or with the correct personality traits to see through, or utterly disregard, the dotting bullshit.
  - __s 9y ago
    Kids these days, amirite? https://mentalfloss.com/article/52209/15-historical-complaints-about-young-people-ruining-everything https://mentalfloss.com/article/52209/15-historical-complain...
    - austincheney 9y ago
      Millennials - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hER0Qp6QJNU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hER0Qp6QJNU
austincheney 9y ago
At the current job is the first time I have worked with young college graduates. It is interesting to see that some of the developers are humble and are completely ready for the corporate world while others are the opposite. It really comes down to personality and whether a person's personality has allowed them to practice more and work harder to learn a skill. These people tend to be much better prepared without the delusions of their own awesomeness. A college new hire isn't ever the rockstar their social reference group has indicated and the more humble personalities didn't need magic to figure this out. Yes, I have actually encountered college new hires who thought themselves as rockstars when in reality they seriously sucked. They cognitively knew they sucked, but somehow the arrogantly boasting rockstar self-persona was still there in very much a stereotypical millennial fashion.
- watwut 9y ago
  Sad prediction: overly confident will have better careers and will be seen as geniuses by people who don't work directly with them. They will have more responsibility sooner and even as they will make mistakes inittially (and some entirely), they will he excused and seen as leaders more then their humble peers. Incentives.
  - austincheney 9y ago
    Marissa Mayer - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marissa_Mayer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marissa_Mayer By all accounts she seemed to be a great product manager, but product management isn't organizational leadership. Likewise there is Hugh Jones - https://www.sabre.com/insights/releases/hugh-jones-to-head-travelocity-global-as-michelle-peluso-announces-departure/ https://www.sabre.com/insights/releases/hugh-jones-to-head-t... Hugh Jones was known for tenacious leadership in large volume business operations, but experience in retail and product was limited or absent.
  - paganel 9y ago
    This only works in big or medium companies, fortunately being over-confident without actually delivering stuff gets caught pretty soon in small companies (because it directly and adversely influences the bottom-line). In other words, small-company bosses/owners don’t really care of how confident you are, they only care about actual work that makes the clients happy, so that the bills and the salaries can be paid at the end of the month. That’s one of the main reasons why I’ve worked only for small software shops in my career, I can’t stand the wannabe people who always brag about themselves without actually doing anything of value.
Rexxar 9y ago
"Proficient" doesn't mean the same thing for the two categories. For example, it probably means: -> for student : "I will manage to have a job a do it" -> for employer : "do the job as good as other employees" So comparison is meaningless.
lr4444lr 9y ago
But Brandon Busteed, executive director of Gallup's higher education division, which also conducts research related to graduates and careers, said these sorts of definitions can vary For instance, Gallup has found that generally an employer believes that "critical thinking" is coming up with new, original thought. But in an academic sense, it can mean more picking apart ideas in depth, he said. Given that their definition of "critical thinking" (which is incorrect,) differs from the academic one, employers are probably responding on a completely different wavelength. That throws this whole survey into question.
- nitwit005 9y ago
  It's fairly normal for terms to have different academic and non-academic usage. There is a reason so many surveys define terms.
  - homonculus1 9y ago
    Critical thinking isn't some kind of academic jargon. It literally means applying criticism to the subject of thought.
    - nitwit005 9y ago
      And? It's normal for words to drift in meaning over time. You have to deal with the reality of language, not "how it's supposed to be".
      - lr4444lr 9y ago
        I agree with you in the general sense, but the employers (whoever they are) are simply wrong by any reasonable standard of language to equate critical thinking with original thinking. For example, the skill of top lawyers is inseparably wed to critical thinking. They need to parse arguments and pore over monotonous tomes of legislation, regulatory paperwork, contracts, and case law to find areas of weakness or inconsistency to exploit/tighten up. They do this through slow, methodical analysis, consultation with other experts, and then have to distill and apply the essence of these points into language defendable against industry peers who are working for the other side. This work requires deeply critical thinking, but has nothing to do with "new, original thought".
hashkb 9y ago
It's silly to ask a college graduate of 20-25 years old anything about professional conduct. Can't we just appreciate that they're young and excited? Anyone with a career a few years long knows exactly how professional to expect a recent graduate to act at their first job; it's everyone else's job to mentor them and set a good example of professional behavior.
- tylergetsay 9y ago
  As somebody younger (and more naive) that is only 2-3 years into my career, I do my best to remain professional. What's some things to look out for?
  - sedachv 9y ago
    Your local public library will have a lot of quality career advice books. Nancy Barry's When Reality Hits is a good one. Go to the shelf it is on and browse around.
bbarn 9y ago
I find it interesting the one outlier in this is in "digital technology". Is that the age difference in action?
greggarious 9y ago
Maybe it's because employers want >2 years experience from people straight out of college, and no one wants to train. Companies claim they don't want to train because you could just leave (at will) but it's relatively simple to draw up a contract that employees must pay back training costs if they don't stay at least a year or two.
- sotojuan 9y ago
  Companies don't "want" to train because employees "don't stay" but companies also don't provide incentive for employees to stay for more than a few years.
- walshemj 9y ago
  Actually harder to do even in the USA - employers don't want to pay the market rate aka how capitalism works.
StanislavPetrov 9y ago
When you give every kid a trophy, they all think that they are winners. We have raised a generation of children who have been infantilized and sheltered throughout their childhood and college years. The inevitable result, unfortunately, is a generation of adults that lack the ability to tackle adversity, think critically, or make valid self-assessments (something that is difficult even for the most enlightened). We have a system of social and academic promotion that has virtually no relation to objective metrics. Many universities (and law schools), even the most prestigious, are eliminating objective admission standards because so many applicants are unable to meet them. Its no surprise that those who have been conditioned since birth to believe that they are entitled to "achievements" have an inflated view of their abilities. The steady decline in literacy, critical thinking, and overall competence (from already low historical levels) mirrors the steady decline and atrophication of our society as a whole. http://college.usatoday.com/2016/07/18/columbia-and-barnard-are-the-latest-schools-to-drop-sat-and-act-requirements/ http://college.usatoday.com/2016/07/18/columbia-and-barnard-... https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2017/03/08/harvard-law-school-will-no-longer-require-the-lsat-for-admission/?utm_term=.cdf318624bbf https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2017/03/0... https://www.fairtest.org/schools-do-not-use-sat-or-act-scores-admitting-substantial-numbers-students-bachelor-degree-programs https://www.fairtest.org/schools-do-not-use-sat-or-act-score...
- Kluny 9y ago
  Oh fuck off with the trophies. I never wanted them. I got a 6th place ribbon for high jump, a "most improved shooter" trophy in the range club, and a "participant" ribbon in an elementary school basketball league where they explicitly didn't keep score during games. I knew I was a terrible athlete and the ridiculous trophies and ribbons were humiliating. I certainly never got the idea I was a winner.
- tomtoise 9y ago
  Of course, if your stereotype is correct, this does beg the question about who decided it was a good idea to GIVE 'the kids' all these trophies.
  - 9y ago
ergothus 9y ago
Others have mentioned the vagueness and low value of the questions, but I'm particularly struck by the professionalism/work ethic one. Professionalism is tough, because we define it (roughly) as seeking the common expectations for the role, but one of those expectations is "professionalism". And "work ethic"...Im a gen Xer and I feel like millennials are getting dumped on more than the normal generational strife, to a very unfair level. (Example: I see a lot more snowflakes and need for "participation trophies" among those complaining about such things than among the millenials themselves) Which leads me to wonder, particularly with work ethic, is it the students or the employer that have the unrealistic expectation?
- MBCook 9y ago
  I have a feeling that many of these numbers would have looked similar 10, 20, 30 years ago. Is the news here that these numbers are much lower than they used to be? Or just that we know them.
- mjevans 9y ago
  I have a feeling that both have unrealistic expectations. Graduates: I won't say all, but I do think many modern graduates allow themselves to be too easily distracted on a mobile computer they own. Employeers: High expectations of engagement and 'loyalty', but low pay, low benefits, and lacking support in the environment at work. Somehow able to remain productive when in a highly distracting environment with no expectation of actual tranquility for focus. Is masochist the kind of professional they're describing? Ultimately this is one of those issues where a clear set of expectations and some metric of measuring them should be set; then an independent review party should measure if just the metric was being met, or if things were normal but the metric was still being met.
  - dasmoth 9y ago
    Graduates: I won't say all, but I do think many modern graduates allow themselves to be too easily distracted on a mobile computer they own. While I think there’s some truth in this (and, ahem, not-so-modern grads...), it seems like measuring the wrong thing. If someone posts 50 times a day to whatever the current friendfaceinstabook might be and delivers useful code (or whatever) on a regular basis, isn’t that fine? Focus on the latter, don’t stress about the former.
walshemj 9y ago
Or the short version employers don't want to train new graduates even less than they did a generation ago. The increase of degree required jobs means that organisations that used to take highschool leavers at 16 or 18 and train them now think that university should do all the vocational training - they are also not getting the top quartile of grads either.
ryandrake 9y ago
> The AAC&U looked at some of the same measures as the association. Specifically around oral communication, students ranked themselves highly -- about 62 percent of students believed they did well in this area compared to 28 percent of employers. That and written communication showed the biggest gaps in the AAC&U report (27 percent of employers versus 65 percent of students). Kind of difficult to disagree with this one. I know it's passé these days to worry about trivial things like correct grammar, spelling, and usage. I've had fruitless discussions on this very site where people will argue that it doesn't matter how you use the language if, ultimately, the message somehow manages to get conveyed. Terrible language skills are not just found among new grads though, I've seen them across the workforce, including appalling spelling in communications from the SVP level. There's a non-zero cost, too: the cost of having to get people to repeat themselves, the cost of ambiguity when your manager poorly communicates their wishes, the cost of misunderstood information bubbling up the chain to decision makers. It adds up.
- peruvian 9y ago
  > I've had fruitless discussions on this very site where people will argue that it doesn't matter how you use the language if, ultimately, the message somehow manages to get conveyed. Most of the time terrible language does manage to hinder the message! But the writer doesn't realize this, because for them it's obvious. I had a coworker (who is almost 30 and a college graduate) with this very attitude. A lot of his code comments and documentation had grammar mistakes and quirks (Random periods. In the middle of phrases.) that made it very hard to read and thus understand.
  - robbick 9y ago
    Agreed - I think the 'its how the message gets conveyed' only applies to really trivial things, like 'expresso', or whom vs who where the incorrect version is so clear that it doesn't affect the readability.
    - ryandrake 9y ago
      Here's the thing about the "expressos," "irregardless," "for all intensive purposes," and "mute points" out there: Even if the meaning is clear and the communication is successful, these convey a carelessness and sloppiness that, as a great engineer, you don't deserve! As someone who knows what you're doing and takes pride in your craft, things like bad spelling and usage needlessly undermine your credibility.
daphneokeefe 9y ago
I'm not sure the word "dubious" means what you think it means. Are the employers dubious?
smallnamespace 9y ago
The pressure to be overconfident sometimes comes directly from employers. One time, walking into an interview for an entry-level position, the interviewer completely ignored me and continued to stare at my resume for two minutes. The first words out of his mouth were, "At Lehman Brothers, we only hire winners. Are you a winner!?" In retrospect, I'm glad that interaction happened and revealed what the company's ethos was; otherwise, I might have been tempted to work there.
k6k7f7uky8ki 9y ago
How are employers coming up with these scores, just off the top of their heads? I wouldn't trust some of my previous employers to make a decent omelette.
crazygringo 9y ago
Is this anything more than the general human trait where most people think more highly of themselves than others do of them? E.g. where 90% of people tend to consider themselves above-average, when mathematically it can only be 50%? Colloquially called the "Lake Wobegon effect" after the fictional lake area where "all the children are above-average". See [1]. There doesn't appear to be any evidence that this has anything to do with students and employers specifically. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_superiority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_superiority
- autokad 9y ago
  that ("90% of people tend to consider themselves above-average") can mathematically be true if you have a skewed distribution. suppose that 90% of drivers have no accidents at all, while the other 10% have 10 accidents per year. Then the average (mean) is 1 accident per year, and fully 90% of drivers are better than average!
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
jadedhacker 9y ago
"The easy solution: set students up in a more professional environment, Busteed said -- this could be internships or co-op programs. If students can't go to an actual office, then the environment should be brought to them so they have a better sense of how a workplace runs." Because education is only about job training so that workers are pliant and ready to to be directed by the system of hierarchy. Thus, turn higher education into the same factory training that high school is. This, in an era when profits are already soaring.

While I agree that a problem is exposed by these findings, let's not judge college grads by their ability to judge how well they fit employers' privately-held expectations of an entry-level employee. Companies suck at training, balk at its costs, but lament its effects on the sourcing of young employees.

nostrademons 9y ago

I'm always a little skeptical of these sorts of surveys because it's hard to tease out what people believe about themselves because it's true vs. what people believe about themselves because it's useful. I remember that when I was a new grad, there was a very large part of myself that held a realistic appraisal of my abilities and was therefore scared shitless about my ability to make it in the working world. I was very careful to never let that part of me out in interviews - or, for that matter, to anyone. Confidence only works if you keep up the illusion so thoroughly that it ceases to be an illusion. And it worked. I got a job at a financial software startup, and then was put in charge of projects that no new grad should ever have been put in charge of. I grew into the role. I left to go found a startup, which is also something that someone with 2 years of work experience had no business doing. That worked too - I may not have been qualified to found a startup, but when I folded it up, I was a lot more qualified as an engineer than most of my other peers with 4 years of work experience. So Google hired me to work on the front page of the search engine, and I grew into that role too. The majority of my classmates let their accurate perceptions of what they were actually qualified to do govern what they applied to do, and as a result, many were still struggling to get into a career 10 years later. By that point, your self-perception has become reality, and it's much harder to convince potential employers to take the risk that you'll grow into the position. Then they wake up and realize that everybody's faking it and their new manager isn't actually all that much more skilled than them, but (barring a career reset like going to grad school) it's difficult to reset people's perceptions.

Zanni 9y ago
Related: these aren't even the competencies that employers have selected as most important, only the ones that the firm doing the survey selected. So how important are they really? Where do, for instance, "Career Management" and "Global/Intercultural Fluency" stack up against "Can actually do the job we're hiring them to do, e.g. program a computer"?
- sandworm101 9y ago
  Intercultural fluency is code for people that are less likely to say the stupid things, either to customers or coworkers, that result in lawsuits. Career managment is code for people who can maintain professional qualifications without supervision, who book the course for themselves before something expires.
  - toomuchtodo 9y ago
    Code words for sussing out leaders vs those who need direction. Know how to grow, know when to bite your tongue.
kartan 9y ago
> Confidence only works if you keep up the illusion so thoroughly that it ceases to be an illusion. This was the same for me as new manager. I was less confident that I let interviewers see. But in the end I got that confidence for real. "Fake it till you make it"
JCSato 9y ago
Had the exact same thought coming here, couldn't have said it better.
ericmcer 9y ago
"What is your greatest weakness?". Everyone is expected to lie or warp reality a bit on this question. Interviewing is just a game and people learn pretty quickly to give the answers interviewers want to hear. The alternative to overconfidence is not great.

araes 9y ago

Implied in finishing university is the expectation that you have been taught what you need to make it in the work place. Its part of the social contract. Its what I paid you for right? Naturally, they answer with high confidence in their readiness. People who have worked a long time are in part answering for themselves. They look back at how much they've learned, changed, and developed. How much they had to learn on the job that was never taught in school. Were they actually unprepared, or are they just judging new grads based on a viewpoint that's colored by several years? When I was a hiring mgr, this could be one of the most frustrating things in a room. Trying to push to take a chance on a new grad, and having several others tell me they'd prefer the industry veteran who's lateraling. Even for "entry level" positions. Amazing how many people with really good CV's were applying for "entry level" jobs. On a last thought, there also seems to be a strong lack of faith that people can learn on the job from hiring folks. Maybe its just the above mentioned flood of high CV talent. Software for example: You know: c, c++, java, javascript, haskell, and perl. Ah, but you don't know Ruby, and we're really looking for Ruby. But, I know 6 other languages, I can learn one more...

expertentipp 9y ago
There is lack of faith that people can learn another Angular version even. You have experience wih 1.6?! We do TS+Angular 4 over here, sorry mate! Such companies are simply not hiring - bragging, teasing, probing the market perhaps - but certainly not hiring. Not only the framework landscape is broken but as well people are extremely anal about their preferences and choices.
- walshemj 9y ago
  And what is the half-life of the latest and greatest frame work any way :-)
rootlocus 9y ago
> But, I know 6 other languages, I can learn one more... I doubt you professionally know 6 languages. There's a lot more to learn about the runtime, frameworks and tools of a language than there is syntax.

borntyping 9y ago

This means almost nothing without a baseline to compare it to. I'd suggest it's very likely that you'd get similar results if you surveyed any other age group - that individuals give higher estimates of their ability than someone else would is hardly surprising.

austincheney 9y ago
I disagree. There are unique personality traits that qualify the millennial stereotypes which are not present in older age groups. Young people will always believe they are ready for the world if all their elders tell them such no matter that this messaging is baseless and inaccurate. The problem is a level of personal fragility and lack of contrary frame of reference. Fortunately there is a minority population in that demographic that either studied appropriately or with the correct personality traits to see through, or utterly disregard, the dotting bullshit.
- __s 9y ago
  Kids these days, amirite? https://mentalfloss.com/article/52209/15-historical-complaints-about-young-people-ruining-everything https://mentalfloss.com/article/52209/15-historical-complain...
  - austincheney 9y ago
    Millennials - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hER0Qp6QJNU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hER0Qp6QJNU

austincheney 9y ago

At the current job is the first time I have worked with young college graduates. It is interesting to see that some of the developers are humble and are completely ready for the corporate world while others are the opposite. It really comes down to personality and whether a person's personality has allowed them to practice more and work harder to learn a skill. These people tend to be much better prepared without the delusions of their own awesomeness. A college new hire isn't ever the rockstar their social reference group has indicated and the more humble personalities didn't need magic to figure this out. Yes, I have actually encountered college new hires who thought themselves as rockstars when in reality they seriously sucked. They cognitively knew they sucked, but somehow the arrogantly boasting rockstar self-persona was still there in very much a stereotypical millennial fashion.

watwut 9y ago
Sad prediction: overly confident will have better careers and will be seen as geniuses by people who don't work directly with them. They will have more responsibility sooner and even as they will make mistakes inittially (and some entirely), they will he excused and seen as leaders more then their humble peers. Incentives.
- austincheney 9y ago
  Marissa Mayer - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marissa_Mayer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marissa_Mayer By all accounts she seemed to be a great product manager, but product management isn't organizational leadership. Likewise there is Hugh Jones - https://www.sabre.com/insights/releases/hugh-jones-to-head-travelocity-global-as-michelle-peluso-announces-departure/ https://www.sabre.com/insights/releases/hugh-jones-to-head-t... Hugh Jones was known for tenacious leadership in large volume business operations, but experience in retail and product was limited or absent.
- paganel 9y ago
  This only works in big or medium companies, fortunately being over-confident without actually delivering stuff gets caught pretty soon in small companies (because it directly and adversely influences the bottom-line). In other words, small-company bosses/owners don’t really care of how confident you are, they only care about actual work that makes the clients happy, so that the bills and the salaries can be paid at the end of the month. That’s one of the main reasons why I’ve worked only for small software shops in my career, I can’t stand the wannabe people who always brag about themselves without actually doing anything of value.

Rexxar 9y ago

"Proficient" doesn't mean the same thing for the two categories. For example, it probably means: -> for student : "I will manage to have a job a do it" -> for employer : "do the job as good as other employees" So comparison is meaningless.

lr4444lr 9y ago

But Brandon Busteed, executive director of Gallup's higher education division, which also conducts research related to graduates and careers, said these sorts of definitions can vary For instance, Gallup has found that generally an employer believes that "critical thinking" is coming up with new, original thought. But in an academic sense, it can mean more picking apart ideas in depth, he said. Given that their definition of "critical thinking" (which is incorrect,) differs from the academic one, employers are probably responding on a completely different wavelength. That throws this whole survey into question.

nitwit005 9y ago
It's fairly normal for terms to have different academic and non-academic usage. There is a reason so many surveys define terms.
- homonculus1 9y ago
  Critical thinking isn't some kind of academic jargon. It literally means applying criticism to the subject of thought.
  - nitwit005 9y ago
    And? It's normal for words to drift in meaning over time. You have to deal with the reality of language, not "how it's supposed to be".
    - lr4444lr 9y ago
      I agree with you in the general sense, but the employers (whoever they are) are simply wrong by any reasonable standard of language to equate critical thinking with original thinking. For example, the skill of top lawyers is inseparably wed to critical thinking. They need to parse arguments and pore over monotonous tomes of legislation, regulatory paperwork, contracts, and case law to find areas of weakness or inconsistency to exploit/tighten up. They do this through slow, methodical analysis, consultation with other experts, and then have to distill and apply the essence of these points into language defendable against industry peers who are working for the other side. This work requires deeply critical thinking, but has nothing to do with "new, original thought".

hashkb 9y ago

It's silly to ask a college graduate of 20-25 years old anything about professional conduct. Can't we just appreciate that they're young and excited? Anyone with a career a few years long knows exactly how professional to expect a recent graduate to act at their first job; it's everyone else's job to mentor them and set a good example of professional behavior.

tylergetsay 9y ago
As somebody younger (and more naive) that is only 2-3 years into my career, I do my best to remain professional. What's some things to look out for?
- sedachv 9y ago
  Your local public library will have a lot of quality career advice books. Nancy Barry's When Reality Hits is a good one. Go to the shelf it is on and browse around.

bbarn 9y ago

I find it interesting the one outlier in this is in "digital technology". Is that the age difference in action?

greggarious 9y ago

Maybe it's because employers want >2 years experience from people straight out of college, and no one wants to train. Companies claim they don't want to train because you could just leave (at will) but it's relatively simple to draw up a contract that employees must pay back training costs if they don't stay at least a year or two.

sotojuan 9y ago
Companies don't "want" to train because employees "don't stay" but companies also don't provide incentive for employees to stay for more than a few years.
walshemj 9y ago
Actually harder to do even in the USA - employers don't want to pay the market rate aka how capitalism works.

StanislavPetrov 9y ago

When you give every kid a trophy, they all think that they are winners. We have raised a generation of children who have been infantilized and sheltered throughout their childhood and college years. The inevitable result, unfortunately, is a generation of adults that lack the ability to tackle adversity, think critically, or make valid self-assessments (something that is difficult even for the most enlightened). We have a system of social and academic promotion that has virtually no relation to objective metrics. Many universities (and law schools), even the most prestigious, are eliminating objective admission standards because so many applicants are unable to meet them. Its no surprise that those who have been conditioned since birth to believe that they are entitled to "achievements" have an inflated view of their abilities. The steady decline in literacy, critical thinking, and overall competence (from already low historical levels) mirrors the steady decline and atrophication of our society as a whole. http://college.usatoday.com/2016/07/18/columbia-and-barnard-are-the-latest-schools-to-drop-sat-and-act-requirements/ http://college.usatoday.com/2016/07/18/columbia-and-barnard-... https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2017/03/08/harvard-law-school-will-no-longer-require-the-lsat-for-admission/?utm_term=.cdf318624bbf https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2017/03/0... https://www.fairtest.org/schools-do-not-use-sat-or-act-scores-admitting-substantial-numbers-students-bachelor-degree-programs https://www.fairtest.org/schools-do-not-use-sat-or-act-score...

Kluny 9y ago
Oh fuck off with the trophies. I never wanted them. I got a 6th place ribbon for high jump, a "most improved shooter" trophy in the range club, and a "participant" ribbon in an elementary school basketball league where they explicitly didn't keep score during games. I knew I was a terrible athlete and the ridiculous trophies and ribbons were humiliating. I certainly never got the idea I was a winner.
tomtoise 9y ago
Of course, if your stereotype is correct, this does beg the question about who decided it was a good idea to GIVE 'the kids' all these trophies.
- 9y ago

ergothus 9y ago

Others have mentioned the vagueness and low value of the questions, but I'm particularly struck by the professionalism/work ethic one. Professionalism is tough, because we define it (roughly) as seeking the common expectations for the role, but one of those expectations is "professionalism". And "work ethic"...Im a gen Xer and I feel like millennials are getting dumped on more than the normal generational strife, to a very unfair level. (Example: I see a lot more snowflakes and need for "participation trophies" among those complaining about such things than among the millenials themselves) Which leads me to wonder, particularly with work ethic, is it the students or the employer that have the unrealistic expectation?

MBCook 9y ago
I have a feeling that many of these numbers would have looked similar 10, 20, 30 years ago. Is the news here that these numbers are much lower than they used to be? Or just that we know them.
mjevans 9y ago
I have a feeling that both have unrealistic expectations. Graduates: I won't say all, but I do think many modern graduates allow themselves to be too easily distracted on a mobile computer they own. Employeers: High expectations of engagement and 'loyalty', but low pay, low benefits, and lacking support in the environment at work. Somehow able to remain productive when in a highly distracting environment with no expectation of actual tranquility for focus. Is masochist the kind of professional they're describing? Ultimately this is one of those issues where a clear set of expectations and some metric of measuring them should be set; then an independent review party should measure if just the metric was being met, or if things were normal but the metric was still being met.
- dasmoth 9y ago
  Graduates: I won't say all, but I do think many modern graduates allow themselves to be too easily distracted on a mobile computer they own. While I think there’s some truth in this (and, ahem, not-so-modern grads...), it seems like measuring the wrong thing. If someone posts 50 times a day to whatever the current friendfaceinstabook might be and delivers useful code (or whatever) on a regular basis, isn’t that fine? Focus on the latter, don’t stress about the former.

walshemj 9y ago

Or the short version employers don't want to train new graduates even less than they did a generation ago. The increase of degree required jobs means that organisations that used to take highschool leavers at 16 or 18 and train them now think that university should do all the vocational training - they are also not getting the top quartile of grads either.

ryandrake 9y ago

> The AAC&U looked at some of the same measures as the association. Specifically around oral communication, students ranked themselves highly -- about 62 percent of students believed they did well in this area compared to 28 percent of employers. That and written communication showed the biggest gaps in the AAC&U report (27 percent of employers versus 65 percent of students). Kind of difficult to disagree with this one. I know it's passé these days to worry about trivial things like correct grammar, spelling, and usage. I've had fruitless discussions on this very site where people will argue that it doesn't matter how you use the language if, ultimately, the message somehow manages to get conveyed. Terrible language skills are not just found among new grads though, I've seen them across the workforce, including appalling spelling in communications from the SVP level. There's a non-zero cost, too: the cost of having to get people to repeat themselves, the cost of ambiguity when your manager poorly communicates their wishes, the cost of misunderstood information bubbling up the chain to decision makers. It adds up.

peruvian 9y ago
> I've had fruitless discussions on this very site where people will argue that it doesn't matter how you use the language if, ultimately, the message somehow manages to get conveyed. Most of the time terrible language does manage to hinder the message! But the writer doesn't realize this, because for them it's obvious. I had a coworker (who is almost 30 and a college graduate) with this very attitude. A lot of his code comments and documentation had grammar mistakes and quirks (Random periods. In the middle of phrases.) that made it very hard to read and thus understand.
- robbick 9y ago
  Agreed - I think the 'its how the message gets conveyed' only applies to really trivial things, like 'expresso', or whom vs who where the incorrect version is so clear that it doesn't affect the readability.
  - ryandrake 9y ago
    Here's the thing about the "expressos," "irregardless," "for all intensive purposes," and "mute points" out there: Even if the meaning is clear and the communication is successful, these convey a carelessness and sloppiness that, as a great engineer, you don't deserve! As someone who knows what you're doing and takes pride in your craft, things like bad spelling and usage needlessly undermine your credibility.

daphneokeefe 9y ago

I'm not sure the word "dubious" means what you think it means. Are the employers dubious?

smallnamespace 9y ago

The pressure to be overconfident sometimes comes directly from employers. One time, walking into an interview for an entry-level position, the interviewer completely ignored me and continued to stare at my resume for two minutes. The first words out of his mouth were, "At Lehman Brothers, we only hire winners. Are you a winner!?" In retrospect, I'm glad that interaction happened and revealed what the company's ethos was; otherwise, I might have been tempted to work there.

k6k7f7uky8ki 9y ago

How are employers coming up with these scores, just off the top of their heads? I wouldn't trust some of my previous employers to make a decent omelette.

crazygringo 9y ago

Is this anything more than the general human trait where most people think more highly of themselves than others do of them? E.g. where 90% of people tend to consider themselves above-average, when mathematically it can only be 50%? Colloquially called the "Lake Wobegon effect" after the fictional lake area where "all the children are above-average". See [1]. There doesn't appear to be any evidence that this has anything to do with students and employers specifically. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_superiority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_superiority

autokad 9y ago
that ("90% of people tend to consider themselves above-average") can mathematically be true if you have a skewed distribution. suppose that 90% of drivers have no accidents at all, while the other 10% have 10 accidents per year. Then the average (mean) is 1 accident per year, and fully 90% of drivers are better than average!

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

jadedhacker 9y ago

"The easy solution: set students up in a more professional environment, Busteed said -- this could be internships or co-op programs. If students can't go to an actual office, then the environment should be brought to them so they have a better sense of how a workplace runs." Because education is only about job training so that workers are pliant and ready to to be directed by the system of hierarchy. Thus, turn higher education into the same factory training that high school is. This, in an era when profits are already soaring.