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1 in 6 Companies Are Hesitant to Hire Recent College Graduates
- chrisweekly 2y agoIn other news, 83% of companies are happy to hire recent college grads. That number seems relatively high to me.
- tightbookkeeper 2y agoThe trend of prolonging adolescence bleeds over to employment. It feels like You aren’t a full employee until 28 years old with a graduate degree. And I am skeptical of claims that this is due to increasing specialization and more training. It’s just more hoops to differentiate yourself, and lower hiring risk.
- TehCorwiz 2y agoAnother factor is companies trying to use fewer staff which results in employees needing more skills to be effective in that environment. It could be fixed if companies hired with the expectation that they train into the positions, but given the labor market there are still enough job seekers that fit their criteria.
- JansjoFromIkea 2y agoEmployees don't stay at companies long enough to warrant training them Employees don't stay at companies long enough because they virtually always only get market level salary increases by going elsewhere There's basically zero space in two week sprints in many companies to accommodate adequate training regardless.
- magicalhippo 2y ago> Employees don't stay at companies long enough to warrant training them We're a smaller but growing company, and this is the case for us. If you're planning to move on in 2-3 years it's just not worth it for us to invest in you. When we grown a bit larger we might have some more positions that are compatible with short-term work, but so far we rely on devs to have a lot of independence and domain knowledge.
- JansjoFromIkea 2y agoIt's interesting to focus in specifically on that one when "so far we rely on devs to have a lot of independence and domain knowledge" suggests there isn't the capacity to train them anyway? And the plan to move on in 2-3 years is one which has been cultivated by the last few decades of employment norms so it's not fair to pin that one on the current group of juniors either, especially when it's equally likely most of your team will be around in 3 years either. I do get smaller companies not being able to do it, but it seems like we're reaching a point where "smaller but growing" can be stretched to mean a company with a few hundred employees and if they don't have the ability to handle juniors it's hard to know what chance most people have of getting a start.
- magicalhippo 2y agoWe have capacity, but not a lot. Hence why we need to ensure it's not wasted. That said, sure, this isn't an issue with the latest crop. However I get the feeling from my more senior colleagues that this wasn't common back a couple of decades ago, at least here in Norway. But yeah, we've been 7 devs for a good while, we've grown to 12 over the last year or so, hence why a single person makes such a difference. Once we reach 20+ I fully expect to have room for more junior devs. If not we're doing it wrong.
- atrettel 2y agoI'm in research and I'd just like to add that in many respects, you are not treated like an adult by some people until you have completed a few postdocs. Multiple graduate degrees are simply not enough for some people.
- tightbookkeeper 2y agoAgreed. “If you just keep volunteering for committees and teaching classes maybe we’ll let you in at age 40.” This is such a strange state of affairs where traditionally getting into academia meant delaying your career from age 23 to 27 when you would become an assistant professor.
- electriclove 2y agoYup.. we forced everyone to take on massive debt and then gave everyone a college degree.. tada, they don’t mean anything
- sksxihve 2y agoThe claims in the article don't have anything to do with meaningless degrees though, it mostly covers issues with work ethic, professionalism, communications, etc. I hired and subsequently fired two new college grads in the last two years and both had most if not all the issues listed. It was a huge challenge to get them to do basic things even when I told them they needed to be done multiple times. I have a third recent college grad working on my team and they are doing great because they put in the work.
- alsetmusic 2y agoIt’s sorta like when I wanted to break into the market as a Linux sysadmin and all the opening positions required 3-5 years of experience. There’s no room to be a beginner and no training.
- hshshshshsh 2y agoStop believing stupid shit. Keep applying.
- galleywest200 2y agoI got my DevOps job with quite a bit less experience than the job posting stated. Granted I was an internal hire, but I still learned the lesson that you miss all the shots you never take. Just apply! The worst thing they do is say no.
- PhilipRoman 2y agoIf you have no formal job experience, thats fine - apply anyway and most likely you'll get to the point where you can demonstrate your skills. Government stuff aside, most job requirements are extremely flexible.
- candiddevmike 2y agoThe best path for juniors IMO is through consulting companies, they are built to train and level folks up. Folks can then choose when they want off the consulting rollercoaster. Alternatively having a real apprenticeship program developed for tech would be super useful, but we hate it when we try to do real engineer things.
- electronbeam 2y agoLots of companies need skills they don't know how to ask for. So they advertise for the wrong things. For example a medium size real estate firm probably needs someone to deal with the computers. Its a grind but cold reach out can go far
- mistrial9 2y agothis seems like bad example.. a commercial company in the US almost always has Windows.. Windows is a merry-go-round of virus and intrusive, debilitating updates. Professional consultants in every big city exist to do nothing but get paid to babysit Windows. Why spend money on training a junior that may leave, instead of hiring the consultants that know how to babysit Windows? .. Secondly, real estate is close to law and banking, where there is a culture of semi-arbitrary seniority.. juniors do as they are told by their managers or else you are replaced. It is a situation that most adults quickly try to leave, but there are infinite numbers of new semi-desperate people to replace the juniors, as there have been for the last several centuries in those professions. For those two reasons, a real estate office is a bad example of the dynamics of hiring junior (high skill) CS graduates IMHO I agree that companies do a poor job of advertising and screening for skills that they really need. Guessing, it might have to do with HR or worse, bad-intention managers, copying the habits of other hiring practices blindly.
- lokimedes 2y ago17%, that is hardly a story.
- legobmw99 2y agoI wonder how much of this has to do with Covid interrupting a lot of recent grads’ time in college and forcing a large percentage of their courses to be online for a time It seems pretty obvious to me that the quality of both teaching and assessment plummeted during this time, so I suspect that it’s even harder than usual to trust things like a transcript to see what an applicant really knows
- wisty 2y agoIs college actually adding value, or just filtering? If it's more the later, then more degrees mean that they're worth less.
- iknowSFR 2y agohttps://www.statista.com/statistics/184260/educational-attainment-in-the-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/184260/educational-attai... It’s always been a filter. Or rather, a qualifier for white collar jobs. It doesn’t mean there isn’t value obtained in education OR that their value is becoming more diluted as the more of the population obtains a bachelor’s degree. It just means that there are new qualifiers. Examples: specific schools are held in higher regard, requirements for higher education, job experience or portfolio, etc.
- fwip 2y agoIt adds value. I don't think anybody learned nothing in 4 years of college.
- anonyfox 2y agoThe most important signal of a degree is a written proof that a person somehow managed to show up to something for a longer timespan without being physically forced to constantly. Basically a minimum baseline of reliability and self-organization. The reality is _a lot_ of applicants without any proof like that don't last long and thus wasting lots of company resources (including rehiring). Of course there are many very great folks without a degree and also a lot of idiots with a degree, but I learned to trust that heuristic until a strong signal otherwise pops up.
- pojzon 2y ago1/3 are hesitant to hire older ppl. Companies are not hesitant to hire only: - 25 with 10y exp - no kids - no plans for family - keen to unpaid overtime - no vacations planned - underpaid and happy Kind of ppl. Who would have thought ?
- BirAdam 2y agoWe used to call this 22/22/22: 22yrs old, working 22 hours a day, for 22k/yr.
- marcosdumay 2y agoThey are probably hesitant to hire those too. Only large companies aren't hesitant to hire people.
- Hatrix 2y agoCompanies invent new reasons to not hire people all the time.
- plantwallshoe 2y agoEhh I’ve seen the opposite line of thought too. People with kids and mortgages crave stability and aren’t trying to job hop every 18 months.
- Flux159 2y agoI would also say that more than 1 in 6 companies don’t have the culture or resources to make college graduates successful - I’m more experienced with software engineers, but it takes significant time and effort from management and senior talent to make recent graduates set up for success. It’s less for other senior talent, but sometimes senior talent still needs significant help. One good thing about most college graduates is that they can generally learn new things quickly, especially if they’re willing to put in some effort.
- vrosas 2y agoI’ve found places that only hire “senior” dev talent to be pretty trash culture-wise. Management only wants coders who can pump out features and does nothing to invest in any type of learning or support. Even things like documentation are deprioritized because any new dev should be able to “hit the ground running” because, hey, we only hire experienced engineers, right?
- onionisafruit 2y agoI've worked at three tech companies with that policy and various degrees of success with it. One had the best documentation and onboarding experience I've seen so far. The other two were close to what you describe.
- azinman2 2y agoIt’s one thing to train a person. It’s another to teach them not to interrupt people or be rude. I had a recent experience with a college student who had just terrible communication skills. It was a total turn off, and the quality of the work was good. And yet I’d never choose to work with this person again.
- detaro 2y agoAnd you've never encountered someone rude or with poor communication skills from a different generation?
- curiousObject 2y agoI guess we all know the problem: the money they might save the company on salary is nothing compared to the money they could cost you in every other way. The chance of hiring a genius is tiny. So, hope someone else performs that experiment for you.
- arccy 2y agoIf companies want experience... they should bring back proper apprenticeships instead of forcing people to squeeze in internships between studying impractical things.
- tgv 2y agoThose aren't shocking numbers, I think. Certainly not without a baseline.
- margalabargala 2y agoAgree, there's nothing in this article that makes me think that it wouldn't be equally true if you wrote it ten years ago about millenials. Or twenty-five years ago about Gen X. It's just an article about "how older people tend to feel about hiring new college grads". There's nothing new about Gen Z that makes them somehow "less hireable".
- onionisafruit 2y agoAs a Gen X, I remember hearing this about my cohort in the early 90s.
- dkasper 2y agoTo me this sounds typical. I seem to remember people saying similar things about millennials 15 years ago. Would be curious to see a comparison.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- electronbeam 2y agoNew grads are a lot of work to train
- fwip 2y agoIf 5 in 6 companies have no hesitation about hiring recent college grads, that seems fine.
- golly_ned 2y agoNoting that these surveys reflect managers' attitudes towards Gen Z recent college graduates, not the actual traits of Gen Z recent college graduates.
- jamboca 2y agoI will add my experience. I graduated with a CS degree from a well known state school a few months ago, I have been applying to so many jobs I lost count, but after being ghosted to even entry level jobs I have pretty much given up on my CS dreams… why should I basically work myself to death for a field that seems like it doesn’t even care about me? Note I had two internship-style experiences while in school, making up the significant portion of my resume. I’m happier working at a restaurant and enjoying my free time for the moment, touching computers on the side but more importantly pursuing my non-computer interests. This won’t work forever as I plan to have children but for now I am existing and happy doing other things. and i am putting a lot of my free time in to convicing my peers still in school that their degree won’t be worth sh!t when they graduate
- cocothem 2y agonot everyone graduates into a strong job market, but tides can change. If I were in your shoes I would make sure to do some coding/ get some certifications on the side of my restaurant gig
- mech422 2y agoYeah - I find it 'odd' that people think they should be able to get a job in a month or with only sending out 20 resumes...Things have been so good the last 10+ years, that seems to be the 'new normal' and now its tightened up again, people are shocked. I always figure 3-6 months to find a good position, probably because I started in the 80s and remember all the tight job markets between then and now. For me, 3-6 months seemed to be 'normal'. I guess its a huge shock when all you've seen are the 'good times', but all fields/careers go thru boom-bust cycles. I seem to recall hearing we had a glut of lawyers and new grads couldn't find work.
- Mc91 2y agoI worked in IT for a number of years without a degree, then went back to school. I had a discussion with some CS major seniors around 2011, who tended to be the more promising half of the class - I started talking about software version control. "What's that?" they said. "You know, like git or perforce or cvs" I said. "Git? What's that?" I hadn't even been programming before college, I was sliding rack mount servers into server racks and the like. I guess internships are where students would learn things like that, or independently. On the other hand, I've worked with interns who were pretty good. One I knew had done a lot of side projects while going to school. He is now making about $300k TC, 3.5 years after his internship. In the climate today, internships are the road to a job. People intern at a company between sophomore and junior year, and then another one between junior and senior year, and hope they have offers from at least one of the two on graduation (plus maybe a few more they applied to separately). The IT job market has been tight since the end of 2022. I don't know what position someone who is ready is in, but just doing classes probably isn't enough. I tended to learn something in a semester, and then apply it after. Like I learned Java one semester, and during the semester started fixing bugs for a free software project that was online. Then I had a small program I wanted, and did it in Java. Similar with C++, computer graphics and other things - I learned it during the semester, then applied it during summer or winter break on little projects. On a wider level, I wouldn't disagree the managers and owners of the field can make you work to death without caring about you and the like. On an individual level though, if people want to break in they need to do the right things, know the right things, and get a lucky break. I can say everyone I know who kept at it eventually got a break, but it can take longer than they wanted it to. Also, from late 2022 until now has not been a great time for new talent.
- youoy 2y agoThey start the article with this: > Generation Z (Gen Z) has a reputation for being challenging to work with and difficult to manage. If you do not compare the results with a similar poll for when other generations where entering the market, the article reads like an arbitrary roast on Gen Z. I will not get fooled by their domain name!
- onionisafruit 2y agoLikewise it didn't even compare to other current workers. For instance it says, "6 in 10 companies fired a recent college graduate they hired this year", but but doesn't say how many companies fired other workers they hired this year or better yet what percent of workers hired this year have already been fired broken down by age and college experience.
- panarky 2y agoSo 5 in 6 companies do not hesitate to hire recent grads.
- azinman2 2y agoI wondered the same. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the case, and it can also shift with the Overton window over time. It might be that if you took two generations ago and had a Time Machine to compared to today, the differences would be so evident that the contrast would be even more meaningful.
- dmm 2y ago> If you do not compare the results with a similar poll for when other generations where entering the market, the article reads like an arbitrary roast on Gen Z. Every generation of Grandpas claim the winters were colder and the fish were larger then when they were kids. I won't be fooled into believing climate change and fish population collapse! Maybe every generation of graduates is getting less employable.
- deepsun 2y agoTo anyone not getting the joke -- both of the claims are objectively true with verifiable proofs.
- oldpersonintx 2y ago[dead]
- tayistay 2y agoDoes the article mention if the 1 in 6 is actually a change vs previous years/generations? I didn’t see anything.
- pylua 2y agoWhat country is this for? I see a lot of hiring of new graduates in krakow and Hyderabad.
- oglop 2y agoMaybe we should add some more classes and another 10-20k on top of what we charge them already to fix the problem. Surely that will work.
- Rugu16 2y agoThis is nothing new, that is what happens in recession. It will adjust in a year.
- neilv 2y agoI could easily believe that the culture of gaming everything (including interview "prep") would lead to problems being useful in a company that's not just going through the motions; however... > Nearly two-thirds (65%) of hiring managers surveyed believe that recent college graduates are entitled, and 63% think they get offended too easily. This line sounds to me like 2/3 the survey respondents might be at least as much of a problem as many new-grad candidates allegedly are. This line is so glaring, that I wonder whether it was written specifically for social media engagement/enragement.
- clusterhacks 2y agoThis article is based on a online poll of 966 people with murky qualifications for having a meaningful opinion about what seem, at best, to be silly questions. I could see this as a first step towards some more interesting work and data collection, but can't imagine there is any actual signal here worth writing about.
- stackedinserter 2y agoGenZ's are barely surviving, even those who work hard, even in lcol areas like mine. Rent is crazy high, ownership of everything is virtually inaccessible, salaries are low, being at age under 25 years is equal to having a criminal record for cases like car rent, etc etc. They just don't feel like they owe anything to the system. That creates vicious cycle: companies despise genz's, genz's do bare minimum, rinse and repeat. We need to lift them up somehow, they are not temporary visitors, they are our own children that the country will be handed over in 10-20 years.
- 39896880 2y agoThis article and the audience reading it would be better served if this paragraph were earlier in the article, maybe even first or second: “ It can be easy for managers to buy into typical stereotypes of Gen Z and dismiss them entirely; however, companies have an equal responsibility to prepare recent graduates for their particular workplace and give them the best chance to succeed. By understanding the challenges of Gen Z workers, companies can take a more proactive approach by implementing formal employee onboarding programs that clearly outline company culture and expectations. Paring recent grads with mentors in the company can also pay huge dividends as that can provide Gen Z workers with the guidance, feedback, and support for them to succeed.” My first impression of the article was that the author was trying to say “Gen Z is bad/worse than other generations.” As many other commenters pointed out, the article itself does not present enough evidence to support that claim. What I realized after reading the comments and then re-reading the article is that the primary argument is actually that companies need to target these specific areas to ensure that new graduates are successful at their companies. This article also suffers from a headline that doesn’t match the content in terms of key information.
- kwar13 2y agoThis article is the equivalent of "avocado toast" for millennials.
- paulpauper 2y agoThis does seem to matter much. We can assume that those are companies on the lower end of the pay distribution. It's not like you need a degree to wok at a McDonald's restaurant, to do landscaping, or to drive a bus. More Than Half of Hiring Managers Say Recent Grads Are Unprepared for the Workforce yeah, because non-grads fare so much better in this regard?
- Notatheist 2y ago>Nearly half (46%) of hiring managers believe that college graduates should definitely take office etiquette training ... >63% of hiring managers surveyed believe that recent college graduates get offended too easily. What would this etiquette training entail, exactly? How to endure being mistreated? >Recent college graduates interviewing for their first job should take the initiative to thoroughly research the company they are interviewing for. Doing the research and sharing your perspective in the interview shows that you have a genuine interest in the company and are committed to being a part of what they do. I'm here to make money. I thoroughly research and have a genuine interest in companies that pay well. Market forces working as intended.
- topkai22 2y agoThe term slacker was invented for Gen X. Complaints against self absorbed and lazy millennials have been an annoying trope for my entire professional life. The ancient Greeks complained thier kids were disrespecting them. I do enough work with new grads to feel comfortable declaring the kids are alright. Gen Z doesn’t feel different fundamentally from millennials to me. We’ve had good (mostly) and bad hires over time. College hires (really any early in career hires) have more variability over experienced hires because they may not belong in it profession they’ve chosen, but that’s been true over time. The one really shocking number is the 6/10 have fired a recent grad. Given how hard it is to get rid of someone generally that is a huge number. FWIW, the last firing of a new hire I was remotely a part of involved a Gen x or elder millennial woman who could not behave appropriately at work and managed to document her inappropriate behavior on company IT assets.