
The real reason new graduates can't get hired - hccampos
http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20151118-this-is-the-real-reason-new-graduates-cant-get-hired
======
cryoshon
"“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
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.

~~~
fancy_pantser
Isn't your proposed job posting "insanely broad"?

~~~
noir_lord
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.

------
forgottenpass
_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

      > 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
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)."

------
rayiner
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
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
> 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".

------
gtf21
> 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
_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
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
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.

~~~
ArkyBeagle
I believe you completely. Seriously.

I think you're actually describing the other side of the same coin. If
somebody has experience at one of these failing companies, they may not have
gotten much of a shot at actually doing anything.

I shudder to think how anyone could clearly demonstrate a real lack of
preparedness in two weeks. Again, I totally believe you but that's just
incredible.

It's like we all live on asteroids that are drifting father and farther from
each other.

------
rm_-rf_slash
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
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
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
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.)

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
I think some things are taught best to the priorities of the local job market.
For example, business-oriented New Yorkers would probably benefit from
skimming calculus and focusing on probability and statistics. Boston, where
knowledge and research is highly valued, should emphasize total understanding
of the math that is taught, which takes up more of the curriculum but provides
value to the community. And in Silicon Valley the schools might better serve
the community by skimming most math in favor of teaching software development.

While I believe in high standards, I also am skeptical about how those
standards are set and measured, and what the benefit truly becomes. If we
teach the entire nation to be exactly one type of citizen, consumer, and
worker, then we don't really benefit or diversify our job markets, do we?

------
riskable
> “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
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.

------
cousin_it
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
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
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
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.

------
malandrew
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.

------
nvader
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."

------
argo12
"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!

------
sklogic
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
Agreed. The more we push job seekers to seek extra education, the more
employers will raise their requirements.

------
VOYD
"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".

------
e40
Supply and demand. It's as simple as that.

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

