<p>Employers say job candidates lack certain skills. They charge that “four-year colleges and universities are failing to provide graduates with the skills they need to become and remain employable.”</p>
<p>How should those skills be taught?</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/29/your-money/a-quest-to-make-college-graduates-employable.html[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/29/your-money/a-quest-to-make-college-graduates-employable.html</a></p>
<p>I think it is a combination of the effects of technology & “over organization” of students extra curricular activities by adults. Advanced technology leads to less face-to-face interaction, which leads to a decline in social skills and problem solving. . During my childhood free time was not organized by adults. We organized games of baseball, football, & basketball. Played table tennis, cards, board games, etc. We made the rules, picked the teams, settled disputes, etc. By doing so we learned how to be flexible, how to stand up for yourself, how to argue your point, to compromise, to make judgements, to work together, to be a leader. Now adults do all this for their children.</p>
<p>Companies are expecting more because there are more people looking for work than there are jobs. The skills that graduates have are not really a factor. Employers are looking for perfect candidates because they can and if students do increase their game, then employers will ratchet up what they want even higher.</p>
<p>I’ve been in job-hunting mode for my daughter for a few months and have a decent view of the job market in the technical area. The term “entry-level” job now means a bachelors degree and 1-3 years of experience. The term “intern” can mean someone that has 0-2 years of experience up to someone with a law degree. Many intern positions expect you to have several other intern positions before theirs.</p>
<p>On the other hand, I see lots of internships and jobs for people with work experience. Of course the problem is in getting this experience. School-work doesn’t count.</p>
<p>Maybe more schools should implement a required internship for graduation…That’d help them learn more of what employers want…</p>
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<p>That would be great if the schools guaranteed the internship.</p>
<p>Even Northeastern can’t do that these days.</p>
<p>Several years ago REUs were easy to get into. My son sent out 1-3 resumes and landed his internships. Today the REUs are flooded with applicants and I’ve read that it’s a lot harder to land one now.</p>
<p>What I see is that companies don’t want to provide training unless they have a decent shot at getting a return. This is true for interns and regular employees. Would you want to train someone so that they leave in a year for a higher-paying job with the training that you provided? So employers are basically looking to poach from other companies. The problem is a relative shortage of employees with skils, training and work experience. So there are lots of job openings for those with a few years of experience. The employers complain about the lack of candidates for their openings and that universities aren’t doing their jobs. Well, the companies could step up and take those that don’t have experience.</p>
<p>BTW, there are companies that do do this. But I’d say that they are in the minority.</p>
<p>The entire point of it at my school is that you have to search out the internship yourself unless you’re an education student (because student teaching requires cooperation between the university and school boards). Professors help, staff help, but it’s ultimately the job of the student to find their internship. And knowing that you have to have one gives you 3 or 4 years to find one.</p>
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<p>That’s fine - if there’s a good supply of them and you have the logistics and support to do one of these things. Living expenses in big cities can be difficult, particularly for unpaid internships. They may be impossible for a lot of students.</p>
<p>The attraction of Northeastern is their Coop program where they have a lot of agreements with companies and organizations around the country so that students have a leg up on getting internships and coops. I think that it’s a great idea as students get experience and, perhaps offers when they graduate. But even Northeastern can’t place all of their students.</p>
<p>I do know a lot about internships.</p>
<p>Four or five years ago, it was a lot easier to get them. Today? Not so much. You can read the employment statistics on how many have dropped out of the labor force, the big shift towards part-time labor, the huge numbers of people on disability to avoid the current difficult job environment, those companies trimming staff to avoid the Affordable Care Act limits. Five years ago, if you told me that Ivy League Engineering Graduates with good GPAs couldn’t get jobs - I wouldn’t have believed you. Today, I see it with my own eyes.</p>
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<p>Northeastern has never guaranteed coop jobs for its students. There have always been students who failed to get a placement. It can be due to low GPA, poor interviewing skills (despit NU offering required and optional interviewing classes) and students who major in esoteric or saturated fields of study.</p>
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<p>I didn’t say that they did.</p>
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<p>It could be the difficult job environment today too.</p>
<p>Why do you think that the Fed is pumping $85 billion per month into the economy in addition to ZIRP?</p>
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<p>And then companies complain about the lack of employee loyalty.</p>
<p>I’m not sure if its the schools, or the students, that are making the students unemployable. It seems that no one is really trying to stand out too much anymore/there aren’t a lot of services that’ll help students stand out and get employed. For example, has anyone ever heard of CollegeFeed? I’m tempted to try them out, hoping to get some kind of feedback on them, though…</p>
<p>Getting an engineering degree from an Ivy isn’t standing out?</p>
<p>There are tons of students that don’t stand out but they would make fine employees.</p>
<p>It’s the same with top schools - they receive a ton of applications and lots and lots of students that don’t get accepted would do fine at the school.</p>
<p>Grads just get filtered out of consideration if they don’t have experience because there are so many grads looking for work.</p>
<p>The posted article mostly talks in generalities. The real issue to me is that college students should realize the end game is about getting a job. If you attend college and get an obscure degree in a field that offers few job opportunities, do you then blame the college for a lack of preparation???</p>
<p>Timely article as I have a recent grad thinking about getting a job. Many of the jobs that are listed as entry level still want experience. My kid took classes two of her three summers and her third one she had an internship lined up that fell through with the budget issues two years ago. Something else popped up and then fell through just as quickly. Her interests and education are well suited for some government jobs, but with the sequester, most places are in a holding pattern. It is a mess for many of the young graduates. </p>
<p>And FWIW, DD has a major in applied math, minors in physics and Japanese, and a certificate in Asian studies. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa and Magna Cum Laude. Not too shabby.</p>
<p>DD does have two prospects right now, but no offers.</p>
<p>One of the Universities I’ve been considering for education is hanze. At least one reason I’m really considering it is they don’t waste time with forcing you to take ‘core classes’, and instead start teaching you what you actually want to major in within your first year. </p>
<p>With the additional time created by this, in the third year,
“The other semester in the third year is spent working in a company outside your home country. Students acquire the placement themselves, making use of the information available in IBS, such as regular placement offers, previous student reports and shared experiences of fellow students.”</p>
<p>and in the fourth year,</p>
<p>“The fourth and final year is a continuation of modules relating to your specialisation. In your last semester, you will do a final graduation project in which you are regarded as a consultant for an external company. You will be required to obtain, define, analyse and research a business-related problem, write a final written report and present/defend your findings in an oral presentation.”</p>
<p>[General</a> information - Hanzehogeschool Groningen](<a href=“http://www.hanze.nl/home/International/Schools/International+Business+School/Programmes/Bachelor+Programmes/International+Business+and+Management+Studies/]General”>http://www.hanze.nl/home/International/Schools/International+Business+School/Programmes/Bachelor+Programmes/International+Business+and+Management+Studies/)</p>
<p>So essentially, those skills should be taught by giving the student real experience while learning so that way they don’t have to waste their time to acquire internships after college and essentially prolong their ‘education’ even more than it needs to be.</p>
<p>It’s much more difficult for a graduate to be able to have the skills taught to them after they graduate simply because, as many others have stated, companies (at least in the United States) are looking to hire/train college students less and less, and instead want the graduate to already have experience upon graduation.</p>
<p>Reading from the article…
““When it comes to the skills most needed by employers, job candidates are lacking most in written and oral communication skills, adaptability and managing multiple priorities, and making decisions and problem solving,” the report said.”</p>
<p>Those three are huge and I can agree that a lot of people graduating from college (or even a lot of middle-aged adults), don’t have those ‘skills’. Things like not being able to write concise but elegant memos, letters, etc, or just not being able to spell correctly (how this even occurs for spelling is beyond me in our digital world). Multi-tasking is another big one. Talking about multi-tasking several different projects at once. If you can’t work on one at the moment because you don’t have enough data, but the next project you don’t need to start on yet, should you just wait for the data for your current project? Or get a head-start on the new one…(the answer should be obvious)?
Finally as for making decisions, tons of people seem to have an issue deciding what to do in situations they haven’t encountered before. It’s probably because they don’t want to be blamed for their actions. Grow-up and take some responsibility for your actions. It’s fine if people are asking what they should do their first few months on the job, but after some time they shouldn’t be having to constantly go to their boss each time they encounter a new situation and ask what they should do unless they have been specifically requested to. It isn’t your boss’s job to make decisions for you. That’s why they hired you, so you can make decisions for them using your best judgement, and have enough common sense to go to them when you are considering options that will have potentially large consequences. Having them make minor decisions you can is absolutely unnecessary.</p>
<p>“The trouble is, those skills are applied in a college context, not a workplace context.”
Which is exactly why the students need real-life contexts to work within, not paper tests. Perhaps for the majority of ‘tests’ colleges should take real situations a random company has had some time in the past and then allow the students to find a solution to the situation and instead grade students on how viable their solution was, as well as how beneficial it would have been to the company.
I could still see colleges having ‘tests’ for students to regurgitate the information they learned related to their field, but really, it isn’t necessary. You could be able to tell if the student learned anything by seeing if they were able to apply what they had learned to the situation provided.</p>
<p>“Those three are huge and I can agree that a lot of people graduating
from college (or even a lot of middle-aged adults), don’t have those
‘skills’. Things like not being able to write concise but elegant
memos, letters, etc, or just not being able to spell correctly (how
this even occurs for spelling is beyond me in our digital world).”</p>
<p>We hire lots of people that don’t have the best of communication skills. They typically come from Asian countries and acquire Masters Degrees or Phds in the United States. Perfect English isn’t as important in a global economy.</p>
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<p>Students do this in University.</p>
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<p>You haven’t gone to university yet and presumably haven’t worked a line or management job or hired anyone. How are you an experienced expert in all of this?</p>
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<p>Have you ever taken a lab course where you worked on an unsolved problem or where the result was to be a published paper?</p>
<p>Someone else mentioned this, but it’s worth saying again…
There are more kids getting degrees than degree-needing jobs. This allows employers to raise the bar on what they want from… essentially… a kid. Back in the early 80’s, when I came out of school, the diploma told an employer a kid was able to learn. Now, the same company wants that kid to become a producing asset within days/weeks of hire.</p>
<p>IMHO, the lack of jobs is due to two trends.<br>
First, the economy was not what it was back in the 80’s. Companies can not support the staff sizes they had back then. Everything has gone “lean.”
Second, the foreign onslaught of goods and services is drowning us… and we do nothing about it. At one point, this was good for our country, but now it is a parasite sucking the host (us) to death. People here happily gobble up foreign goods and services, then complain their kids can’t get jobs.</p>
<p>One of my favorite questions about US versus foreign manufacturing is why are Americans so much less concerned about employee safety and the environment when things are made in China? Are American fingers more precious than oriental fingers? Do we not care that a river runs in technicolor toxins?.. or large cities, like Beijing, doesn’t have a single day of acceptably breathable air (to US standards)? </p>
<p>We hog tie our manufacturers here with rules from EPA, OSHA, etc… AND WE SHOULD!!! But why do we not hold foreign made goods to that same lofty standard? Why do Americans gladly purchase items from foreign factories who follow few, if any, of these same rules? Why do we, as a society, allow that to continue? That alone would allow US goods to be more competitive… which would mean more US jobs for our kids.</p>
<p>Some manufacturing is moving back to the United States. Apple is building Mac Pros in the US and Google is building their new Moto X phone in the US. I picked up three pairs of New Balance running shoes this afternoon, all three made in the US. I’ve been to two of the US factories and there’s a YouTube video of their Lawrence factory. The make shoes using high-tech automated factories with fewer employees than Asian factories - and their costs for US-made vs Asian made are comparable. But they can respond better to market demand with shoes made in the US.</p>
<p>Cheap energy is pushing companies to move manufacturing back to the US and is pushing some foreign companies to manufacture in the US. There is some hope here.</p>
<p>Why do American buy foreign-made products? Because they are cheaper. But Americans buy a lot of domestic goods too; just not enough of them.</p>
<p>How To Get A Job:</p>
<p>Understand that the cost of hiring new employees has never been higher. In addition to your wages, employers will pay for background checks, payroll taxes, workers comp, insurance (other than benefits), health insurance, training expenses, and administrative costs (maintaining employee records, payroll prep fees, etc.). Depending on the job, those costs typically run 30-40% above your wages. Applicants judged as “risky” might cost more; so, you want to present yourself as a low-risk/high-return worker. </p>
<ol>
<li> Open a new spreadsheet. Save as “Project List”.</li>
<li><p>Head Column A “Project Name”; Column B “Nature of Project”’ Column C “Issues Faced”; Column D “Remedies”; Column E “Results”. In the rows, enter the info under each column for anything you can think of having done. This is what you use to prepare a resume and your interview answers. Maintain it throughout your career.</p></li>
<li><p>Scrub any social media sites on which you participate.</p></li>
<li><p>Prepare a list of at least 3-5 names of easy to reach people that WILL verify and confirm the info on the application, your resume, and your interview. Type it up on a separate piece of paper from your resume. Present it to a hiring authority as you end your interview.</p></li>
<li><p>Be on time for your interview. Dress appropriately for the job which you are seeking. LEAVE THE SMARTPHONE IN YOUR CAR. There is no call that you will receive more important than the job interview. If you dare to peek at it during the job interview, you will be automatically disqualified from any good company that I know.</p></li>
<li><p>Thoroughly understand what the company does, how it makes money, how you can help them do it and how you can get more quality entries on your project list.</p></li>
<li><p>Work on your valuation. Watch “Shark Tank” if you don’t know what that is. It has nothing to do with your needs or what anyone else makes. It is uniquely yours. Your net worth to a company is your assets minus your liabilities. Your purpose is to maximize your assets and limit your liabilities to increase your value. They will come up with their own valuation of you, which is likely to be lower. The final price is what you eventually agree on. But the employer has the leverage until you produce.</p></li>
<li><p>Make promises, then keep them. Don’t write verbal checks that you can’t cash. This is called “building credit” which will tide you over until your value and earnings rise. It works as long as you live. One “glitch” can cost you dearly.</p></li>
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<p>The mere fact that you’ve done those things puts you in the 99.9 percentile of applicants. You will find a job, keep it, and be a target for recruiters like me.</p>