<p>Sami, what changes exactly do you suggest? My company verifies everything on a candidate’s resume-- but not until we are getting primed to making an offer. It’s too bad that so many people lie or inflate… but short of closing down our business to become full time private detectives, occasionally a candidate with a phony resume is going to get through the screening process and get an interview.</p>
<p>I chuckle at your use of the expression 'human resource drones". Would it were that easy. The resume reading technologies don’t verify college degrees; don’t catch spellcheck type errors; don’t realize when a candidate doesn’t know how to use a comma or an apostrophe. So if we are drones, at least we aren’t going to be replaced by a better software package any time soon.</p>
<p>My favorite are the people who apply and can’t spell the name of the company in their cover letter.</p>
<p>Isn’t it really about getting your “foot in the door” as a college grad, at a company where you can acquire more skills, demonstrate initiative, and get promoted? Or acquire more saleable skills? I graduated from a HYP, and still find myself searching files. My doctor’s enormous downtown medical practice seems to have lost my medical file several times, whereupon my doctor has enterred the medical files room to root for the file himself.</p>
<p>Didn’t mean to be disrespectful, I am speaking of what a hiring manager told me of his experiences, when asked about certain skills to verify competence, he said it is clear the screen prior should have eliminated particular candidates. Another in finance said his human resource department sends people that don’t have any of the skills he is looking to hire. Also as you said grammatical errors, etc. So these two might be anomalies, and a biased view. </p>
<p>They both did say their respective companies do not want the cost of entry level training, abandoned the practice few years ago. Do want seasoned skilled workers, not interested in new grads at all.</p>
<p>samiamy–Dh has hired 1000’s of people over the years. When his company went to an HR screening model, he stopped getting qualified candidates. He sat down with them one day and discovered that it wasn’t so much that they were not doing their job but they had little knowledge of the jobs for which they were screening. A candidate might have C.P.A on their resume when the job description was looking for someone with experience with financial statements, something that should be a given with a CPA but the HR person might not have known that (exaggerated example but you get the idea). He just bypassed that step until they were more up to speed on what the jobs entailed. HR needs to cross train so they have an idea I think.</p>
<p>The older, more experienced people who worked in my H’s human resources dept were all required to re-apply for their positions over a year ago. None of them were selected. Instead, young inexperienced people in their early to mid 20’s were hired to replace them. He suspects the reason they did this was to save money since the older employees were earning a higher salary. My H said things have deteriorated significantly since then. Very little, if any, screening is being done. Which means he has to spend more time screening prospective new hires.</p>
<p>I wonder how often older employees are being “let go” in order to hire “cheaper” younger employees?</p>
<p>I’ve been out of the work force for 20 years. Now that I’m in my mid 50’s, I think it would be extremely difficult to find a job due to age discrimination. Plus the fact that I’ve been out of the work force for a very long time. However, if I were in a position to choose between a young, inexperienced applicant and one older and more experienced, I’d pick the older worker.</p>
<p>By the way, this same NY Times article was posted in a thread started by Barrons yesterday.</p>
<p>" I wonder how often older employees are being “let go” in order to hire “cheaper” younger employees? "</p>
<p>I have seen this happen to friends and acquaintances . Try to find a job in a hard hit area if you are over 50. We know several people making a fraction of what they once earned. Pretty hard to survive on the salaries they are now lucky to have .</p>
<p>S1 was pretty thankful that he got to interview with real live techies at each level of the process instead of HR folks during his job search. Served the companies well (they conducted on the spot programming exercises so they could assess S’s skills) and S got a vibe for the people he’d be working with.</p>
<p>My sister in law is a stay-at-home mom despite a law degree from the flagship national university. The market there is so over-supplied that the only jobs were insurance salesperson or notary public type positions. </p>
<p>Most cab drivers have college degrees there as well, often displaying them in the cab next to the municipal taxi license.</p>
<p>But, the best example of Elbonian career lore came about when we were seniors in college… The joke went like this:</p>
<p>A BSEE guy graduates from the National University and can’t find any job. He finally lands a job with the circus as an electrician. One day he’s asked to climb the catwalk over the lions’ pen to replace some light bulbs. He misses a step and falls right in the pen. As the lions circle around him making noises and threatening moves, he goes on his knees to pray: “Oh Lord, what fate awaits me, a graduate of Electrical Engineering from the National University”. To which the lions respond in unison “Be quiet you bozo. We’re all Mechanical Engineering graduates from the National University”…</p>
<p>I agree with the comment about getting your foot in the door when you are a recent grad. My spouse is a branch manager for a bank, and all the tellers on the teller line have college degrees. Is this a dead end job for them? Not necessarily. The head teller graduated college in 2009 (as the economy was tanking) when she started as a teller. She was promoted to head teller after two years and now has been selected for credit analyst training—a position requiring a college degree. The company is thrilled that all of their trainees were promoted from within.</p>
<p>That article made me depressed. I understand that it’s partially because of the recession, but I don’t know how I could live on if I had 100k in debt and worked some clerical job. Is there a phobia of student loan debt? Because there should be.</p>
<p>Side question, and I truly, honestly don’t intend to sound rude, but do office job recruiters have a bias when it comes to choosing which type of Bachelor degree holder they want for the job? I mean, a secretary job in question requires skills that arguably don’t necessitate any college degree. But if there are hundreds of resumes of Bachelor degree applicants, do employers rank the value of the various types of majors as “easy” or “hard”, even if there is an equal amount of experience?</p>
<p>I don’t see why the article is depressing. If anything, it confirms that taking a low-level entry level job can lead to bigger and better things. Many – if not most – of the paralegals at my law firm have J.D.s, so I don’t think it is depressing that a woman two years out of college got promoted to a paralegal position. At many firms, paralegals have a lot of responsibility and do a lot of analytical tasks. </p>
<p>I also don’t see a lot of long-time employees being pushed out of the door by young college graduates. Come to think of it, I wouldn’t be able to tell you whether most members of the non-professional staff went to college. (Except the late-night word-processing crew, who are all brilliant and extremely well-educated and are all writers or actors by day (some fairly well-known)).</p>
it is directly relevant to the job (e.g. computer science major for a computer software development job)
it indicates a skill that is relevant to job (e.g. math and physics majors are sometimes considered for computer software development jobs because mathematical and logical thinking often translates to being able to work on computer software)</p>
<p>Workload of the major in college likely has little to do with it. Biology and music may be high workload in college compared to math, but math majors have better job prospects.</p>
<p>I’ve been out of the workforce for 20 years as a stay-at-home mom. I had no idea that companies still employed people to do word processing. My first job out of college was working as a temp at a law firm doing word processing. That was 33 years ago. We all had college degrees.</p>
<p>D2 was depressed about landing what turned out to be a pretty boring job with her BA…until she realized that everyone else in the room had master’s degrees of various flavors and they were doing the same tasks she was. At least she’s got a title that makes it sound like she’s working in her field…and compared to her cohort, this is a plum position (no food service or cleaning skills required!).</p>
<p>My father, a high school graduate who at the time had 25 years of experience in public transit, was repeatedly passed over for a promotion to supervisor by young whippersnappers with college degrees and very little experience. He finally did get the promotion, but it took him 10 years at his current firm, and he pointed out that I had a cubicle before he did. He was literally a blue collar worker all my life until now.</p>
<p>I suppose this is how unearned privilege works you don’t need a college degree to be a filer. But assuming someone has more career ambition and more in common with you just because they have a college degree is silly. I went to a small women’s LAC; there was no football team, and I have no interest in college football. Actually, in that vein a job that wanted someone who could talk college football would be better off hiring my husband (who does not have a BA) than me. I also think it’s silly to assume that someone is more “career-oriented” just because they went to college - I don’t know anyone who isn’t “making a real commitment to their future,” degreed or not. Who <em>doesn’t</em> care about their own future? In fact, I would be much more willing to assume that a receptionist with 5 years of reception experience is more likely to want to make a career out of it. If I applied to a paralegal or reception or admin assistant job right now, it would be to pay the bills until something better came along. I wonder what their turnover looks like.</p>