Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Employers: Entry-Level Applications are Useless

Well, technically, the article's title is:

Employers: Entry-Level Applicants are Just About Useless.

I ran out of room in the subject line, so I cut out the less emotionally charged words.

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- At perhaps a bad time in U.S. employment, it seems there's a "perception gap" between what workers think they're worth on the job and how employers see them.

Analysis by Bryant & Stratton College with help from Wakefield Research from a survey among U.S. adults age 18 to 34 found that 80% of workers believe they are "job ready and possess all the skills, experience and education needed to advance in their desired career path or obtain their next job."
Yet 40% of U.S. employers say most entry-level job candidates lack even the basic skills needed to fill job openings.

Then there's the issue of so-called "soft" job skills such as critical thinking and sophisticated problem-solving. Only 16% of the 18- to 34-year-olds surveyed see such skills as necessary for career advancement.

But that's a huge swing-and-miss by employees, the college says. In fact, 93% of U.S. employers say soft skills are "weighed more heavily" when vetting job candidates -- much more so than a candidate's college academic credentials.

"Being employable today is all about knowing how to communicate to employers that you have intelligence quotient as well as educational quotient," says Scott Traylor, associate campus director for online education at the online college."

http://www.thestreet.com/story/1195...e-just-about-useless.html?cm_ven=RSSFeed

It's ironic that while employers put such strong emphasis on "Soft Skills" the majority of them insist that the application process begin with an online application where very little if any of those soft skills can be recognized, rather, the application is just a summary of raw data.

When I was an employer (Long time ago), the application process was for skill sets, the interview was for how well you would fit with the group, temperament, and communication skills. The questions I asked where not nearly as important as the way in which you answered them, the way you present yourself, and the overall way you may fit within the environment you would be placed into.

I think that there is plenty of blame on both sides of the hiring equation, actually-- college students (and many recent grads, for that matter) haven't really been taught to value authentic critical thinking, communication, or problem-solving.

They also resist learning those things, come to think of it. Apparently, such skills are for underlings. (In my experience as a prof, I mean.)

On the other hand, potential employers (rightly!!) see those domains as the best predictors of overall job performance and value to an organization and its mission.

But they sure don't capture that level of concern/awareness by gatekeeping via quantitative measures such as specific certifications and degree titles.

If children are involved in the Yale achievement arms race, when are they supposed to learn soft skills?

Well, they don't.

Of course they DO learn that anyone that needs to learn those trivial things is irrelevant. Such people and their concerns are largely beneath them anyway. So that part is fine. Until it isn't, of course.

This reinforces what Selingo says in College (Un)bound - too many kids are entering college and the work force without preparation or necessary skills. Over 70% of students attend college now for the social aspects and extracurriculars rather than for the intellectual rigor or actual coursework. I would classify social aspects under 'soft' skills, though that doesn't necessarily carry over into 'job ready' skills.

On the other hand, I'm sure employers are all too willing to take college students as interns and free labor. You don't hear about how employers are relying heavily on them too much.

I agree with you HowlerKarma, but I don't think it's necessarily an issue of not being taught or appreciating critical thinking or problem solving. To me, it's a much, much larger problem of autonomy, motivation, and learning that stems from how public/private schools are structured and operate. I think kids, in general, often see little to no relevancy or point between the curriculum and their future lives. They're so disengaged from learning and having control over their lives that they often don't know how to make a decision or self-direct/ self-motivate themselves.

I agree. Those "job ready" skills include showing up on time and getting stuff done on time. Too many young people don't learn these skills these days. Those jobs at burger joints and the like have a real way of teaching those skills while still not asking a whole lot of the employee otherwise.



I think the home environment is also very, very important in this regard.

That which gets measured (and rewarded) gets done. If employers want soft skills, they need to screen for them and reward them at all levels of employment. The problem is it takes more than the modicum of resources that most firms choose to allocate to HR decisions.

We can easily trace this back to universities and prior schools not valuing these skills at least in part because they aren't easily measurable for testing purposes. Universities are becoming undergraduate (and graduate) degree sausage factories. Everyone and his dog is expected to have a master's at a minimum, no matter how inane the field or unqualified the candidate. I can appreciate why companies like Google entertain multi-step hiring processes. It's a caveat emptor world.

That quickly morphed into vitriol. Let me just wipe the sneer off my face.

I'd argue that most university faculty DO regard them very highly and do their best to foster/encourage students in that direction...

but...

K-12 education has become so bad this way that by the time higher ed sees these young people, most of them are hopelessly behind on the curve.

They expect to be given many chances to get it right, expect that A is for effort, expect that everyone will treat them with respect (regardless of their behavior), and expect that THEIR time is more valuable than anyone else's.

Honestly, secondary schools and their parents tend to coddle them too much for far too long.

My DH and I both believe that executive functions probably do NOT develop in the absence of load/demand. My hypothesis is that the reason why that maturation curve doesn't reach a peak functional level until the early-to-mid 20's in most modern humans is that we don't place adult DEMANDS on people until then. We have found the trend toward "It's okay, try again... it's okay, try again... here, let me fix that for you... oh, it's all right, always a second chance" to be kind of toxic, because it does rob adolescents of the drive to seek excellence. There are no consequences for not being responsible and diligent anymore-- and yes, I think that many times, parents are also part of that problem, but schools aren't doing their students very many favors either when they cave to pressure to inflate grades using whatever means necessary.

Someone who needs to take the (same) final exam four times hasn't earned an "A." Not IMO. I'm perhaps a bit more hard-nosed than most people about that kind of thing, but my feeling is that real life doesn't give a lot of second, third, and fourth chances at much of anything. High school kids should become acclimated to that.