Companies: won’t hire college graduates Also Companies: “College graduates aren’t prepared for the workforce”
this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2024
90 points (95.0% liked)
Quark's
1092 readers
1 users here now
Come to Quark’s, Quark’s is Fun!
General off-topic chat for the crew of startrek.website. Trek-adjacent discussions, other sci-fi television, navigating the Fediverse, server meta (within reason), selling expired cases of Yamok sauce, it’s all fair game.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Also companies: you need to be a college graduate
Colleges: you give me money and I give you a piece of paper. You can get your education from YouTube.
You can get your education from YouTube.
That right there is a big part of the problem. Watching someone do something is not the same as knowing how to do that thing yourself. Especially when the youtuber is just some fuckup selling TV dinners.
Let’s stop this idiotic hazing ritual. 15 years ago I was a recent grad and people were saying similar stuff. These attitudes kept people my age out of many workplaces. It was shortsighted.
I was rejected many times before I got my first job, and managers in my first roles used my age against me a lot, especially when I didn’t stay in my lane. Finally a company removed my leash and treated me as an opportunity rather than a threat, and they got a big return on that investment, but it took years to find a place like that.
We were acquired and I’m doing other stuff now, but when I see my products in the wild, I sometimes wonder about all those hiring managers who couldn’t see past my age. Did they ever learn that unreplaceable means unpromotable? Did they ever learn to have a bench? What would we have built together if they weren’t so afraid of change?
Of course this is just one story, and profit isn’t a proper motive for doing what’s right. But those who don’t care that ageism is bad for society should at least consider that it’s bad for business and their careers.
The thing is people come and go through this phase of life relatively briefly. Then it's not their problem anymore. Nobody is in it long enough to care to change it.
Maybe so, but if our generation knows what it’s like to find the ladders pulled up, and we don’t care enough to put them back for the younger people behind us, who will?
I'll acknowledge that 1-in-5 bring parents bit is pretty wild to me as I'm assuming it was more than just a ride.
1-in-5 of the survey respondents say they’ve seen a recent grad bring in a parent. That doesn’t mean 1-in-5 bring parents.
That doesnt even mean anyone brought in parents. Thats an easy lie that multiple managers Ive worked for would gleefully tell
What's the point of that lie though?
Reinforcing stereotypes they believe are true despite lack of evidence.
Like how these same people swore up and down that millenials were lazy, greedy, worthless members of society not 10 years prior. Wasnt true then, isnt true now, but I spent my working years getting an earful of "examples" of why millenials were awful workers.
That doesn’t mean 1-in-5 bring parents. It means 1-in-5 interviewers have seen someone bring in a parent. If an interviewer has 500 interviews and 1 brings in a parent, that interviewer is one of the five who has seen a parent at an interview. Even though it was only 1 in 500 interviews for them, they’re still 1-in-5 interviewers.
Hell, it could even be the same fucking parent at every interview, if it’s a small enough industry. Maybe that same college grad applied to all of the local jobs in the industry (because of course they did; it’s what they studied for) and so all the interviewers in that part of the industry have seen a parent at an interview. It’s still only the 1 parent, but all of the interviewers in the area have seen them, so they all report that they’ve seen a recent college grad bring a parent.
It is a sad fact that for-profit universities and colleges sometimes hand out degrees like candy, making them not worth the paper they are printed on. In essence they trade on their past reputations, hoping that nobody will notice. Well, people noticed. Students, after they start interviewing, often BEG their professors to actually teach them what they need to know. But they cannot, b/c, and I cannot state this hard enough, the purpose of a for-profit education system is not to teach, but to... can you guess what I am about to say... say it with me now... "just make profits".
This reads like those shitty china articles where the nation's youth are unemployed
There are plenty of millennials looking for work. If I could hire someone with work experience or something with no experience, the choice is obvious.
Additionally, I have heard complaints about gen z from millennials and older. Even in my very very small business, gen z workers have been very unreliable.
The work they do is to make things, they are paid for the things they make. They are paid well above the market rate. Like significantly higher, but they still disappear for a month or two at a time without warning and don’t respond to messages.
There is always a final exam or family emergency. I don’t mind if they take time off, but c’mon. How many finals exams can you have per year.
So due to their lack of communication I often need to find people to replace them. Millennial workers are hard working and produce high quality work. They often over communicate.
So this is my perspective on the issue.
I do have some very good gen z workers and some bad millennial workers, but that is the exception.
With 4 college semesters (two standard and two accelerated summer sessions) I'd say they could probably have a final exam at least once every 3 months.
I think it's best we evaluate workers as individuals and leave ALL generational labeling out of it.
I'm a millennial and it sounds just like me and the majority of people I know. A friend of mine just gave up during this Christmas because she wasn't feeling well and her manager kept pressuring her and making her feel guilty. I can tell you my friend is a nice and honest woman, but this just scared her and made it even harder to return. She's completely freaking out now and started drinking and it takes me a lot of effort to support her.
I've been there myself too. Loved my job. Perfect track record for a year. Then suddenly for a day I had 5 bosses, each giving me conflicting orders. I clearly communicated multiple times that it doesn't work and that I need one boss. I'm sure that if they would've spoken to me as a human being that I would've continued. I cared and they didn't.
But ya then the next day I was ready to go but at my door this powerful dread came over me and I simply froze. And then you just start feeling worse due to guilt and so on and it becomes harder to overcome that barrier. After a month I managed to finally overcome my fear and return to the same job with the same people! I'm still proud of that. Unfortunately there was a lingering resentment from my manager's side. I decided to move and do something else, eventhough I loved that job and I was good at it.
It's not a comment on you, because I wasn't there. But in all the situations this happened to my friends and me it was always due to a lack of half decent communication. One could argue that a manager should be good at listening.