WHAT DO EMPLOYERS WANT FROM GRADUATES



WHAT DO EMPLOYERS WANT FROM GRADUATES?

Graduate Attributes

After considerable research, Lee Harvey and his colleagues established that employers want graduates with a range of personal attributes. Some of these attributes are shown here. (Harvey, Moon, Geall, 1997, Graduates’ Work: Organisations Change and Students’ Attributes).

Why Employ Graduates?

30% of future employees are predicted to be graduates in future. The careers and jobs you will be entering after graduation will be many and various. How do you fit in with the ‘wish list’ of six characteristics given below?

Research suggests that employers want graduates who not only add value but who can COPE WITH CHANGE and who are able to help to POSITIVELY TRANSFORM their organisation in the face of continuous and rapid change.

Employers want graduates who can anticipate change and effectively communicate innovations to colleagues as well as clients and customers.

Knowledge may be less important than the ability and willingness of graduates to learn and continue learning.

From the research, 6 broad areas of graduate attributes emerge as of major importance to employers:-

1. Ability to work in a modern organisation

2. Core/transferable skills

3. Interpersonal skills

4. Communication

5. Enthusiasm for learning and willingness to learn

6. Knowledge and intellectual ability

As you read about these characteristics make notes on those which you feel you have already or which you are looking to develop.

Ability to work in a modern organisation

Traditionally art and humanities students do not think in terms of the vocational aspects of their degrees or of working in business environments. They may not understand them. Employers on the other hand traditionally do not think of employing humanities graduates nor do they understand them. This means both sides are often frustrated in their employment relationship feeling neither side can bring value to the other.

Core/Transferable Skills

Employers expect graduates to exhibit a wide range of attributes in addition to the acquisition of a body of knowledge. The research suggests a set of

|generic or core skills and attributes |personal attributes |

|willingness to learn |commitment |

|team work |energy |

|communication skills |self-motivation |

|problem solving |self-management |

|analytic ability |reliability |

|logical argument |co-operation |

|ability to summarise key issues |flexibility and adaptability |

Interpersonal Skills

Interpersonal skills in an area that is often regarded as very important by graduate recruiters, but one where there is a gap between expectations and performance. Employers often refer to the:-

• Arrogance of graduates particularly in terms of a lack of recognition of skills and abilities of non-graduates. There is a fine line drawn between arrogance and self-confidence and it is the latter that recruiters look for during the selection process.

• Lack of awareness that graduates have of the impact they make and their failure to realise that they have to gain the respect of peers and subordinates. They think they know it all and often lack tact and tolerance.

• Inability of graduates to relate to other non graduate employees. Graduates see themselves as a ‘breed apart’ and employers want graduates who can communicate with people who are not on the same intellectual level.

Communication

Employers place a great deal of importance on graduates’ communication skills both oral and written. Communication skills, including listening, are important to employers because it is necessary for graduates in industry to communicate ideas and concepts efficiently and effectively to colleagues and customers. Employers were:-

• Dissatisfied with both oral and written communication skills.

• Often critical of graduates’ grasp of fundamentals of written communication, especially basic grammar, sentence structure and punctuation.

• Concerned about the range of writing abilities of graduates. They may be good at producing essays, laboratory reports, academic projects and dissertations but graduates are relatively poor at producing other forms of written communications.

• Disappointed by the inability of graduates to write reports. It seems that graduates have learned to provide balanced arguments that explore every nuance of a debate but are not experienced in making a persuasive case. Reports are much more prescriptive than essays and graduates are not good at writing them.

• Unimpressed by graduates’ oral presentation ability. Graduates seem to have had little experience of making, or being assessed in oral presentation.

Knowledge

Undergraduate education is frequently seen as developing students’ knowledge. However as much as this may be a useful context for developing many other skills and abilities, it is unusual, except in very limited areas, for a recruit from an undergraduate course to provide an organisation with technical knowledge that might provide a market edge.

For some employers the subject of the degree may be of little or no consequence. Even for employers who value specialist knowledge it is still relatively unimportant because it has a short shelf life. Rather than value specialist knowledge for its own sake most employers:

• Consider that understanding of core principles, technical ability, potential and willingness to learn and continually update knowledge are more important than a stock of knowledge.

• Consider problem solving to be a very important attribute but one with which they are only moderately satisfied because of graduates’ lack of real world application.

• Are only moderately satisfied with the technical ability of graduates. Indeed, graduates are not seen as particularly good at applying knowledge or understanding to practical work situations because they are unable to improve, lack commercial awareness and lack appreciation of the human or cultural context within which they are working.

Intellect and Adaptability

Employers want graduates to be flexible, adaptable and receptive to change. Employers expect graduates to exhibit a range of intellectual abilities. They want graduates who are inquisitive, innovative, logical, critical, creative, able to think laterally and conceptualise issues rapidly.

In summary, employers:-

• Are unimpressed with the innovation of graduates, in part due to the insensitivity of graduates to the implications of innovation.

• Are satisfied that graduates are analytic, logical, able to conceptualise issues rapidly and deal with large amounts of information.

• Think that graduates’ critical ability is not quite so satisfactory. There was some expressed dissatisfaction with the lateral thinking and synthetic ability of graduates.

• Are satisfied with the flexibility and intellectual adaptability of graduates.

|Key skills areas for employers are: |

|Effective oral and written communication skills. |

|IT literacy. |

|Flexibility. |

|Ability to work independently; resourcefulness. |

|Research, investigative and intellectual skills. |

|Good interpersonal skills: teamworking, people skills, etc |

| |

|Employer perceptions are: |

|Graduates learn all the theories but do not have practical experience |

|Courses are not always very vocational – even those that outwardly appear so |

|Graduates have overly high expectations of a first job |

|Students are more used to having fun than working |

BENCHMARKING STATEMENTS

Students Skills Profile:

Education Studies:

1. knowledge and understanding, its application and ability to reflect on it;

2. transferable skills e.g.:

communicate and present oral and written arguments;

use communication and IT, including word-processing, data-bases, internet communication, information retrieval and on-line searches;

interpret and present relevant numerical information;

work with others, as a result of the development of interpersonal skills, to demonstrate the capacity to plan, to share goals, and work as a member of a team;

improve own learning and performance, including the development of study and research skills, information retrieval, and a capacity to plan and manage learning, and to reflect on their own learning;

analyse, synthesise, evaluate and identify problems and solutions.

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|Task |

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|Using your student handbook to identify what skills you will develop on your course, |

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|HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR ACADEMIC AND PERSONAL SKILLS AT LEVEL 1/2? |

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Introduction to Activity

Each subject discipline these days uses benchmarking statements to identify what in each case might be expected of a ‘graduate of X’.

The list below highlights the skills expectations for your subject.

• Do you know what your subject benchmarking statements expect of you?

• What skills do you have now?

• Can you say how you are developing these skills

NB. This is important knowledge to have at interview, when you will be expected to know what skills you have and how you developed them.

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