Overconfident Students, Dubious Employers
insidehighered.com
Overconfident Students, Dubious Employers
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Re: Overconfident Students, Dubious Employers
#2While I agree that a problem is exposed by these findings, let's not judge college grads by their ability to judge how well they fit employers' privately-held expectations of an entry-level employee. Companies suck at training, balk at its costs, but lament its effects on the sourcing of young employees.
Re: Overconfident Students, Dubious Employers
#3I'm always a little skeptical of these sorts of surveys because it's hard to tease out what people believe about themselves because it's true vs. what people believe about themselves because it's useful.
I remember that when I was a new grad, there was a very large part of myself that held a realistic appraisal of my abilities and was therefore scared shitless about my ability to make it in the working world. I was very careful to never let that part of me out in interviews - or, for that matter, to anyone. Confidence only works if you keep up the illusion so thoroughly that it ceases to be an illusion.
And it worked. I got a job at a financial software startup, and then was put in charge of projects that no new grad should ever have been put in charge of. I grew into the role. I left to go found a startup, which is also something that someone with 2 years of work experience had no business doing. That worked too - I may not have been qualified to found a startup, but when I folded it up, I was a lot more qualified as an engineer than most of my other peers with 4 years of work experience. So Google hired me to work on the front page of the search engine, and I grew into that role too.
The majority of my classmates let their accurate perceptions of what they were actually qualified to do govern what they applied to do, and as a result, many were still struggling to get into a career 10 years later. By that point, your self-perception has become reality, and it's much harder to convince potential employers to take the risk that you'll grow into the position. Then they wake up and realize that everybody's faking it and their new manager isn't actually all that much more skilled than them, but (barring a career reset like going to grad school) it's difficult to reset people's perceptions.
Re: Overconfident Students, Dubious Employers
#4Implied in finishing university is the expectation that you have been taught what you need to make it in the work place. Its part of the social contract. Its what I paid you for right? Naturally, they answer with high confidence in their readiness.
People who have worked a long time are in part answering for themselves. They look back at how much they've learned, changed, and developed. How much they had to learn on the job that was never taught in school. Were they actually unprepared, or are they just judging new grads based on a viewpoint that's colored by several years?
When I was a hiring mgr, this could be one of the most frustrating things in a room. Trying to push to take a chance on a new grad, and having several others tell me they'd prefer the industry veteran who's lateraling. Even for "entry level" positions. Amazing how many people with really good CV's were applying for "entry level" jobs.
On a last thought, there also seems to be a strong lack of faith that people can learn on the job from hiring folks. Maybe its just the above mentioned flood of high CV talent. Software for example: You know: c, c++, java, javascript, haskell, and perl. Ah, but you don't know Ruby, and we're really looking for Ruby. But, I know 6 other languages, I can learn one more...
Re: Overconfident Students, Dubious Employers
#5Implied in finishing university is the expectation that you have been taught what you need to make it in the work place. Its part of the social contract. Its what I paid you for right? Naturally, they answer with high confidence in their readiness. People who have worked a long time are in part answering for themselves. They look back at how much they've learned, changed, and developed. How much they had to learn on…
There is lack of faith that people can learn another Angular version even. You have experience wih 1.6?! We do TS+Angular 4 over here, sorry mate! Such companies are simply not hiring - bragging, teasing, probing the market perhaps - but certainly not hiring. Not only the framework landscape is broken but as well people are extremely anal about their preferences and choices.
Re: Overconfident Students, Dubious Employers
#6Implied in finishing university is the expectation that you have been taught what you need to make it in the work place. Its part of the social contract. Its what I paid you for right? Naturally, they answer with high confidence in their readiness. People who have worked a long time are in part answering for themselves. They look back at how much they've learned, changed, and developed. How much they had to learn on…
> But, I know 6 other languages, I can learn one more...
I doubt you professionally know 6 languages. There's a lot more to learn about the runtime, frameworks and tools of a language than there is syntax.
Re: Overconfident Students, Dubious Employers
#7I'm always a little skeptical of these sorts of surveys because it's hard to tease out what people believe about themselves because it's true vs. what people believe about themselves because it's useful . I remember that when I was a new grad, there was a very large part of myself that held a realistic appraisal of my abilities and was therefore scared shitless about my ability to make it in the working world. I was…
Related: these aren't even the competencies that employers have selected as most important, only the ones that the firm doing the survey selected. So how important are they really? Where do, for instance, "Career Management" and "Global/Intercultural Fluency" stack up against "Can actually do the job we're hiring them to do, e.g. program a computer"?
Re: Overconfident Students, Dubious Employers
#8This means almost nothing without a baseline to compare it to. I'd suggest it's very likely that you'd get similar results if you surveyed any other age group - that individuals give higher estimates of their ability than someone else would is hardly surprising.
Re: Overconfident Students, Dubious Employers
#9Implied in finishing university is the expectation that you have been taught what you need to make it in the work place. Its part of the social contract. Its what I paid you for right? Naturally, they answer with high confidence in their readiness. People who have worked a long time are in part answering for themselves. They look back at how much they've learned, changed, and developed. How much they had to learn on…
> But, I know 6 other languages, I can learn one more... I doubt you professionally know 6 languages. There's a lot more to learn about the runtime, frameworks and tools of a language than there is syntax.
If the framework solves a common problem, then the structure will be familiar. Stackoverflow to fill in the gaps.
Re: Overconfident Students, Dubious Employers
#10At the current job is the first time I have worked with young college graduates. It is interesting to see that some of the developers are humble and are completely ready for the corporate world while others are the opposite.
It really comes down to personality and whether a person's personality has allowed them to practice more and work harder to learn a skill. These people tend to be much better prepared without the delusions of their own awesomeness.
A college new hire isn't ever the rockstar their social reference group has indicated and the more humble personalities didn't need magic to figure this out. Yes, I have actually encountered college new hires who thought themselves as rockstars when in reality they seriously sucked. They cognitively knew they sucked, but somehow the arrogantly boasting rockstar self-persona was still there in very much a stereotypical millennial fashion.