Employers Want Real World Experience
by Motte Brown on 01/23/2008 at 11:17 AM
USAToday.com reports on a survey of 301 business leaders about the preparedness of college graduates entering the work force. And it seems they're giving them a failing grade. Aptitude is important, they say, but what they really want is for colleges to help students apply what they've learned in real-world settings.
Forget transcripts, multiple-choice tests or institutional scores. The surveyed business leaders want faculty assessment of internships, senior projects or community-based work.
"Too many policymakers and educational leaders are focused on the tests rather than on what is really important: whether students are learning what they need to know," says Roberts Jones, president of Education & Workforce Policy, a consulting firm based in Alexandria, Va.
The "what they need to know" is never really spelled out in the article. They just know they're not getting it. But I think it has something to do with working well with others and demonstrating an ability to get the job done. As USAToday notes, Carol Geary Schneider, President of the Association of American Colleges and Universities, said that colleges and universities must look for new ways to demonstrate student success.
Last year, I blogged about the importance of on-the-job mentors for graduates entering the work force and offered some tips based on my personal experience. But I'd be interested in hearing from our readers who've completed internships or just entered the job force on what they learned from their "real world experience."
1. Carrie (the original) said the following at 11:32 AM on Jan 23:
This is very true. It's tough when you go in for an interview and the employer wants to know how much Excel and PowerPoint experience you've had when you've been typing papers for the last 4 years of your life. I had a computer applications class my freshman year. After that I worked with PowerPoint in one or two other classes. I don't think I touched an Excel application after that.
Your best defense is your intelligence, but employers want more than that.
I think one would be better off getting a two-year degree while working, save up some money, then get a four-year degree on your own dime. Just going to college after high school is something, had I known better, I would have not done.
2. Esther said the following at 11:53 AM on Jan 23:
This is another one of those times when I have to tip my hat to my parents and say, "You were right."
When I was in college, they urged me to take advantage of every opportunity I could to get real experience in my field. It meant some hot summers doing field research, and even supervising Christmas tree pruning crews, but the fact that I graduated with more on my resume than a bachelors and a job in the dining hall has made all the difference in getting jobs. I am also humbled by the fact that I will soon be starting a new job that will earn me significantly more than my father's law degree did him just a few years out of school. (He has the grace to tell me he's proud of me for it.)
3. Christina said the following at 12:05 PM on Jan 23:
Real-world experience wasn't what colleges were created to give >.<
Its what frustrated me so much about my school, is that we were educating future high school teachers...they weren't providing quality education to those that wanted to learn for the sake of learning and proceeding to graduate school. They were teaching the students how to get an easy grade in anything other than what thye needed to know for high school education. (That's not true of all the departments at my alma mater, but it was of the vast majority of the math department)
Vocational training was where you got real world experience,but for some reason companies stopped valuing that. Instead, they pay their most competent vocational trained workers a pittance, while supplying upwards of $50,000 salaries to incompetent college educated, freshly graduated students.
Colleges are now making the transition to providing that experience, and aren't succeeding as well as employers would like - but like i said, it was never their job.
My current company isn't the best at on-the-job training, and pretty much leave you to sink or swim. If you sink, then you weren't right for the job. Nevermind that you were never trained properly or handed down information relevant to your current assignment, your a college grad - you know all this stuff already.
What I learned from my real world experience (outside of school) was to work hard. But this still isn't relevant...you can be the hardest worker ever, but if your clueless to the work your supposed to be doing, you won't be nearly as beneficial to the company.
This kinda goes in with the other blog posts on the role of universities...
4. James said the following at 12:18 PM on Jan 23:
Having a mentor when I started my internship (I interned after I graduated, and right before it ended, they offered me a full time position so it was a seemless transition) really REALLY helped me learn what I needed to. It wasn't that he tutored me or anything, since when I started we were in the smack dab middle of formal testing and the entire engineering division was burning the oil pretty hard getting our product fully tested. What helped was that he showed me what I should be looking at and how to go about learning. Then I learned on my own and also learned from my mentor about WHO to talk to about what things.
Networking was (and is) a HUGE skill that needs to be learned. There is no praise for an engineer who will spend a good deal MORE time on something that could be solved much faster if he went and asked someone he knew was more experienced in the area. The "I must do myself with no help" is not looked well upon. An engineer who works hard, does his work, and does what he needs to to get his work done is what is looked highly upon. This includes using ALL his available tools and resources which VERY MUCH include his fellow (and more experienced) engineers.
Another big thing is learning the priority of your tasks that you're assigned. It helps you to know what is considered more important or "cannot be delayed" and what can be pushed back if necessary due to other tasks.
Being familiar and comfortable with the company's processes and procedures is something employers want. This usually requires them to hire you or intern you first, but what they want is to see you adapt to how they do things and learn to work with the system instead of grind against it.
Learning to manage stress is another skill. An engineer who is strung out too much will be less productive than an engineer who works hard, but knows how to blow off steam and get himself relaxed and mentally refreshed to keep working. For example, I try and do this by keeping my work AT WORK, and not taking work home if at all possible. So, when I leave for the day, my mind tunes out the engineering and just destresses from the day. And I come to work the next day refreshed and ready to get back at it where I left off the day previous.
Back to networking. Knowing WHEN to ask for help is important. This means knowing your strengths, weaknesses, and being confident in your capabilities as they truly are. Learn to NOT underestimate or overestimate your capabilities. Just be bluntly honest, and then you'll know when you're in a pickle and need extra help and when going and asking for help will not help you get the job done easier or faster.
Thinking critically and creatively is something that cannot be overstressed, but should be just as obvious. The reason you're being hired instead of them buying a computer to do your job is because of these two skills that no computer can ever replicate. Learn to think through all your options and possibilities and evaluate them all and figure out work-arounds if the straight-forward approach isn't going to work well.
People skills. This means being able to give friendly smiles and hello's to people you work with or see regularly at work. Using common courtesy and being considerate of others. Make yourself the kind of person people like or don't mind having around instead of the person who can generally grate people's nerves. How well you work with others is more highly valued than how brainy you are.
For the record, I've been out of college for 1 year and 1 month, and am in my 9th month of employment at my workplace (this includes the 4 month internship since I was doing real work during the internship, just under some more supervision than I am now). My position is a junior Avionics Systems Engineer and I have my bachelor of science degree in Electrical Engineering. I'm also currently mentoring a brand new hire who just started who is finishing up his masters in EE, but in the workplace experience on the job counts for more than years of education, so I'm seen as more senior than he and thus able to mentor him. It's going well and helping me to think more about how to help a new hire out.
And, I love my job. I'm having a blast, so I kind of figure that the skills I mentioned (I use these daily) really do work.
5. Leann said the following at 3:03 PM on Jan 23:
I had an internship with one of my state offices and even though I had that experience I was told by one employer, actually a university, that it didn't count as full-time work because it was an intership. Even though I may have worked for over a year, they counted half of it. It took me two years to find a "real" job that paid more than $9 an hour and I had a Master's Degree! Thank goodness patience pays off because four years later I'm working for the federal government in my field and making what I feel I deserve. But it took four years to get in that job. I had to take a job for three years that was emotionally horrible but had good pay and benefits. I just hung in there until God provided this much better opportunity.
6. Jessica said the following at 3:08 PM on Jan 23:
I would agree. I don't have a college degree and am entry-level in the always growing, fairly competitive field of medical billing. It isn't what I want to do for the rest of my life, but I have been told by numerous people that I am doing myself a favor.
People spend thousands of dollars to be 'smart' enough to get the job I have and then get fired after 2 weeks because the classroom knowledge was not aptly applied in the workplace. If I ever need to get back into this career later in life, I will have an edge over the people who have a degree in what I do. Because of that experience, I will also start at a better salary. Sounds good to me!
(Though, as a disclaimer, I would not recommend this approach to everyone).
7. BDB said the following at 10:08 PM on Jan 23:
As an employer, let me make two observations:
1) People with more work experience are better and doing basic work things, like showing up every day on time. Many people don't have this discipline. Heck, I like hiring people over 50 in part because they are so incredibly responsible compared to a 20-year-old.
2) People with a good education are often vastly superior and putting together complex projects with little direction. It helps a lot when you work for an educated person who knows HOW to deploy your skills. Many uneducated people freeze up when given a complex project to figure out. They think their employer should show them how to do it. Well, I have news for you: to be successful in most professional, managerial or executive jobs, you need to be able to figure it out yourself. If you want to rise in your career, you need to be the person who can accept the assignment, "This is a mess-fix it!"
And then go figure it out and fix it. Those are the people I promote.
(Even better are the ones who say, "I notice that X is a mess, would you mind if I fixed it by doing A, B, C and D?" Those people are gold.)
8. Chris Krycho said the following at 6:52 AM on Jan 24:
Hmm. Vocational experience is good... but it bothers me that we societally and employers particularly have reduced the university to nothing other than a four-year vocational/tech school. (No complaints against vocational/tech schools; I think a lot more people should be going there instead of college, honestly.) Is that really the point of college? Or should the university be exposing you to a wide variety of subjects, teaching you to think, rather than simply filling your head with knowledge? I've had the opportunity while in college to study across a number of different fields of study (though even in my case, less so than I would like), and the truth is that it's been great - but most of my classes will not be "directly applicable" to a job I would get straight out of college. They have, however, taught me how rather than what to think, and that's extremely consequential.
Perhaps we should stop blaming the colleges and universities for doing what they're supposed to do and not doing what other institutions are supposed to do. Internships and practicums are great, but they're not (and should not be) the focus of a university education.
9. Logan Mailloux said the following at 7:38 AM on Jan 24:
Regarding, Real-World experience, mentorship and "What you need to know?"... I recommend serving in the armed forces. Both directly out of college or even high school. Whether you serve one tour or many the experience you gain will be "Real" and make a significant difference for the rest of your life.
10. Randy said the following at 2:01 PM on Jan 24:
I am just about finished with my ninth year of education since high school and will be getting my Ph.D. in engineering and finding a job. I have been a graduate student for five years and have had two internships in my field. I agree with a lot of what people are saying, but I am much less willing to blame the college/university system for not preparing people the way that some might expect.
If anything, college's most intangible benefit is learning organizational and time management skills. It is a rarity to find someone who can not only manage their time well, but also give accurate approximations of how long a task will take. This is something that you should learn after (at least) four years of experience being a student. The college teaches it to you the way is should be taught - independently by the student. There is no Organization Skill 101 course.
So far in my job search, the interviewers have been, say, 90% interested in my skills. But that probably comes with the level of the position. The ability to show up on time and be organized is a given. You will have a hard time making it in graduate school if you didn't learn that as an undergrad.
I am hopeful that wherever I work there will be exceptional mentoring. Mentoring has always been a win-win for everyone involved and was that way during my internships.
Oh, and whoever was complaining about fresh, incompetent new grads getting $50,000 starting salaries, consider this: they may have gotten a C+ GPA, but they got an A in choosing a career. Also, my father is a trade school instructor and my brother is in that trade. $50,000 is much less than my brother earned in his first year, and he only was in for two years...
11. Michael M. Norman, ED.D. said the following at 5:18 PM on Jan 24:
Many of the comments have pertained to attitudes and those attitudes reflect many issues taking place in the American society. Young employees do need to learn some new tricks from old farts like myself. But we also have to engage younger staff members in understanding the purpose of work in their lives and in what it means to work with people they may like and those they may not like. This includes their bosses and customers.
Employees of all ages now have the specter of additional adult responsibilities to face. Those responsibilities include taking care of home-based children, those from birth-to-whenever they finally leave the nest to live on their own. And the probability they will have to take care of their parents or other love ones while working. It will be a tough spot to live in but it is reality and that means it is very REAL!