Why getting a job straight out of college is so hard.
There is a deeply rooted consensus that those who attend college will be placed in a well-paying reliable occupation. The thought process is that due to you having a degree or qualification on paper that you are knowledgeable in a particular field or topic.
This does not matter to employers (in most cases). Now if you want to be a doctor or a lawyer you will obviously need certain skill sets. Companies or hospitals for example will not hire those who haven’t passed the bar or graduated medical skill.
The people I am referring to are those with general degrees. Or those who have studied subjects that can be applied to many different jobs.
Take a communications degree for example. This may cover effective ways to process and pass on information or tasks, but it doesn’t teach graduates how to work and communicate with others.
The issue with Universities and colleges in this era of human life is that colleges are realistic in their projections of what a student needs to be able to land that job out of college.
It sets them up to memorize sequences and relay information as if they are walking photocopy machines.
I personally learnt in college how to absorb an extravagant amount of information and then regurgitate it onto a piece of paper within three hours.
Now working with customers over the phone, in person, and answering challenging emails dozens of times a day, being a human photocopier is useless.
What my job demands is the ability to ADAPT. Adapt in every aspect of my time at work. Whether it is adopting a new task, or trying to solve a new problem. All. By. Myself.
No help, no lecturers to walk me through the answers. Just me and my brain.
Employers want individuals who can rise to the challenge, despite what the challenge contains. If they are unable to do this, they become unteachable and are slowly, but surely, washed out of the workforce.
If these higher institutions focused on teaching their students how to adapt quickly and efficiently to new challenges and situations, they would become remarkably more attractive to employers.
Someone that is able to bold themselves around a problem, absorb it and solve it, its value for the employer. The employer can utilize the employee and ensure they are value-adding to the company, not part of the value-reduction.
Customers are going to use, buy from, or facilitate a company that produces value. Colleges don’t have these customers in mind when attempting to produce productive members of society.
They fail to produce and prepare adaptable, value-creating individuals.
Producing this type of person after three years of learning by memorisation, is not going to produce a hireable workforce.
It is very hard to land a job out of college if you are unteachable, value-reducing, and unable to adapt to the situation you are given.
Enough said,
Thank you.
