Job Expectations Of New University Graduates
Welcome to the TBSC Consulting Blog.
The end of the university year has arrived and a new crop of university graduates is entering the job market. Over the past month TBSC has had the opportunity to do two informal surveys among graduating students about their expectations as they enter the job market. This and subsequent postings will show some results from those surveys along with our (TBSC’s) interpretation of the facts.
Note that the surveys should not be considered to be statistically valid from a frequentist perspective. On the other hand, as management consultants and Baysian statisticians – having to make business decisions based on less-than-perfect information – our belief in what the results indicate increases due to the survey. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_probability).
If you truly understand the previous paragraph then contact us about a job.
Before we get to the results, let me share some of my own thoughts about new university graduates in Georgia. When I came to Georgia nearly 11 years ago the situation with university graduates was very different than the situation today.
- Today there is a good supply of well qualified graduates in some important subjects; that was not the case 11 years ago when there were many fewer well qualified graduates
- The possession of a university degree today is a credible measure of actual learning; having a university degree 11 years ago was not a credible measure of learning
- Today there is a good supply of well qualified graduates with degrees in business and law; 11 years ago and today there continues to be a chronic shortage of graduates with technical and engineering degrees.
If you have a technical or engineering degree and a business orientation contact us about a job. You get the point.
It Is Very Good To Know How To Market And Sell Widgets (a business issue), But A Shame To Not Know How To Produce Widgets In The First Place (a technical and engineering issue)
Such is the state of the new crop of graduates. On the positive side it appears that the university student financing schemes are reacting to this situation.
So if most graduates are in business and law, what are their expectations about their first jobs?
The Financial recently published (June 27, 2011) an article about the Dream Employers of Georgian Business School Students. I was struck by how nearly all respondents expressed interest in prominent companies or brands (i.e., names that are in the minds of nearly all Georgian students), including many not even present in Georgia (e.g., Amazon). I did not see a single mention of a company that could be considered to be below the radar (i.e., that would reflect some work by students to find good employers). To the end, I felt as if the students were more influenced by media-prominence than by any specific knowledge of the employer. This conclusion was reflected in the survey.
A Majority Of Graduates Do Not Work So Hard To Finding The Perfect First Job
Fewer than 40 percent of students said that they had put much or very much effort into looking for a job. This strikes me as odd since a graduate’s first job after university is arguably the most important one of the next ten years and at a time when unemployment rates are high.
However a high percentage of graduates already have jobs (e.g., internships) and they said they intend to stay at those employers. To me this suggests that new graduates are satisficers in the sense that if they have a job that is OK then they will not work particularly hard to find a better first job.
This is reflected in job satisfaction where only 50 percent of graduates said they were somewhat or very satisfied with their current job. Of course the motivation for this could be that the graduates have concluded that there are so few good jobs out there, or that they are so hard to find, that it is not worth investing the time needed to find them.
Of course graduates may feel that there are few good jobs because we, as employers, have done a bad job of explaining things to the students. I exclude the banks and accounting firms from this self-criticism because they seem to have done a good job among students.
Next Time
We also asked questions about wage expectations among graduates and their expectations about the level they will be within companies now, in two years, five years and in ten years. The experts say that blog entries should not be so long, so those will be subjects for a later posting.
Paul
Comments
Dear Luka,
Thank you for your comment. I will be posting the next piece in a bit, but let me comment on your comments. Is that C^2 (comment squared)?
You are right about the chicken and egg problem regarding technical training. I think it all depends on one's time horizon. If you think about the immediate future then students should ignore technical fields since (most) employers (today) undervalue the technical end of things. Emphasis on most (as opposed to all) and today (as opposed to the future). If one looks out ten years or so the situation is different. If one in investing in one's education with the long-term in mind, then something technical makes great sense. I recommend master degrees in industrial engineering to most people, regardless of their original degree (yes, even Georgian Language majors could do fine here).
Personally, I think it is MUCH easier to teach a technical person business or social skills than it is to teach a non-technical person technical skills. The technical/non-technical orientation is created before one is 22 - if you do not have it when you are 22 then it is unlikely you will ever have it.
While the technical skills may not be directly related to your (non-technical) job, I know a technically-oriented person would never have a problem understanding modern finance or market share evolution. But take a finance person and ask them to understand the production process for widgets? Good luck with that!
It is curious that in the US, and elsewhere, the new billionaires are often technical people. Maybe they were not trained to be managers (or entrepreneurs), but they are at the top of the heap anyway. The Google boys (Larry Page and Sergey Brin) were PhD students when they created Google. Do we seriously believe that Google would exist today if they had chosen to study finance instead?
(In the interest of full disclosure you should know that I am a finance sort of person; have an MBA in it and use it in my daily work; but then I was a rocket scientist before that - really).
As far as the life of students being largely managed by others (parents) I guess I would agree, based on what I see in Georgia over the past 11 years. On the other hand, it seems to me that the most successful people over that time are ones that cut the apron string (an American metaphor) early on. When you are forty do you want to say that "I am where I am today because of my parents" or "I am where I am today because of me"?
Actually I think the banks have done a fine job in terms of creating a certain mystic about working in a bank. If they can trade on that image, and if it helps you get good people relatively cheaply then more power to them. But do not get me wrong, however. Banks are a great place to work. My only observation is that they are far from being the only place to work.
I have an associate who thought he/she would be a finance/banker once he/she graduated. It took four months of working with us (TBSC) to cause him/her to seriously question that previous article of faith. Why? Not that banking is a bad profession, but merely that it is not the only one.
Given a choice, would a young Georgian want to drive his or her own car, or have someone else drive his or her car for them (i.e., just be a passenger in the car)? Future success depends on taking the wheel and pointing the car in the direction that you want.
Paul
As someone from business sector I am very thankful that TBSC started this blog. I hope we will now have chance to discuss here many interesting topics about the business and economy. I registered and hope to get updates on mail about your new posts.
Your current topic I found very interesting and it took me back, when I was a new graduate and went through all the difficulties of planning my career. Let me express my opinion about the first job issue, you mentioned.
When I graduated from business school and chose my first job, I did it mainly spontaneously and I think most of the new-graduates do the same. I will explain why I think they do this and why it is bad.
Academic world is very different from the real world, which is waiting you out of the school. When students start to seek for their first job they have very limited information about real world, about companies (potential employers) and what they are doing. Correspondingly, they also do not truly understand what they want to do and where they belong to. That is why they like prominent companies and brands. Because they think that well-known companies might be good place to build up their career. I think it is not true and successful career most probably can be result of the job that you find interesting and truly yours.
The consequence of this is that, new-graduates quit their first job very soon, mostly within a year. This is for sure not good for employers, because they have quick change of staff, which is costly and they can not maintain quality. You did not have the inquiry of how long new-graduates stay at their first job, but I am sure results would show a short period. If you ask big banks in Georgia, they would name it as one of their biggest problem. Banking sector is prominent in Georgia and attracts lots of new graduates, but only few in the end find themselves as Bankers, as banking is very specific field and not for everyone. Frequently changing job is also bad for employees, because they loose time. Going to a new company, adapting there and starting everything from the beginning also takes time, even if the second job is more suitable for you.
I think that some level of uncertainly that new graduates have about their "true" job is natural, but still there are things that employers can do to improve the situation. First, as you also mentioned, is them to explain things to students. Only banks and some accounting companies do it, but there are other big companies from number of other fields that can do the same. I think that Universities could push them to make presentations for third year and last year students. Second, and most important is that they should also give students opportunity to have internships. I know some business schools in Georgia, started to make it obligatory, but it would be good to have it in all schools. These internships I think should start as early as third year of studies. I do not think students will be distracted from studies, because getting acquainted with practical experience is as important for them as studies. Business schools in Georgia should become less academic and more mixture of academic and practice based. Short internship (3 months) could be very useful for students and good preparation for the real world.
It would be also very good for some elite schools to give opportunity students to have international internships, which gives very rich experience- especially today when you have to think global as world becomes more and more border less.
If we compare Georgia to Europe and USA, we can see there is lot to be done. Because, most of business school students there are having two internships before they finish their bachelor studies and at least one is international.
To summarize if we provide more information to students they will have chance to plan their career more efficiently and companies will also have more qualified employees. But, this situation can be improved by integrated work of universities and employers together, maybe also government( ministry of education).
Mari
What are three things TBSC Consulting searches for in its new young employees (unless I have a degree in engineering)?
Hello,
I really liked the name of this topic.
I'm recently a new graduate in business Administration (major-Finance), and I think this topic will be helpful for people like me. so tank you for it . 
and now concerning engineering degree, as you know or see this field of studies wasn't appealing for student few years ago. this was maybe because of lack of professionals who conduct this subjects, or maybe because of our view of life(in our I mean Georgians). I believe that economic welfare of our country, Georgia, will be based on 1.energetics (engineering) 2.business sector(international trading) 3. agriculture. . so i think that engineering degree will support our BBA diplomas, as it is one of the main aspects of county's future economic welfare. because of this I'm going to take 1 year courses, not exactly in energetics, but in sort of engineering(computer engineering).
I think that formula of success is, you must be perfect in you field of occupation, based on your education and experience, and you should know what is happening in other fields. or you can say that no one will be good professional in his/her field as long as he/she doesn't know "what's going on around them".
now i want to talk about survey you made, I as a recent graduate can say that i was looking for job on my third year of studies at University, Georgian-American University(GAU) and i can say that it was really hard to find one, not because I don't have knowledge or I was not studying hard. and I could not find out the reason yet. Can you please make a comment about this?
and what about salary, I'm looking at myself as an investment my parents have made and will make in me, in my education, so in perspective the NPV of this investment must be at least zero, according to this everyone can find out what his/her salary must look like. Mr. Paul can you please make a comment on this way of thinking? thank you in advance
thanks for attention
P.S. i really understood this paragraph:
"Note that the surveys should not be considered to be statistically valid from a frequentist perspective. On the other hand, as management consultants and Baysian statisticians – having to make business decisions based on less-than-perfect information – our belief in what the results indicate increases due to the survey. "
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Hello,
It also bears mentioning that at least in my university they didn't have a good engineering department, my friends there often complained that they study completely unrelated subjects. Maybe its caused by low demand for quality engineering staff, after all we dont have many factories in georgia, but why would anyone open a factory here if there's no quality engineers, region instability notwithstanding. All in all it's a closed circle and I believe it will take a major shift both in mentality and incentives before there is a change.
It was an interesting read, being a recent graduate myself I wanted to share some thoughts from student perspective...
About technical degrees, I agree there is very little interest in studying engineering basically because there is a mentality in Georgians that technically skilled people are forced to work on the lowest level of command and everyone wants to be a boss in Georgia so they all aim for the managers, including myself
Regarding effort put into finding a perfect job... I think the reason for low effort put into finding a really good job is caused by the fact that the lifes of most of Georgian students have been "herded" by parents till the moment they graduate. We have been taken to kidergarten at low age, than they took us to school and to university after. At the moment of graduating these students are so used for their lives to be planned ahead for them that they just stand there waiting for next thing to happen. This is reflected in your findings that when asked about a company they would like to work for they just answer some good company they heard about in media rather than from results of their research.
Concerning satisfaction and banks... I dont believe banks did a good job at appealing to students, its part of the mentality and media as well, everyone knows they exist, they are big (it is considered the bigger the company, the bigger the salaries there), they are prestigious and they are there to stay - a perfect match for a disoriented student thrown out into a big world. I agree with you about satisfaction, there's a big uncertainty if there are better jobs and if they can be obtained.
Uhh this turned out to be a bigger text than I was planning to, I'm sorry. Just wanted to share my thoughts. I will keep checking you blog for the second part of your survey.
Regards,
Luka