A Wealth of Experience

7th April 2016

What do you consider most important when you are hiring new staff? To some extent it will depend on the sort of role you are filling in terms of seniority and/or technical skills required. But the majority of roles should be fillable by any number of different candidates, providing of course, that you have systemised your business sufficiently, so that your new employee can follow the instructions given verbally and supported by manuals.

However, it is something which is foremost in my thoughts at the moment as I have a daughter who is just coming to the job market and a son who will be following her in a couple of years. Reading an article in the Sunday papers this week made it quite clear that on the whole, most employers were no longer looking for the smart young things fresh out of university with impressive degrees, but much more for people with experience, both in work and ideally the ways of the world.

The trouble is, in the various government drives to make our teenagers look cleverer, and give them “more confidence”, there has without doubt been an easing of pass marks in exams (and exams getting easier especially as a lot of results are boosted by coursework). As a result far more graduates approach the job market with high degrees, but unfortunately no ability to communicate, tackle problems, use common sense, or even turn up on time and look presentable. Hence the general feeling of employers that they would rather turn to those with experiences of some sort.

Nevertheless, whilst I completely understand and support this viewpoint, we must also be careful not to “throw the baby out with the bath water”. There are of course still plenty of good graduates, and providing they have a good positive attitude, are willing to listen and learn, and fit in with your business culture, I would still advise that in many situations, you would be well served employing these people. After all it is much easier getting people with open minds to fit in, than teaching old dogs new tricks.

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