Companies Fail First Career Job College Graduates

[Scot Herrick]

Yesterday, Taleo Corporation released a study that was bad news for companies hiring college graduates and hoping to retain their services. The quick numbers:

* 43% of adults who got a job after graduating college stayed in this job less than two years.
* 41% of those who are no longer with their first employer out of college spent less than two years with their first employer.
* When describing how their first job made them feel, 13% said they couldn’t wait for Friday to arrive, 10% wanted to quit every day and 8% felt it was a waste of their time.
* 19% of 18-34 year olds wanted to quit their first job every day, compared to 3% of those 55 years old and over

The major reason given for these retention rates was that 61% were not given a path for career advancement.

As I noted on Cube Rules, I can't believe that I'd not want to quit my job every day if only I knew that the next step in my career path was Business Analyst II.

To me, this has to be employee engagement where the employee is not getting the connection between the work and the company goals, being known by the team, and being able to measure success independent of the manager.

Part of the cause has to be an employee "not knowing what they don't know" about work coming directly out of college. And part of the cause has to be the manager not addressing the needs of a college graduate coming into the work force.

What types of engagement practices have managers done specifically for college graduates coming into the work force?

[Terrence Seamon]

This is a great question, Scot. And I agree that it is an engagement issue. Unless the employer engages the new hire, disengagement will set in quick, and may lead to turnover.

I think that one of the best things a manager can do is get the new hire involved in real work as fast as possible. Not "make work" or sitting around reviewing manuals. I mean actual, meaningful, makes-a-difference-to-the-company work.

Such immersion gets the new hire into the action, where he or she will be meeting others, learning the business, and feeling exhilarated.

Terry

[Scot Herrick]

I agree with this one. But I would also think that this applies to every employee coming from the outside.

I was also looking for specific engagement practices for those new to the workforce from college.

For example, two of the most difficult changes students face as employees are constantly shifting demands and a faster paced environment compared to school and classwork.

Do we help these people with understanding that six back-to-back meetings can sometimes be the norm? That your priorities will shift three times a day? How would we effectively do that?

Those types of activities would help the student, now employee, engage in the job more wouldn't it? Others?

[David Zinger]

Scot:

This is a very important focus to help young people with the transition from school to work.

I think some of it is first hand learning experiences.

Some companies are creating mentors but I wonder about the true impact of assigning mentors rather than finding mentors.

I have encourage a couple of my clients to take the last few days of someone working at an organization and try and capture their lived experiences on video. Talking about what it was like, what they learned, the "real" way to do things, etc. Then if these clips can be edited down and search able perhaps they young person can learn from the stories of those who have been there - just at long as those stories are not "in my day we had to walk 10 miles to work and work 10 hours a day and only got $10 so you should be happy with what you've got" type of stories.

I think you raising this point is very key. Perhaps it it less about programs, policies or procedures and more about sensitivity and communication with the new college graduate and her or his transition to work.

I have 3 children ages 19, 17, and 17 and I hope that they will experience someone caring enough at their workplace to learn about them, learn from them, and care about the quality of their working experiences.

David

[Scot Herrick]

"Perhaps it it less about programs, policies or procedures and more about sensitivity and communication with the new college graduate and her or his transition to work."

This is probably the right answer with a list of "subjects" to talk about for the transition. I did something like "five things that are different about work than school" on Cube Rules and most of them were pretty close from the comments. Helping new employees that just graduated from college with this transition should help the employee engagement and associated retention rates.

Corporations are wasting time, talent and money by not addressing this gap.

[Stephen J. Gill]

I completely agree with the comments so far about the need to do a better job of engaging college graduates in their first jobs after college. It has been my experience that most organizations continue to assume that once you have put new hires through orientation or "on-boarded" them, they should be fully capable of doing their jobs successfully, which, of course, is nonsense. However, let me offer a somewhat contrarian view of the survey stats. College grads might just need first and second jobs (and maybe more) to figure out what they want and how they fit in the world of work. Unless they have done some well supervised internships during college, there is no way for them to know where they fit best until they have experienced a couple of jobs. Take teaching for example. Until you have your own classroom in a public school for a year, there is no way for you to know if K-12 teaching is a good fit. So I'm not surprised with the survey results. And it might be that, as a society, we can't do much better.

[Scot Herrick]

I still want to figure out what I do when I grow up!

I agree that people probably don't know what they want to do directly out of college. It is simply a large change in approach, discipline, and hours spent compared to an entire life of school. The risks are different.

The statistics might not change, but going through the process of specific, different help for college graduates in their first positions will help them figure out if what they are doing is right.

A very good point, Stephen. Thanks.

[Ian Buckingham]

In the UK we've become obsessed with the notion of the Employer Brand, namely the brand the employer presents to existing, potential and new employees. Nothing wrong with positioning brand as a concept as applicable to the internal audience and employee audience as the customer audience and it's a welcome change to perceive employees and potential employees as customers of the internal support functions. However, it's an equation without balance. I encourage HR functions in particular to appreciate the notion of the Employment Brand.
Just as a brand, from a customer perspective, isn't the promise made but the promise delivered, the Employment Brand is the result of the Employer Brand minus the Employee Brand (i.e. what the people processes promise minus what they actually deliver). It's a simple twist but it keeps the minds of those responsible for managing the people processes firmly focused on constantly ensuring they understand what they're promising new as well as existing recruits and are delivering against that promise. This is never more important than with graduate hires - one of the most expensive but important investments the HR team are responsible for making.

[Scot Herrick]

Unfortunately, in many cases the Employer Brand is simply marketing without execution. I like the idea of an Employment Brand. It's not just filling out forms to show Business Week that you are one of the "top 100" companies to work for, but, instead, actually do the work with employees to make your place great.

Nice insight.