Apparently employers are now disregarding applicants with a University degree. Instead they have a preference for picking youngsters who have completed an apprenticeship or work experience. This will obviously benefit the young generation that is not academically inclined and prefers to take the technical and professional routes.
This news is of course a direct blow to all those young adults who invested a lot during the recession years in getting a good education in order to build a better future for themselves, borrowed money from Mum and Dad as well as from the banks to pay triple University fees.
In the end, what the world had to offer them was absolutely grim…years and years of unemployment and underemployment as a product of a world recession that no one had seen since the 1930s.
This of course only meant to them that their personal debts were not to be cleared as soon as they expected. Understandably so, many chose to leave the UK while others opted for serving coffees at Starbucks just in order to place something on their CVs.
On the other side, somehow this mindset shared by employers does not come as a surprise to me. For years, the media has highlighted that too much homegrown talent produced by the national educational system cannot even spell or count properly, thus leaving thousands of vacancies unfilled in the jobs market every year!
I can still remember the day I attended a conference about the future of work in Britain only to hear a business leader comment loud and proud on stage in front of a vast audience full of experienced and highly qualified professionals from every fields that he gave no relevance whatsoever to college degrees! Instead what he valued above everything else was the applicant’s personality, character and attitude!
Now we all know that in general, offices are full of individuals full of questionable character, nasty attitude and unpleasant personality with no talent, skill or even qualifications…yet somehow they got a place there!
At the same time, employers themselves are no example to anybody as a recent survey revealed that only 22% of them hold a University degree. They cannot understand qualifications that foreign graduates bring into the UK either as the educational systems differ.
Currently 49% of decision makers mention that relevant training or a previous role is crucial to them when considering a new applicant. Only 24% of employers would be keen on recruiting someone with a University degree as the remaining preferred practical skills such as communication, team working, multicultural awareness, problem solving and simple punctuality.
I guess the best solution for those “young guns” who value learning itself and education regardless of what employers might state these days, is to gain work experience via volunteering and work placements. Therefore once they finish their degrees they will have experienced the “school of life”, gained practical skills, work experience and made a few contacts as well in the process.
However, a careful and balanced choice has to be made in order to pick decent employers who will not exploit or abuse them while they are still in University as cheap/free labour desperate for anything just to get a reference or an entry level role.
Bakasura Blog 