These past few months I have been regularly applying for full-time positions across a variety of roles. However during this time I noticed a very big trend across the various positions. Very few organizations want to train anyone.
A huge majority of roles are looking for someone with 2-3 years of professional software development experience, and it really made me wonder why is there such a strong hesitation towards training?
At one of my previous accounting firms, they had a policy of not hiring a new grad unless a new grad went through an internship at our firm. One thing I noticed that was common was that even if you were able to get interns in your door, they likely had previous internship experience or planned internships at another firm. This meant that you were not guaranteed to have any particular intern willing to accept a full-time position at the firm.
During my few years at the firm, the partner of my department retired and a younger partner took over the position. Not to long into his new role, he hired two new grads in accounting. As someone who helped train these new grads, I couldn’t help but notice how much more quickly they were able to be trained and integrated into our workflow.
So as I see this trend of not wanting new grads across multiple fields, I can’t help but wonder what caused this fear?
Is it an issue with how higher education prepares students for industry? Is it a fear of cost or wasted effort for spending time on a individual who might leave afterwards? Perhaps it is just a lack of experience from the individuals who are responsible for hiring, whom might not understand how prepared an individual might be without professional experience? Maybe it is just an echo room where everyone does it because everyone else does it? Is it a generational gap in quality of education that worries long-experienced individuals hiring little-to-no experienced individuals?
Though I may be a little biased as a soon to be new grad myself, I feel that this might be an excellent research topic for a PhD fellow or a professional or government entity since this a common sight in so many industries.
How can you find a solution if you don’t know the problem?
