FINANCIAL INCENTIVES TEMPT BOSSES TOWARDS SCHOOL-LEAVERS
Employers are increasingly giving graduate jobs to younger applicants who haven’t been to university, new research suggests. Bosses say that the applications they receive from graduates “are simply not up to standard” – so they are widening their search to include younger candidates who can be taken on as apprentices.
A survey commissioned by totaljobs.com and the Association of Graduate Recruiters (AGR) found that almost half of employers (48%) confess to a shift from graduates to apprentices when looking to fill entry-level roles. According to the findings:
- Nearly a third of companies (32%) complain that graduates lack the necessary interpersonal skills
- Nearly a third (31%) say graduates lack the necessary work experience
- Nearly a fifth (18%) want degrees to be more appropriate for the world of work
- Six in ten (57%) companies say they have difficulty recruiting entry level staff with the right skills
- A third (34%) claim the skills gap is most acute in technical ability
- Over a quarter (27%) of those survey cited apprenticeships as crucial to addressing the deficit in skills
- A quarter want to see business skills embedded within school education
Mike Fetters, graduate director at totaljobs.com, hinted that there could also be financial motives behind these companies’ decision to hire apprentices instead of graduates – and implied that younger candidates were easier to train and mould for jobs:
“With government funding available for firms that run apprenticeships, it is clear that employers are taking on and helping train entry level staff as a way of addressing a chronic shortage of skills.
“Too many of those we spoke to reported that the graduate applications they received were simply not up to standard. The organisations that needed employees with so-called STEM skills said they struggled finding enough graduates with appropriate degrees. Others said that recent university leavers lacked work experience, and the soft skill this brings. In such an environment, it is perhaps unsurprising that companies are looking to take on staff earlier to shape them for the roles required.”
These findings raise alarming questions for students and graduates. If employers are now saying they actually prefer school leavers to graduates, what is the point of going to university at all? Do you believe that school leavers are actually better for these jobs – or could it have anything to do with the fact that apprentice wages are only £2.65 an hour, while the minimum wage for anyone over 21 is more than double that, at £6.19 an hour?
*SHOULD APPRENTICES BE GIVEN GRADUATE JOBS?
Is it fair that young people who haven’t invested time, money and hard work in a degree should be viewed as more attractive candidates than university graduates? Do graduates really lack skills – or are employers just recruiting on the cheap, and taking advantage of the pitifully low apprentice wage (£2.65 an hour)?
Wish I’d never gone to university. I was told it would improve my employability yet six months after the end of my course I’m just a graduate unemployment statistic. I should have just got a job after leaving school!
the reason i think that employers are taking apprentices are costs it is cheaper for an apprentice and secondly that uni teach theory not practical skills and employers can mold an 16-18 apprentice were a graduate is going to be more unwilling to do a menial tasks.
What Matt said. Graduates aren’t keen to get their hands dirty and expect a immediate responsibility without any real industry insight.
Hmm…I could understand traditional apprenticeships that taught a marketable trade, e.g. plumbing. Though the apprenticeship wage would basically be impossible, even for sixth-formers, without parental subsidy.
Increasingly, though, I see apprenticeships (eg administrator, barista) that are blatantly scams to pay £2.65 an hour and pretend to be helping the young.
How does training to photocopy compare to learning a trade? A barista clearly needs to learn a fair bit (I couldn’t do it), but they used to be paid minimum wage during training, and its not comparable to the traditional trades in amount learned still.
Firstly, I really wish they would tighten up the rules as to what counts as a a real apprenticeship. As the above poster says, a lot of these so called apprenticeships are clearly just a way to get cheap labor rather than actually train people in a proper trade.
Secondly, I’ve said this before, when it comes to soft skills and being ready for the world of work a lot of these employers must be looking back on themselves at 21 through rose tinted glasses. Schools have never taught office skills and everyone has to had to learn this stuff on the job.
Businesses in the UK are motivated by cost and seek to keep costs to a minimum. They will say anything to justify their penny-pinching. As for soft skills, undergraduates develop these throughout their course, through giving presentations and engaging in seminar discussions. They develop negotiating and persuading skills, communication skills, interpersonal skills. Undergraduates are marked partly on their involvement in seminar discussions and their ability to put forward a cohesive argument is scrutinised and marked. The degree classification is determined not just by written assignment. Obviously, different graduates will demonstrate different levels of communication skills for instance. A graduate with a First will have better soft skills than a graduate with a 2:2.
Soft skills such as interpersonal skills are developed to a higher level at university than school or college. That’s the difference between secondary education, further education and higher education. I think a lot of employers seem to be confused between education and training. Education comes first, followed by training and sometimes there is a combination at university.
Again, in an age of cost-cutting, fewer employers seem prepared to invest in graduate training programmes. But when most focus only on the next quarter, they don’t want to commit to a 10 or 20 year investment.
It’s plain ridiculous to assume that graduates don’t have the skills which employers need – and it is an assumption because how do they know before they’ve taken them on?! I may not have done a course in administrative skills at university but it didn’t take me long to pick them up when I started my first job.
‘The right skills for an entry level position’? Wasn’t there a time when ‘the right skills’ in that context meant being dedicated, hard-working and keen to learn? I think that statement is very telling – employers increasingly want more and more for less and less.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-21723662
As for soft skills, undergraduates develop these throughout their course, through giving presentations and engaging in seminar discussions. They develop negotiating and persuading skills, communication skills, interpersonal skills.
Having interviewd thousands I can tell you that whilst they are exposed to these things, they are simply left to it. Leadership skills become a matter of the person with the biggest mouth gets to lead and may or may not impose themselves well or badly on the group, collaboration skills become simply “getting on with it”. Presentation skills – again left to get on with it and when one interviews these people they cannot ably describe how they influenced others or got their point across.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15722022
‘Shortage of skills’ – more like a shortage of ethics that is helping to build the most divided and nasty country since Victorian times. Are we supposed to believe that favouring school leavers over graduates has nothing to do with the apprentice wage rate being £2.65 ph? Could it also be that educated people question what they are told to do?
How do people get the skills if they cannot afford to take entry level jobs without being subsidised by wealthy parents? How can graduates progress and fill skilled positions in the economy if they are trounced in every effort and require subsidy from wealthy backers to work for free in internships? So, as I have long suspected, now both entry level jobs and internships are denied to graduates from modest backgrounds.
I have looked through the apprenticeships on offer. Quite a lot of them are not apprenticeships in the sense people would traditionally understand. Most look like your entry level job that would have previously been paid the minimum wage. Why am I not surprised.
@Peter, universities conform to high standards and are rigorously assessed. The produce high calibre graduateswho are industry-ready. Maybe many do not have the particular mix of skills that you are looking for but courses are designed very carefully to produce specific and transferable skills. The Degree Supplement that acccompanies the Degree certificate outlines in detail the different skills and knowledge acquired by the graduate and is designed to assist employers.
I would suggest that the thousands of graduates you interview lack the correct Personal and Professional Development knowledge and insight to the degree they followed, rather than lacking the actual skills. This touches on the area that the Careers Service is largely responsible for. I think I would agree with you, Peter, to a certain extent. When you say that undergraduates are exposed to soft skills but left to get on with it, the role of the lecturer is to monitor the Seminar Presentation and intervene only when the discussion descends into chaos.As you are probably aware, Workshops are set up to instruct students on how to give presentations and how to manage seminar discussions. Students regularly see their Personal Tutor to discuss issues surrounding the presentation they are due to give. Every opportunity to develop soft skills is given to students – they are not simply left to get on with it.
The university careers service could perhaps deliver its service in a different way. Simply putting on a series of workshops close to the end of the academic year might not be the best method, especially when assignment and dissertation deadlines are looming. Students should have greater access to careers workshops at a time and location convenient to them throughout the calendar year and not just the academic year. Yet, how much can a small careers service be expected to deliver to 25000 or 30000 students?
Whose responsibility is it to provide specific soft skills that are probably best developed in separate workshops in simulation games or the like, to supplement the lecture room learning? Who provides the extra funding needed? Should this thread go down this avenue or is it simply going over ground covered in another article?
I would suggest that the thousands of graduates you interview lack the correct Personal and Professional Development knowledge and insight to the degree they followed, rather than lacking the actual skills.
Then you would suggest wrong. I interview them on collaboration, customer focus, communication and influence, performance and drive and ability to deliver results, analysis and problem solving, planning and organising.
All skills.
Although, in the worst case analyses, the worst type of employer will rebrand any job as an Apprenticeship, and then (as in the case of Mr Alan Sugar) treat the Apprentice with total contempt (it should be noted that,sadly, Mr Alan Sugar failed to achieve anything at school other than a few mediocre grades at O level before becoming a mere Barrowboy), the figures over Apprenticeships are alarming.
Contrary to popular myth, Apprenticeships are not restricted to the 16-18 age range, and unfortunately, because their is no coherent idea, any job lasting an indeterminate time (even lasting 1 week) can be rebranded as an Apprenticeship. This allows the employer to evade even the National Minimum Wage.
According to a report produced in November 2011
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/nov/14/apprenticeships-training-schemes-employment
[QUOTE]The government’s £1.4bn skills training scheme, intended to ameliorate youth unemployment, has seen a near 900% increase in the number of apprenticeships begun by those aged 60 and over.
The news comes ahead of figures to be published on Wednesday which are expected to show the numbers of young people out of work hitting one million.
Analysis of data published at the end of October shows that over the last year there has been an increase of 18% for apprenticeships begun by 18-year-olds and a 22% rise in those begun by people aged 19-24.
But the rises for those not regarded to be in the apprenticeship age bracket are larger. For those aged between 25 and 34, there has been a 179% increase; a 283% increase for those between 35 and 44; and for those aged 45-59, a 396% increase, according to analysis by the specialist publication Further Education Week.
For those aged 60 and over, there has been an 878% increase — from 400 signing up in the year 2009-10, to 3,910 in the last year.[/QUOTE]
On an aside issue, should the findings of the survey be treat with the contempt deserving ? After all, for some decades now, the CBI, Institute of Directors, Chambers of Commerce and Association of Graduate Recruiters have frequently eschewed the myth that “graduates are not fully skilled, fully trained, fully experienced, capable of hitting the ground up and running” or “graduates are not oven-ready”.
Conversely, unless and until employers contribute to training, even to the limited extent of investing in sponrsorships (how many undergraduates and postgraduates are self financing?) or placements, they can only offer critique according to their commitment. Unfortunately, if employers dont do a damn thing, neither the employer nor Representative Body (such as te CBI, IoD, CoC, AGR) have any credible perspective to offer.
If employers are not part of the solution, they remain part of the problem.
“A graduate with a First will have better soft skills than a graduate with a 2:2”
I resent that statement. I graduated with a 2.2 and happen to be the only one amongst my social group – who mostly graduated with first class degrees and master’s degrees – who has a professional, graduate-level job.
Honestly, I love my friends, but they don’t have any soft skills beyond academia. They’d suit an academic career, but that’s about it. Degree classification, in my experience, bears no resemblence to a person’s level of soft skills.
As a (soon to be) 25 year old, can anyone tell me how I can get a trade like plumbing or plastering? I’d want to work by myself or with one or two other people.
@CostaDel, it is the examining body that makes the distinction between graduates. This body states that a Graduate with a First as ‘Outstanding to excellent’ and a graduate with a Lower Second as ‘Good to satisfactory’. There are postgraduates with a PhD who can find themselves unemployed but the fact that you have a graduate job doesn’t make you better than they are.
Brian, I would agree that people with a first are “Outstanding to excellent” and people with a Lower Second are “Good to satisfactory”, BUT that only refers to academic excellence.
I don’t for one minute believe that I am “better” than anyone (although I was obvious “better” than my peers who also applied for the job with higher degree classifications that I had).
When it comes to soft skills, degree classification falls silent on that matter. You cannot predict soft skills through a degree classification. Those with a first class are better academically than those with a lower second. And that’s where that predictor of merit ends.
Employers could not care less! As long as labour (educated or not, well at least to A’level) is cheap and plentiful! Those on apprenticeships are cheaper and less career-demanding than graduates! Their boss will probably be a non-graduate so why bother with the prospect of friction in the organization! That is my experience of the workplace. And I am probably not the only one. UNIVERSITY IS A CON.
Graduates are given priority in the job market. The message by the government is if you don’t go to university or get high grades you are frankly worthless and are no worth investing in.
Not every body is academic but unfortunately Britain has an obsession with going to university. Young people are being exploited every step of the way. They are excluded from the protection of the minimum wage which discriminates and isolates them. All parties are guilty of doing absolutely nothing to help and motivate our young people.
Lastly, it is not easy to get an apprenticeship if you get below a C grade because basically in their eyes you are on the scrap heap with no hope of a job. Welcome to Britain, shame on them.