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Employer Quotes
The quotes below are from employers in this industry: Engineering
They are talking about this topic: General Skills
The quotes below are about this issue:
Employers find that many new hires do not understand what it means to be a professional in terms of accountability and work schedule (such as a willingness to work nights and weekends).
| "Self-accountability is important. To me, self-accountability means I'm going to be responsible for myself, which means I'm going to learn and understand what is expected of me. That's self-accountability. Our managers are here to help teach. Okay. But if you don't have the initial inward self-accountability, that teaching process is very, very difficult." | Central |
| "Work is not play. Play is play; work is work." | Central |
| "Fifth grade would be a really good time to start teaching about the life of work." | Central |
| "And you have that hesitation on the engineering side, too. 'I didn't sign up for weekend work.' But that's what we do. You will be working some weekends and you will be first shift and you could be third shift. You're going to need to understand the entire plan, from days to nights. You do get some of that hesitation from recent grads, which is a challenge." | Central |
| "There is a lack of preparedness for them, coming out of school, to even know what being an employee means. If I could elaborate on that, I've had conversations with my managing staff where they're saying, 'I want to go back to school to figure out how to manage these people.' It seems to me that all of these kids going through school should be taught what it means to be an employee. You work for a company. You're at the service of a company. It isn't about them, it's about the company. It's about what we need to accomplish as a business. We seem to be spending a lot of time with what should be standard accountability for yourself. I'm just saying there may be, aside from the engineering and aside from the skills that you've learned, we really feel that there is room to have whatever—maybe one class—that is about what it means to be an employee. What kind of expectations should a company be able to have on you? These skills would make a big difference." | Central |
| "I basically see it, just within the younger generation, that they want the 8:00 to 4:30, Monday through Friday schedule. They don't want to work weekends. But, that's just not how we operate." | Central |
| "I agree about the generational differences. I think that's key. It's totally different. You have to approach them differently, use different things. We broadcast text messages now; that we've never done before. I think they have a different idea about what work actually is—they think it's 8 to 5, hour for lunch, no weekends, no nights, no nothing. So, it's different." | Central |
| "You have to look at the whole picture. Sometimes when you look at grades, I'll ask somebody, 'What do you attribute these grades to?' They will typically tell me, 'Hard work. I worked hard. I studied very hard.' Those are the types of things that we're looking for. People that have really put in an effort because they want to do well, that is just part of who they are." | Northwest |
| "If they grew up on a farm, we know they have a pretty good work ethic." | Northwest |
| "I'm an HR person, so I sit in on the initial interviews. And the one thing that I always find really interesting is that a lot of the candidates don't have any idea what we do in our industry. They don't even have a clue about our company. They know the name of the company and that's about it." | Southwest |
| "I do think there is something to say about the younger generation. I don't like to use it as an excuse, but our generation will work hard, and then expect to be rewarded after I've shown you what I've done. The younger generation is coming in saying, 'Give me the money up front and then I'll work hard, and then I want more money and I'll work even harder.' So, it is kind of flipped a little bit. It is not all of the younger generation, but we're seeing more and more of that." | Southwest |