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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).
| "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 |
| "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 |
| "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 |
| "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 |
| "Fifth grade would be a really good time to start teaching about the life of work." | Central |
| "Work is not play. Play is play; work is work." | 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 |