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Employer Quotes

The quotes below are from employers in this industry: Financial Services

They are talking about this topic: Occupation-Specific Skills

 

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The quotes below are about this issue:
New hires are often lacking proficiency in Microsoft Office programs, particularly Access and Excel, which employers are seeking.

Employer Quote Region
"Employer: I think we bring on people that initially have fairly good analytical and problem-solving skills. We can teach them the technical skills that are unique to the jobs that they perform. But what surprises me is that they lack what we think of as standard tools: basic Excel and Access database type skills. We really don't have the time or the...we're just not staffed to provide that kind of training. So, we would hope it would be more second nature than what it is.

Interviewer: So, second nature meaning the spreadsheet?

Employer: Yeah. I've got a toolkit and we give it to you—whether it's MS Office or something else—and you should just know how to apply those tools in your everyday problem-solving work. In our business, as much as we'd like to think that we have really upgraded our technology, a lot of the core accounting engines are mainframes and everybody's bolted on Windows front-ends to them. But when you get data out of that mainframe system, it's in a raw text format—unless you're in a real large organization that has departments that takes the data and they build reports for people. A lot of times, we'll ask people to build reports that provide this oversight, reconciliation. It would be great to be able to say, 'I can give you this data in a flat text format, but can you convert it and put it in a format that is useable for you? In a way that lets you do the problem-solving work that you need to do?' It can be as simple as even if you have to send a letter out to somebody. They're lost when they go into Word. When they go into Excel, they know basic formulas to do pivot tables or to be able to take it and move it into Access and do analysis. That's just lost..."		 Central
"If there was something in this basic computer skill [lost in translation] certification that ensured you these people know basic applications and that they can function with them, that'd be helpful. One thing I'd also like to mention is older workers; we don't just hire entry-level. In fact, we really try to hire baby boomers and all kinds of people. One of the things that when you're retooling those folks, boy, it's those basic computer skills that they are just clueless on." Central