Tony Tudor looks at the fallacies surrounding the skills of graduates
"Idle, drunken, scruffy, scroungers" and "they cannot spell, have no idea how business works, and are a waste of time". These are some of the comments trotted out by employers on students and graduates.
"Prejudiced, ill informed and out of date", is the normal response.
If you look hard enough, you can always find a survey that seems to support the criticisms. But when investigated, the comments often apply to school leavers, people starting at university, or even the profession in general.
Widely quoted studies are often no more than a 1,000 person vox pop, dating back six or seven years, being used as a tool to sell a service.
It is easy to quote examples of graduates who cannot spell or have no base in reality. These are often just people in the wrong job.
For many years, employers have been concerned about the ability of graduates to work in a modern organisation and might prefer they were more accomplished in some respects. Graduates are raw material and it is up to companies, as well as the graduates themselves to take advantage of that potential.
The real challenge is the integration of new graduates into an organisation and the speed at which they can contribute effectively. In a rapidly changing world there is less time for graduates to become acclimatised.
Companies want them to be effective, instantly. Few companies have graduate programmes or specialist in house training, other than at a technical or process level.
One fallacy is that companies employ graduates because they are intelligent, bright and have special knowledge. The reality is that graduates bring a fresh, creative mind to the job, are quick to learn and are more able to cope with change.
Employees can no longer expect to retain discrete specialists and pre-determine career paths. The ability to transfer and combine skills and to influence the work process is assuming increasing importance.
The insurance world is dynamic. Anyone who has been in it for 30 years will have seen huge changes and who knows what the next 30 will bring.
Employers are often criticised for not being clear about what they want from graduates. Employers focus on potential - an element that is elusive and dynamic. Employing graduates is not like buying a desk.
Training investment
Graduate recruitment and training has a speculative component. There are training costs to be incurred, as most graduates have little industrial or commercial experience; and then the training investment is a risk given their career aspirations and potential mobility.
Also, people rarely have jobs for life now, so recruiting and keeping good people is much more difficult. Good employers must realise that they need to empower graduates for life-long learning through imparting a range of skills and abilities as well as knowledge.
Graduates come with an ability to learn. Interpersonal and presentational skills will vary, but can always be improved.
The biggest criticism of graduates is that they lack business skills, particularly vital for more senior roles.
When you left university or school, did you enter insurance complete with such business skills? Of course not, they had to be gained by study and experience.
There are several courses which have been developed specifically for those working in the insurance industry who are aspiring to management.
When exploring the options here are some options that you should look for as a good basis for a financial services management course:
- The principles of management: in terms of the management of people, systems and self
- Importance of management skills in the strategic context
- Personal skills for the delivery of customer service and the increasing importance of ethical issues
- Understanding the financial services marketplace
- Understanding the concept of risk and its importance. Assessment, analysis and control of risk. Business risk.
- Knowledge of the monetary system and the regulation of financial institutions
- Fundamental principles of marketing and the marketing environment
- Understanding customers and their needs, the underlying principles of customer relationship management; and selling and managing sales
- Measuring performance - the balanced scorecard, the under-pinning principles of financial reporting, non-financial measures of performance.
All the above may sound daunting. But when taken in bite size chunks, it is achievable. The Institute of Financial Services (ifs) offers a qualification that contains most of these elements, the Professional Diploma in Financial Services Management (PDFSM). It is available as a distance learning course.
Graduates will be used to writing an essay or taking a technical exam, but business writing is different. Writing a report or proposal is something most managers have to do, so course work helps prepare for these tasks, which can at first appear frightening.
Far better than the industry's historic methods; promote someone, send them on some generalised management course, and drop them in the deep end without support. When people criticise graduates for having no business sense, they often forget that in the 'good old days', non-technical training was a rarity, and talent often under-used.
Employees are an expensive resource. Getting more out of them does not mean working longer hours. In the darkest days of World War II, it was understood that after a certain time, longer hours only meant a poorer quality result - a lesson we could well heed.
Using employees to their best advantage means working smarter and ensuring they have all the relevant skills. If the current employer fails to provide training and opportunity, then people move on.
A key reason bright people leave companies, is feeling undervalued and not stretched. For employers, helping employees gain management and business knowledge, is a win-win situation.
- Tony Tudor is director and company secretary at the Institute of Financial Services.