Although many of us have grown up believing that we'll spend our working lives in a job at a large organization, this seems to be a changing trend in the business world. Big companies are there, just as big as ever, but they're employing less people for less time. Now, the gap is being filled by smaller companies of 100 employees or less, and many entrepreneurs are also leading the way with mini-companies of 10 employees or less.
Chances are, we'll end up working for many different sized companies throughout our career... instead of just sliding into that big company job right out of college and onto retirement. We may work for a big company, we may work for a small company, we may work on our own. It's hard to tell before we even enter the workplace!
That's why I thought it was really important to find out what skills employers of all sizes are looking for in college graduates. So, during my survey, I asked several demographic questions to help me divide up the results and get a picture of the skills needed at different sized organizations.
Just like in the real world, the majority (68.8%) of respondents to my survey work for companies of 100 employees or less. The 168 responses from bigger companies, however, is enough to get a picture of what such organizations are looking for and make comparisons between the skills desired by different-sized organizations.
To see what different sized companies are looking for in their potential employees, please click through!
(If you want to see a larger version of this table, click on it with your mouse).
These results showed the same four skills (Time Management, Creativity, Adaptability and Communication) as the top desired skills in all sizes of organizations. Interestingly, however, the top skills for each group were different.
Companies with less than 10 employees valued Ability to Manage Time and Self and Ability to Communicate with Others second while organizations with both 11 to 100 employees and over 1000 employees valued Ability to Communicate with Others the most and Ability to Manage Time and Self next. Both believed Creativity and Problem Solving Ability the least important of their top four choices.
Interestingly, organizations employing between 101 and 1000 employees picked Creativity and Problem Solving Ability as the top skill they want in prospective employees. To them, Ability to Communicate with Others and Ability to Manage Time and Self were approximately the same in importance and Ability to Adapt to New Situations was the least important.
This shows that while organizations vary slightly in the relative importance of different skills to them, they still consider the same four skills to be the most valuable overall.
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