Does Your Major Matter?

Why Businesses Want to Hire Creative Graduates

Today, one of the biggest problems faced by organizations is how to differentiate themselves in a global marketplace filled with choices.

By increasing industry productivity and lowering costs, technological advances have made production of hundreds of goods possible and companies today find themselves contending in an extremely competitive world of business. 

Lowered international trade barriers have make products from all over the world available to be purchased anywhere in the world. Increased information on products and prices through the Internet has increased consumer knowledge of that availability.

This is painful for organizations because as quality goes up and prices go down overall, a brand’s power becomes less. As a result, consumers are faced with hundreds of similar choices and brand loyalty has virtually disappeared. Organizations usually find themselves fighting in an international tug of war over a set number of customers who make many of their decisions based solely on which product has the lowest price.

In today’s world, it is no longer enough to sell a product at a reasonable quality and price. Everyone does that. Companies wishing to gain in market share must gain attention from customers in a different way. For that reason, a creative and innovative workforce has become extremely necessary to help organizations differentiate themselves in a global marketplace.

Unfortunately, coming up with new ideas and solutions is not an easy thing for most people, and they cannot become brilliant innovators overnight. Often, however, this is exactly what organizations expect. One day, the leader of a company will throw the gauntlet on the table and demand that everyone there "be creative". Unsurprisingly, this usually doesn't work.

For that reason, companies love college graduates who have shown the ability to think of new ideas and solve problems.  In my survey of 559 hiring managers, 45.2% of the respondents said that Creativity and Problem Solving Ability is one of the top three skills they look for when hiring new employees.

Employers don't want run-of-the-mill employees, they want workers who can add value to their organization by helping that organization stand out in the global marketplace!

The Importance of Communicating Well - Part 2

Many job listings include a requirement that job applicants have "good Communication Skills", but it's often very difficult to know what actually makes a good communicator or what a company is actually looking for in potential employees.

A general consensus is that Communication Skills include presenting, public speaking and good writing skills.  Listening, explaining, negotiating and persuasion are also important, as well as non-verbal components.

But  being a good communicator eventually comes down to only 2 things...

The Importance of Communicating Well - Part 1

At my college, we liked to joke that majoring in Communications was an easy way out.  After all, Communications majors are just learning to do something that college graduates do naturally, right?

Apparently not.

When I asked 551 employers about what skills they look for while hiring young college graduates, sixty-two percent of my respondents indicated that the Ability to Communicate was "Critical".  Only 11 respondents thought the skill was less than "Important" in their hiring decision. Also, sixty-six percent of respondents marked the Ability to Communicate as one of the top three skills it is important for job applicants to be good at.

If 66% of my survey respondents felt the need to emphasize that the Ability to Communicate is so important, it is likely that many job applicants do not excel at it.  For that reason, a job applicant's Ability to Communicate can frequently make the difference in whether they are hired for a job or not.

Imagine that you are an employer who must sort through many prospective job applicants who have similar educational backgrounds and skills.   On paper, all the applicants appear to be the same.  So how do you decide?

The Increasing Availability of Information

Cut off from the Internet during my 9-month stay in Malta, and having to research a paper about the evolving workplaces of a country thousands of miles away, I recently spent a significant amount of time lamenting how difficult it was for me to find information.

In order to get material for my paper, I had to <brace yourself> read books and spend time looking through the card catalogs in the library!  Oh the pain, the horror!  The agony of not being able to simply call up a search engine, type in a few words and press "send".

For those of you who use the internet frequently in your business, or for academic reasons, or just on an everyday basis, you probably know what I'm talking about.  Searches engines like Google, and Yahoo!, online reference libraries like Encarta and Wikipedia, news websites like CNN and BBC, and the thesaurus function in Microsoft Word make information easily available with only a few clicks of the mouse.

Today, information is everywhere.

In the far, far distant past (in computer years), the best place to get information was at a local library.  There, one could find the sum of all human knowledge.... or at least all human knowledge that could be found in that district, and that wasn't already checked out.

Then Google came along and suddenly "universal access" was available to people all over the world, to libraries all over the world.  It is seachable in over 100 languages and Google CEO Erik Schmidt brags, "If you can type, you can use Google."

This availability of information is changing the workplace.  In the past, workers needed to be highly specialized because they were responsible for knowing all the factors that affect their job and the things they were responsible for.

Now, we simply type a few words into a search engine, head to Wikipedia.com, or even go to Amazon to buy a ??? for Dummies book... which is shipped to our house in less than a week without anyone having to go anywhere near a bookstore or library.  Information is no longer power... it has become a commodity.

Survey Results 3: Skills by Organization Size

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!

Survey Results: Part 1

A couple years ago, I faced a very difficult dilemma.  It was the point in my junior year where I had to decide on my college major…and I had no idea what to do!  There were the majors I knew I should study if I wanted to be “employable” and there were the subjects I actually liked studying. 

I didn’t know what to do! Then my adviser said something that I’ll never forget.  He told me that “whatever you study, you’ll develop skills that can be used in the real world.”  I was flabbergasted!  I had always thought that the college major I studied would directly impact my future career.  But I trusted his advice and got my degree in Classical Languages.

Not surprisingly, however, I still had lingering doubts.  After all, the ability to read Homer’s Odyssey in the original is not a skill that organizations specifically list as something they desire! So, this summer, I asked 555 businesspeople (who hire college-educated young people) how important certain skills and college majors are to them in hiring decisions.

What to see the results?  Click through to the next page!