My Recruiter Hell - Part 5

Related tags: General advice, Blog, Job hunting

What is this ‘nous’ I keep banging on about? Well, the OED defines it as ‘common sense; practical intelligence’, while my faithful friend Wikipedia informs me that it is also a philosophical term that means intellect. Strange as this may seem, intellect is not what our student applicants lack; if anything, they suffer from a surfeit.

Our recruitment literature firmly states that a 2.1 is the minimum requirement for the graduate and internship schemes, and I have seen a definite increase in the number of applicants with first class degrees. So let’s be clear: the students I am talking about are highly intelligent and academically able. The problem, as I see it, is that many of these fine scholars have absolutely no common sense. Readers of this blog may remember the young intern who was unable to prop open the office doors without step-by-step instructions and a full briefing. This may be an extreme example, but the harsh fact is that incidents like this take place on a smaller scale almost every day. Our graduate employees appear to need a level of cosseting previously unimaginable outside the nursery. Of course, we don’t expect them to come in and hit the ground running, which is why we offer a comprehensive training programme and full managerial support, with plenty of feedback through regular appraisals. Everyone has to start somewhere.

No, I’m talking about the woman who ended up taking a taxi to a meeting 10 minutes’ walk away because she was unable to use an A-Z; a man who didn’t phone any clients for 6 months because he didn’t know how to make external calls; an intern who didn’t do the crucial photocopying because the copier had run out of paper and he wasn’t sure how to refill it. Sometimes the simplest solution is to ask for help. Aha, you might say, but what about that intern who asked too many questions? There is a crucial distinction between asking for help and demanding that someone else does your job for you. And that’s where nous comes in – understanding that distinction. Using your nous also means deciding whether the best course of action is to seek assistance or to puzzle out the problem for yourself, using trial and error. The most bewildering order for our graduate employees seems to be: ‘Use your judgment.’

And I’m not the only person complaining. A recent Guardian article discussed the increasing ‘infantalisation’ of society, which manifests itself in students living at home for longer and even turning up to careers fairs with their parents in tow. Several employers have apparently had to field phone calls from irate breeders after their darling offspring failed to gain their rightful place on a graduate recruitment scheme. Any parent who tried that with me would swiftly rue the day, but that’s not the point.

On a related note, I’ve also been reading a lot about the shortage of soft skills in the UK graduate market. This is a rather vague piece of jargon that is shorthand for skills such as leadership, teamworking and communication, but is also sometimes used to refer to ‘practical’ abilities such as computer knowledge.

What’s the solution? I have a rather controversial suggestion: we should scrap the 2.1 minimum. Tune in next week to find out why…

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