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Data and infographic from the York College of Pennsylvania. Note data on "deadly interviewing mistakes."

I also note the "misuse of social media/texting on the job. Although to be fair, the managers surveyed are probably not Gen Y and have a different paradigm.

http://comerecommended.com/2012/05/college-grads-lacking-professionalism...

mattpalmer's picture

Words + Numbers does not automatically equate to meaning or actionability.  What is *anyone* actually supposed to take away from this?  Perhaps if one read the complete study, it would make sense, but in that case, a far more useful infographic would have been "READ THE STUDY" in bright, flashing letters -- at least that would have had a clear call to action.

The data presented lacks impact for me, too (despite supposedly being smack bang in the middle of the "Gen Y" bracket -- although I'm well on the "hiring manager" side of the fence these days).  Here's my reactions to each of the points presented:

  • "96% of HR executives/managers believe that professionalism relates to the person, not the job title".  And?  Ignoring the implicit umbrella in that statement, what am I supposed to do with this information?
  • "92% of HR executives/managers believe that colleges and universities should develop professionalism in their students".  Of *course* they do -- it reduces the amount of training the company has to do.  I'm sure a similar percentage of these people believe that colleges should teach *everything* that people need to know for their company's specific job -- that'd save staff training costs.  By the time you cram in all this touchy-feely "learn how to be a good human being" stuff into a curriculum, though, you end up with a system that produces statistics like "92% of HR executives/managers believe that colleges and universities should develop critical thinking and analytical skills in their students".  If anyone wants to know why more and more positions are requiring masters degrees, look no further than this "statistic".
  • 51% of HR executives/managers believe that the sense of entitlement has increased among employees".  I'm sure 51% of these peoples' bosses would have said exactly the same thing about them, damn dirty smelly hippies that they were.
  • "96% of the HR executives/managers reported that a job applicant's professionalism affects the likelihood of being hired".  The shocking part of this statistic is that there are 4% of "HR executives/managers" who believe that professionalism has *no* impact on the likelihood of being hired.

As a side note, what does "HR executives/managers" mean?  Is that HR managers and HR executives, or is it hiring managers and HR executives?  It does make something of a difference.  Given how little impact HR should have on the day-to-day management of people throughout the organisation, I'm not sure how important the opinions of HR staff should be in a survey of this nature.

The "Top Characteristics of Today's Professional" section just makes no sense.  They don't add up to 100%, so it was presumably a survey question something like "choose all of the items that you believe makes up professionalism".  In that case, since the highest number there is 34%, the real headline here is "no more than 1/3 of (whoever was surveyed here) can agree on what professionalism actually is", which isn't particularly useful for the new grad looking to improve their professionalism.  If the spend time improving their interpersonal skills, presumably 2/3 of (whoever got surveyed) won't give them any credit for that.

"IT Misuse on the job" just screams "why are you telling *us* this stuff?  Why don't you tell your directs?"  Perhaps I've drunk too much of the "communicate about performance" kool aid, though.  I'm starting to reflexively respond to any statement along the lines of "my people should/shouldn't X" with "Have you told them?", "How have you told them?" and then "So why are they still doing it / working there?".

"Deadly interview mistakes" are handy, but they don't need an infographic.  In fact, taken by themselves, they aren't really an infographic at all -- pretty much like the entire image, actually.  There are no graphs, charts, or other *information* presented in graphical form throughout the entire image.  While all of the things listed in that section are things I'd recommend candidates avoid (along with about 50 other things that weren't mentioned), I'm slightly worried that "Poor verbal skills/grammar" only scored 23% (whatever *that* means).  That means that over 3/4 of (whatever) don't seem to put much stock in the ability to communicate.

OK, rant over.