to be shocked at the poor quality of graduates

[tredaswe]

At work we are recruiting for a graduate trainee position and we have been swamped with applications. I've been doing the sift and the standard of applications is absolutely woeful. At least half of them have spelling and/or punctuation errors in, many of the cover letters are so general you get the impression that they are sending them to every job they are applying for and there are even some that are applying to different companies than us.

From the initial 79 that we received only 6 don't have at least one or more of these flaws. AIBU to think that with youth unemployment people should be putting far more effort into their applications.

OP - I hope you don't mind me asking but its something that's always bothered me - what is it about the vacancy that requires a graduate? I didn't go to uni for a variety of reasons. Working in the City as I did, I got a bit fed up seeing junior jobs advertised for which a degree was required that could be done by a bright school leaver.

Maybe it's sector-specific, because I've recruited for years and just can't agree with the OP. I work in the third sector. We get a few cocky so-and-sos who think that their degree makes them shit-hot and a few whose cover letters are so poor that I can only imagine they must be applying for so many jobs and writing so many personal statements that they've stopped caring about the errors. But the vast majority of grads come across on paper as bright, literate, pleasant young people looking for a break.

Have to say, some of the worst application forms I've ever read come from former SAHPs looking to move back into the workplace who seem to think that because they had a good job 5/10/15 years ago before they became SAHPs, they should be able to walk back into the same sort of role on the same pay; and people in their 40s and 50s, recently made redundant, who seem to think that actually having to put effort into an application form, let alone a cover letter, is beneath them because they should be the best candidates based on their lengthy professional background.

Even if the application itself is general, surely it is not too much to ask that the covering letter is specific to the job advertised?
Else, well, what is the point. May as well not bother at all.

The op probably does not have a problem, as 73 applicants have managed to rule themselves out, leaving a handy number of 6.

I am a journalist yellowballoons. I wouldn't go so far as to claim to be the Mumsnet journalist.

Yes, sniffandmoomintroll. Someone sighed to me that it's a full-time job trying to get a job. From what I've seen, I'm not going to disagree with her or the effort that she, or many others, put in.

I hope you got one.

I'm not a recruiter, but I have in the past year had a couple of graduates approach me through alumni connections to ask for advice on getting into my (very competitive) profession. I have also helped a few friends and relatives with their CVs.

It seems that graduates finish their education without ever having been taught how to look for work and how to present themselves professionally. Both alumni connections emailed me to ask for "any hints and tips" for getting into my profession - with no attempt to analyse what information would be most useful to them or in what way I could best assist them. My advice to both was to learn to be analytical and focussed and to avoid vagueness when dealing with busy professionals! I also had to provide constructive feedback on the impression that a four-page CV, including jobs baby-sitting and watering plants when people were away no, dressing it up as Self-employed Household Manager doesn't make it look any more impressive, and an email peppered with multiple exclamation marks!!!!!!

I'm not sure that either candidate got my points though, as after writing a tailored email response to each, I didn't even receive a thank-you in return.

You're right, in many cases 5 years doesn't make an awful lot of difference - although I currently work in a field where legislation changes very quickly and has changed significantly in the past decade, so even returning after 5 years can mean somebody lacks the currency and knowledge that many of their colleagues will have and will require quite a bit of retraining and professional development.

It's certainly an enormous issue when applicants have been out of the workplace for a decade or more and are clearly very out of touch with how legislation has changed, or even that their role will now require them to have and use skills (IT; but their cover letters don't indicate that they feel this will disadvantage them. Some cover letters genuinely do come across as "I used to do this job, that alone should be why you should give it to me, why should I bother to tell you how I meet the person specification?". Obviously, that's no reflection on the majority of older workers or long-term SAHP's returning to work: it's a general comment based on some of the worst application forms I've read, just as those comments about graduates will only apply to a small number of graduates rather than vast swathes of young university-leavers.

Of course not all graduates are lazy. However, there are quite a number who do not concentrate on some important aspects of applying for jobs and are therefore falling at the first hurdle when they need not do so.

That's hardly limited to graduates though is it?

broken, I don't know where you teach that you don't mark SPAG, but every university I've heard of had it as a requirement. It's common to limit the number of marks a student can lose for that, and it's common to have some system to alert examiners to students' dyslexia so they can have special consideration, but I've never heard of what you claim is common.

OP - that doesn't sound great. I know I've sent in applications with errors in them, because sometimes you do slip up no matter how hard you try, but if there are errors in so many of these, I suspect it's as others say, that you're getting lots of 'ah, fuckit, I'll give it a go' applications from people who either don't really want the job, or who're applying for absolutely everything in the desperate hope of getting something.

You are only seeing a snapshot of what they are like - obviously, it's a terrible impression that these people are sending out, and they'll suffer for it by not getting the job. But it is possible it's not that 'graduates' as a group are no longer capable, it's that lots of them are applying for far more jobs than they can sensibly manage to write good applications for.

The op is recruiting for a graduate trainee position, BlueShirt, so it matters not a jot what other applicants are doing when they apply to other jobs as far as the op is concerned.

As far as I know, every Uni has a careers office/library, so no excuse for a student not to have popped along at least once while they are at uni.
And they, again as far as I know from my limited experience, are open to ex graduates to use for up to 3 years afterwards, at least in some unis.

YANBU.

Dh was recently recruiting for a marketing assistant (didn't have to be a graduate). He had many, many applicants. Without exception, the applications of the recent graduates (all English, Media or Marketing) were riddled with errors: both SPAG and tone/content.

He employed a forty-something, non-graduate, until recently SAHM with perfect SPAG and a fantastic attitude.

Oh I've sent applications with errors in them, even after checking very carefully & repeatedly. Sign of age, maybe...

I used to work in an environment where it was definitely not essential to have a degree, but it just so happened that everyone did (almost the entire nationwide chain, but certainly our branch).

It's really mean when I think about it now, but we all used to take great pleasure in announcing to recent graduates who called in to ask about potential 'graduate management programmes' that we ALL had degrees and still had to start at the bottom and work our way up the ladder. Some of them just couldn't grasp that concept.

I lay part of the blame with the Job Centre. People are being sanctioned for 'only' applying for 30 jobs a week. Some advisors are telling people they have to apply for at least 60 jobs per week. Factor in the search time to find a job to apply for and it doesn't leave long per application.

Most sensible people would agree (I think) that it's better to spend time researching, writing and proof reading each application so that it is tailored to the job. However this takes time and would limit people to an average of 10 applications per week. The fear of sanctions and having no money at all is so great that people end up going for a quality over quantity approach.

Really grumpy? How does that help anyone?

If that's what's happening, a more constructive thing for OP would be to ask her employers to ask Jobscentreplus to stop wasting her time with no-hoper applicants who have to go through the motions in order to get the benefits to which they're entitled.

Alternatively, she could just post barely literate rabble-rousing stuff about lazy young people on here.

What do you think, OP?

And while we're at it, what industry do you work in, what is your level of education and what are your qualifications for doing your job and deciding why people should or shouldn't go forward for a particular job in your company?

And I don't doubt you grumpy

I remember my father moaning and groaning about this before I went to university many years ago now.

Nothing changes.

Tbh I've been applying for numerous jobs lately using more or less the same letter. I'm applying for jobs relevant to my experience so basically the same so I use the same letter. I I only change it to highlight particular skills or experience for jobs in the same sector I work in now.

As a graduate with little or no experience it's so disheartening to apply for jobs and get rejected over and over again, I'm not surprised they're lazy with their applications!

It's true many graduates have to educated to be tested and told grammar and spelling will only be tested in English exams.

I am one of them. Fortunately I never did fall for that!

I know so many really intelligent people who I've either studied or worked with who are absolutely shocking at applications. And indeed writing letters.

Very poor.

I do graduate recruitment and my experience is that the applicants are scarily scarily good.

Admittedly we hire a company to do basic sifting and the first interview so we only see the top 20 or so but they are all very very good.

I joined the company on the trainee scheme many years ago and have since had a successful career with them but have a nasty feeling I wouldn't get through against the current competition.

We only ever get graduates applying to work for us, even for routine admin jobs. Of course, once they start, they start trying to change the job and want to be a policywonk. Top management are usually piss weak and allow this to happen, so that they are happy, with the result that no-one does the filing, the photocopying or the washing up. Ask them to do this stuff (which is what they were hired to do) and you get I Didn't Get My First Class Honours Degree From A Russell Group University To Do The Photocopying. To which the obvious response is "Which bit of "admin assistant" did you not understand?"

We had one charmer who didn't make the shortlist for interview, who emailed us and said "Hello? I don't appear to have been invited for interview? Which bit of Double First From Cambridge did you not understand?"

And another one who said "I don't want Mrs Schadenfreude to line manage me. I have a first class honours degree and an MA. She didn't even go to university, so I don't think there is anything she can usefully teach me."

We had one come to work for us who had a degree in French from a RG uni - she couldn't understand French, never mind open her mouth and speak it. When I queried this, and asked her about her year in France, she told me that she had only hung out with the Brits and hadn't bothered with speaking French.

Anyway, I agree, the standard of applications is generally shocking - CVs full of typos, spelling and grammar mistakes in the covering letter, and often an unpleasant sense of entitlement. But we have had more than our fair share of people who are truly outstanding, although they tend to move on to better stuff fairly rapidly.