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Forums - General - Alumna sues college because she hasn't found a job

HappySqurriel on 05 August 2009
twesterm said:
HappySqurriel said:

It took me 8 months to get my first "real" job after graduation, and even though my university was really helpful the reason I got the job was one of my oldest brother's friends submitted my resume for me and ensured that I got an interview. Personally, if I was to give new grads one peice of advice on finding a job it would be to ask their family, and their friends' families, if they knew of anyone who was working at a company who might be looking for a new grad.

Most new grad positions are not advertized, and very few use the university's career services because they get flooded with unqualified applicants and even the qualified applicants have very little to seperate them on their resume. While people may think that their high GPA makes them more qualified for a position, there are a wide variety of skills (like social skills) which are not demonstrated in a person's grades that matter far more than the information they gained in school; for example, it is often better to hire the B student with exceptional social skills rather than the A studen with decent social skills, and it is always better to hire the C student with exceptional social skills than the A student with "acceptable" social skills.

Finally, one thing I have been seeing more and more of lately is "kids" who don't realize the damage they're doing to their potential chances based on what they're posting on the internet. A couple of years ago a girl I knew was talking about how her sister graduated from university and it had taken over a year for her to find a job. The first thing I asked her to do was to google her sister's name and what popped up was her sister's myspace page ... Needless to say, I don't think many companies really wanted to hire a girl who had so little sense that she posted a picture of herself in her panties and bra while smoking a joint.

Your point about grades vs. social skills is HIGHLY situational.  It might work for some business degree but for other degrees like say computer science that doesn't work.  Good companies will generally worry more about how qualified the person it and if they're social, that's a perk.  The bad companies that aren't successful worry so much if the person is the perfect fit that the person just sucks and you still have about the same office atmosphere that you would have anyways.  My wire has worked at a few of both types of companies and the ones that look for social skills or the perfect personality fit always just plan suck (and this is going from the tech side of jobs).

And yeah, if you're looking for a job, make MySpace, Facebook, twitter, and everything else private.  If you can't make it private, delete it.  If a photo of you is tagged on someone else's album and they won't take it down, delete the tag.  It sounds silly but yes, employers will Google you.

Computer Science is actually one of the areas I have noticed has the greatest emphasis on social skills because you're usually working in a team of people with very diverse backgrounds, and interacting with people who have non-technical backgrounds. Now, I wouldn't say that companies are looking for smooth and charismatic people to put into these positions, but they're certainly avoiding the socially awkward and inept people that seem to be in high availablity at all times.



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Tayne on 05 August 2009

Join the military as an officer...




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twesterm on 05 August 2009
HappySqurriel said:
twesterm said:
HappySqurriel said:

It took me 8 months to get my first "real" job after graduation, and even though my university was really helpful the reason I got the job was one of my oldest brother's friends submitted my resume for me and ensured that I got an interview. Personally, if I was to give new grads one peice of advice on finding a job it would be to ask their family, and their friends' families, if they knew of anyone who was working at a company who might be looking for a new grad.

Most new grad positions are not advertized, and very few use the university's career services because they get flooded with unqualified applicants and even the qualified applicants have very little to seperate them on their resume. While people may think that their high GPA makes them more qualified for a position, there are a wide variety of skills (like social skills) which are not demonstrated in a person's grades that matter far more than the information they gained in school; for example, it is often better to hire the B student with exceptional social skills rather than the A studen with decent social skills, and it is always better to hire the C student with exceptional social skills than the A student with "acceptable" social skills.

Finally, one thing I have been seeing more and more of lately is "kids" who don't realize the damage they're doing to their potential chances based on what they're posting on the internet. A couple of years ago a girl I knew was talking about how her sister graduated from university and it had taken over a year for her to find a job. The first thing I asked her to do was to google her sister's name and what popped up was her sister's myspace page ... Needless to say, I don't think many companies really wanted to hire a girl who had so little sense that she posted a picture of herself in her panties and bra while smoking a joint.

Your point about grades vs. social skills is HIGHLY situational.  It might work for some business degree but for other degrees like say computer science that doesn't work.  Good companies will generally worry more about how qualified the person it and if they're social, that's a perk.  The bad companies that aren't successful worry so much if the person is the perfect fit that the person just sucks and you still have about the same office atmosphere that you would have anyways.  My wire has worked at a few of both types of companies and the ones that look for social skills or the perfect personality fit always just plan suck (and this is going from the tech side of jobs).

And yeah, if you're looking for a job, make MySpace, Facebook, twitter, and everything else private.  If you can't make it private, delete it.  If a photo of you is tagged on someone else's album and they won't take it down, delete the tag.  It sounds silly but yes, employers will Google you.

Computer Science is actually one of the areas I have noticed has the greatest emphasis on social skills because you're usually working in a team of people with very diverse backgrounds, and interacting with people who have non-technical backgrounds. Now, I wouldn't say that companies are looking for smooth and charismatic people to put into these positions, but they're certainly avoiding the socially awkward and inept people that seem to be in high availablity at all times.

Mind you I take social skills and being able to work in a team as two completely different terms.  :-p

I don't have the greatest social skills (in fact I'm pretty awkward) but I can work in a team just fine.  ^^



 

Words Of Wisdom on 05 August 2009
Mistershine said:

Also, WTF is a GPA?

GPA stands for Grade Point Average.

In the US, all your University/College class scores are averaged together to create your GPA which is an at-a-glance view of your whole academic life.  4.0 is the highest mark possible.  Comparatively, a 2.X is pretty crappy.



Vetteman94 on 05 August 2009

The company I work for, the #1 maker of heavy construction equipment, to get in the Engineering department you need a min 3.5 GPA. Most other departments like accounting and marketing are not as strict though. This woman is crazy about this, a 2.7 is not anything worth mentioning. She would be lucky to get hired by my company as a secretary.



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HappySqurriel on 05 August 2009
Vetteman94 said:
The company I work for, the #1 maker of heavy construction equipment, to get in the Engineering department you need a min 3.5 GPA. Most other departments like accounting and marketing are not as strict though. This woman is crazy about this, a 2.7 is not anything worth mentioning. She would be lucky to get hired by my company as a secretary.

I just want to make a side note that the only reason why GPAs between 2.0 and 3.0 are considered "bad" even though they're passing grades is because too many universities are accepting too many students and in order to keep these students from failing out in their first year standards have been lowered and grade inflation is the result. Degrees were worth more when you needed more than good attendance and a willingness to put in the minimum effort to get a passing grade in a course.



twesterm on 05 August 2009
HappySqurriel said:
Vetteman94 said:
The company I work for, the #1 maker of heavy construction equipment, to get in the Engineering department you need a min 3.5 GPA. Most other departments like accounting and marketing are not as strict though. This woman is crazy about this, a 2.7 is not anything worth mentioning. She would be lucky to get hired by my company as a secretary.

I just want to make a side note that the only reason why GPAs between 2.0 and 3.0 are considered "bad" even though they're passing grades is because too many universities are accepting too many students and in order to keep these students from failing out in their first year standards have been lowered and grade inflation is the result. Degrees were worth more when you needed more than good attendance and a willingness to put in the minimum effort to get a passing grade in a course.

I don't know about your university or degree but mine and the ones around me were still plenty difficult and required a large amount of effort just to pass.

Luckily you just don't list your GPA and degree, you also list your school and that can be taken into account.

Southern Methodist University isn't even that great of an engineering school and I know all the engineering school majors require an insane amount of effort.  I also know even the liberal arts majors require a large amount of effort and not just attending so you can float by.  Our business school, maybe you could float by and get in the 2.0-3.0 range, but you better have an in somewhere if you want a job with that kind of GPA.



 

Sqrl on 05 August 2009

^^Yeah I don't know about other schools or degrees but I'm not being handed anything. Granted I'm generally at the top of my class for anything in-major - but this is because I do a stupid amount of reading on course material outside of class...I'm that guy who gets the summer suggested reading and says "sweet!".....I enjoy reading about it and devote an inordinate amount of time to it. I've never been a huge party animal during college thanks to having got it out of my system in junior high (my brother was in college at this time only 2 hours away from me and I spent a ton of time at frat parties on the weekends telling girls I was 19 - granted I actually looked 19 so I had that advantage).
To Each Man, Responsibility
sguy78 on 05 August 2009

Somebody seems to be grasping.



HappySqurriel on 05 August 2009

I don't know, maybe I just had a very unique experience in University ...

I worked through university and took an extra course over the "Maximum" number of courses to get both of my degrees in a reasonable time; and I was surrounded by people who got far worse grades than I did, had a lighter course workload and didn't work at all (and almost all these people complained about how hard it was). In many of my courses my professors would comment that me and my friends were more like what the students used to be like a decade earlier before the University had (essentially) doubled enrollment by lowering standards.