Last Friday I attended a conference which addressed the place of the Community College in the 21st century. There were a lot of speakers there, from the two state legislators who were primarily responsible for passing a bill in my state that will drastically reduce the amount of remedial help we will be allowed to give high school graduates who come to us unable to read, write or do simple math, to the president of one of our state universities, to business and community leaders.The business and community leaders were the most interesting, informative and relevant. Anyway, one of them, a man who owns a rather large company in our state which employs electrical and mechanical engineers (we have an AS in both of those areas) told this story. His company needs to hire young men and women who have degrees in electrical and mechanical engineering. They hire people with both four year and two year degrees, for different jobs.
He says he has never been more disappointed with the new college graduates than he has been in the past ten to fifteen years, and it is getting worse. The biggest problem, he says, in his field is not really that the college graduates, be they two or four year grads, have not learned the technical knowledge they needed to learn in their college classes. The problem, he says, is that today's college grads are helpless and annoying and come to him with a huge sense of entitlement. To try to find the kind of employee he needs in his company, he does a simple test during his interviews:
After a candidate has made it through the interview process, he or she is asked to perform some simple technical task on the computer. Very simple, but with one little trick built in to the situation: they are asked to print out the results of their task, and to bring it to the interviewer within 20 minutes. And the printer is always unplugged. The task, he told us, should not take your average person on the street more than 5 minutes to complete. So that gives them 15 minutes to figure out what to do about the printer problem. He will only hire the ones that can bring him what he asked for within the given time. He does not care how they do it, although he does prefer the people who just plug in the damn printer, (Only a small percentage actually plug in the printer, he shared with us. The rest of the minority candidates who actually overcome the obstacle do things like use their personal thumb drives on which they save their information, carry to a different office, and get someone to help them by printing it out.) This guy told us that 2/3s of the candidates come to him in a variety of helpless states----annoyed at him for asking them to do something when his equipment is faulty, flustered and tearful, apathetic, even smug, seeming glad to be able to point out where he, the job offerer, has failed in his ability to make the job easy to complete.
What does he want us to do as educators? Produce college graduates who can plug in a printer.
And that is a laudable goal: producing graduates who can really think, and not just memorize. As you no doubt know, it is quite difficult to teach, and always has been, although recent trends in education (including anonymous student evaluations of teaching, in which students are positively invited to retaliate for putting them outside their comfort zones) and parenting (such as pushing unearned self-esteem, which naturally has bred incredible entitlement) have made it so much harder. God help us all.
ReplyDeleteActually, I doubt most of my students can even memorize. They seem incapable of doing anything other than sitting and texting in class, socializing, making less-than-witty observations about entertainment. Problem-solving abilities are completely lacking. COMPLETELY.
DeleteYou know, I have really been thinking about this little test. It's sort of brilliant, but I wonder if certain personalities would fail it.
ReplyDeleteI am not sure I'd mess with equipment that didn't belong to me. If it is an obvious thing like an electrical plug sitting next to an electrical outlet out in the open, I might just plug it in, but what if it's something under the desk? And going to another office and imposing on someone to print something would be murder for an incredibly shy person applying for a job. (Talk about stress!)
On the other hand, the tears and accusations, etc. approach is just as much an anathema in my mind.
I might have trouble for the same reasons. What if someone unplugged the printer for a reason (e.g. it was broken in some way that might injure it or its users if I plugged it back in)? And barging into someone's office and asking them to interrupt their work to help me? That strikes me as rude, and not a demonstration of a good teamwork ethic. I'd probably finish the task on the computer, and then seek out the person who interviewed me to ask (politely, non-accusingly) if I should plug in the printer or whether there was another one I could use, on the theory that he's the person whose workload that day included paying attention to me.
DeleteThe difference between the scenario he sets up and a real work situation, I think, is that employees would already have a network at their own level (and possibly at the support level) to help them solve problems that the boss doesn't need to be bothered with.
But I still like the idea of hiring employees who can solve problems for themselves. I'm just not sure this is the right test.
Of course, there's a substantial minority of my students who probably wouldn't complete the task in the first place, because they wouldn't read the instructions.
A printer with an empty paper tray (and an intuitive loading method and/or posted directions) and a stack of paper sitting nearby might be a better test. That I'd do without hesitation. I'd even open the doors of the cart a printer was resting on to see if there were paper underneath, and/or search nearby bookcases, and open a ream if necessary.
DeleteI totally agree. It wouldn't just be a personality issue, but a cultural one; I would never touch someone else's equipment unless they had granted me permissions to do so for fear of offending. I wouldn't, however, wait to whine to the boss about it, and would FIND a way to print my document by asking permission of someone to touch their equipment...
DeleteThis guy really felt he was getting better people with this test, although I see what you are saying, CC and myth. I like the test----it appeals to my sense of people needing to figure out how to get things done, dammit. I am so sick of people encountering one little loophole and giving up. At work and in my personal life LOL. I'd plug the printer in...but then, I am married to an IT guy. Always check your cables and power connections first, before anything else!
ReplyDeleteHe did tell us that the interviewer was unavailable for questions after the assignment was given.
I couldn't respond to your post because the computer in the lab wasn't working. Never mind that 28 other computers surrounded me that WERE working. It's not my fault.
DeleteHow many times have you heard a student say, "This computer isn't working." How many times have you had to say, "Try another one." This why I no longer have exams in the computer lab.
DeleteMakes you wonder if, back in the Dark Ages of paper and pencil exams, if the student received a stapled group of blank pages if they would sit for the exam period and then pass in the blank pages claiming they couldn't complete the exam because it was blank?
DeleteWhat makes you think this didn't just happen in a classroom today somewhere?
DeleteBitter experience has taught me always to be careful to print exams on one-sided paper.
DeleteI've had to add arrows at the bottom of every page to make sure the little snowflakes turn the page.
DeleteAfter dealing with the unending and eternal misery of government IT equipment and management, I'd probably quit on the spot if a new job I was applying for showed similar fail-o-rificness as its first impression.
ReplyDeleteThe company owner also risks this with his test: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PywI0BOxJpI
ReplyDeleteI totally thought of the Family Guy clip and laughed when I first read the post.
DeleteAll problems inherent in the task alloted to potential employees, I love the idea of using this example in class to show that problem-solving skills and taking initiative are important skills that students often discount and don't even realize they lack.
ReplyDeleteThank you for this post!
The three rules of electronics are turn it on, plug it in and kick it. More seriously the increasing separation of engineering education from physical reality contributes to the problem
ReplyDeleteWhen a student asked me about the assignment he missed before class, I told him it was always posted on the LMS. He then responded that he didn't have a computer at home. I pointed to the iPhone he so dearly was holding and said, "How about this?" He just looked at me with a blank stare as if to say, that never occurred to him.
ReplyDelete"This guy told us that 2/3s of the candidates come to him in a variety of helpless states----annoyed at him for asking them to do something when his equipment is faulty, flustered and tearful, apathetic, even smug, seeming glad to be able to point out where he, the job offerer, has failed in his ability to make the job easy to complete."
ReplyDeleteIsn't it just like a snowflake to be all pissy and be totally rude to the potential employer? Never once suspecting that this might be part of the interview?