As someone on the employer side of the table I see two frequent problems with university educated candidates that generally don't land the job:
1) irrelevant or (professionally) useless degrees. These would be fine but because they have a degree these candidates generally think they deserve a higher wage which I can't afford (before you say "but general knowledge is valuable as well" remember that self-taught candidates with similarly well-rounded knowledge generally demand less despite often having actual job experience)
2) complete lack of practical knowledge or skills. Even if a degree is job-related that doesn't mean they are capable of doing the job or have the frame of mind required to do the job properly. This is especially a problem with people who picked their majors based on what industry currently provides the best salaries rather than what they are actually interested in doing.
These are especially problems for people who went into university without knowing what they want to do professionally. TINSTAAFL but even if you just get a degree to orient yourself and pass time until you have figured out what you actually want to do with your life that can affect your employability.
As someone on the employer side of the table I see two frequent problems with university educated candidates that generally don't land the job
As someone who has sat on both sides of this table, let me point out that pathologies in hiring are very, very hard for a company to spot. After all, who is going to advocate the contrarian position? The ones not hired aren't there. Observers who are there often don't have anything immediate to gain and lots of political capital to potentially lose.
complete lack of practical knowledge or skills.
If those skills are valuable and hard to find, then it's an advantage to be able to impart those, for both a company and a country.
> If those skills are valuable and hard to find, then it's an advantage to be able to impart those, for both a company and a country.
Sure, but as a small company we can't afford to pay someone a "graduate level" salary when the best we can they need "unskilled level" training before becoming productive at all.
I'm not speaking of a Fortune 500 company or a AAA-level VC-funded startup. We have tight profit margins yet we try to take paid interns and students (which is a net loss for us because we actually train them rather than simply abusing them as cheap labour) because that's the right thing to do.
I'm also speaking from my experience of working closely with people running similar companies (let's say up to ~10 permanent employees) in Germany.
That said, in many cases someone with 3 years of actual job experience is more productive (in the short-to-mid term) than a recent graduate with 3 years of university (with no practice). Yet the graduate will often cost you more in Germany because of inflated salary expectations (partially caused by people reading about US startups and thinking the numbers transfer 1-to-1).
I am talking about entry level jobs. And I'm not even talking about my own company in particular. I've seen this in enough other companies and heard it from enough other people to be certain this is more than purely anecdotal.
There is a false impression in Germany that a university degree increases the chance of finding a job. But it's neither necessary (depending on the industry) nor sufficient.
The kind of companies that can and are willing to pay inflated salaries for graduates with no practical experience or useless degrees are oversaturated and the rest just can't afford them because it's not profitable.
Another way this problem manifests itself is students thinking they can or should specialise in niches when the only jobs that don't require experience require them to be generalists (because if you're going to specifically hire a one-trick pony you probably want a good one).
I've literally seen a fresh graduate apply to become a "colour consultant" in a full-service marketing agency. Sure, they might need someone who really knows their colour theory well but the scale at which a company can justify making that task a full-time job AND giving that job to a fresh graduate with no hands-on experience is pretty implausible.
1) irrelevant or (professionally) useless degrees. These would be fine but because they have a degree these candidates generally think they deserve a higher wage which I can't afford (before you say "but general knowledge is valuable as well" remember that self-taught candidates with similarly well-rounded knowledge generally demand less despite often having actual job experience)
2) complete lack of practical knowledge or skills. Even if a degree is job-related that doesn't mean they are capable of doing the job or have the frame of mind required to do the job properly. This is especially a problem with people who picked their majors based on what industry currently provides the best salaries rather than what they are actually interested in doing.
These are especially problems for people who went into university without knowing what they want to do professionally. TINSTAAFL but even if you just get a degree to orient yourself and pass time until you have figured out what you actually want to do with your life that can affect your employability.