I would add communication, business writing and problem solving to the existing curriculum. They are the biggest deficits I see in new grads (even liberal arts).
They are often smart, talented people, but lack the skills to operate in a business (business writing, comms, etc.). We recruit, then train the heck out of them and have had good outcomes.
I don’t know if this is still a problem, but I remember reading that some decades back, a number of companies had problems with people writing absolutely unusable emails.
The problem, as I recall it being presented, was that historically the norm had that you’d have a secretary take dictation. That secretary was basically a professional writer, and would clean up all the memos and whatever that went out.
But at some point, companies generally decided that people should just be emailing each other directly. Now you weren’t dictating to a secretary. You were typing an email yourself. The problem is that this meant that there were suddenly a lot of people who had relied on secretaries to clean things up for many years who had had no practice and were suddenly writing their own material…and it was horrendous.
I’d guess that that was probably some twenty years ago now, at least, so maybe the problem has aged out.
I would add communication, business writing and problem solving to the existing curriculum. They are the biggest deficits I see in new grads (even liberal arts).
The even liberal arts thing made me spit my coffee.
They are often smart, talented people, but lack the skills to operate in a business (business writing, comms, etc.). We recruit, then train the heck out of them and have had good outcomes.
I don’t know if this is still a problem, but I remember reading that some decades back, a number of companies had problems with people writing absolutely unusable emails.
The problem, as I recall it being presented, was that historically the norm had that you’d have a secretary take dictation. That secretary was basically a professional writer, and would clean up all the memos and whatever that went out.
But at some point, companies generally decided that people should just be emailing each other directly. Now you weren’t dictating to a secretary. You were typing an email yourself. The problem is that this meant that there were suddenly a lot of people who had relied on secretaries to clean things up for many years who had had no practice and were suddenly writing their own material…and it was horrendous.
I’d guess that that was probably some twenty years ago now, at least, so maybe the problem has aged out.
Sadly, it has not gotten better. It is something I actively have to train people when they join our company.
Business writing is like the one thing LMMs have actually made useless
Hard disagree. That would require a library of well written emails to reference (which, in my experience are not very common).