Employers need employees with the right abilities to do the job. Is education fitting the nation’s workforce with the right abilities? When we compete on the world stage, how do we develop the right skills to grow the economy?
Posted by: Mr. Craig Thomas | 20.08.2008 10:19am
... I positively reject candidates with some academic qualifications. There are two kinds of academic degrees that light a warning light for me when I'm viewing CVs.
One is the totally academic academic stuff like Classical French or Latin - what are those people thinking??
The other is badly set out faux-vocational degrees like IT Management or Computer Science. They sound like a good idea, but I've found that people who learn that stuff out of a book are sooo much worse at it than people who learn on the job.
No idea what the solution is to that one. The first one, though - get rid of those degrees, or clearly label them as "this degree is for trustafarians only". Or something.
Posted by: Joe | 09.12.2008 11:41pm
Don't you think as employers you should be looking past qualifications and presumed social status, when looking at a CV arent you looking for 'the person' what they have to say about them selves, their goals.
Aren't you looking for a person to fit the specific job/career that they have applied for, even if they have specific qualifications required for the hypothetical position, it doesn't make them right for it, thats what interviews are for.
Please don't pigeon hole people by assuming you know their motivations for learning or not learning. If you want employees that fit your mould then have on-site learning, it's quicker and more encompasing because their not learning a test, their learing skills usefull to your organisation.
Posted by: Jonathan Cuffe | 29.08.2008 06:40am
As an employer I'm in the middle, I support Lating and the classics and will happily give someone a job if they have an a-level in either latin or greek, it shows more than mere erudite learning, a desire for the best from an early age, which is why I don't support "these people" - the idea that they work long and hard to get a piece of paper is their own families fault, I agree that some people do come from bad places and deserve a chance, fine. But the majority are learning later in life because they wouldn't do it when the rest of us did, slowing many of us down in the process so I don't accept them, simply because I'm not funded to help people 20 years behind where they should be.
Also: I don't accept GCSE's or A-levlels in media, drama, IT (because you shouldn't have to prove you know it nowadays), art, sports science and so on. Its not just the faux vocational degrees, its also the faux qualifications before that - and it is those, by pretending to be worth something, that keep the majority as epsilons