The Benjamin Factor

Demos
June 2006
“Working Progress: How to Reconnect Young People and Organisations” (Download does not seem to work)
By Sarah Gillinson and Duncan O'Leary

This report by Demos, a British think-tank devoted to promoting “everyday democracy”, says that there is “a disconnect between young people and the organizational cultures they encounter in the workplace”. Graduates enter the workforce thinking that the knowledge they have gathered during their education has prepared them for the world of work; yet a majority of human-resources directors say that it is increasingly difficult to find the right graduates with the right skills. They want softer skills such as communications and creativity, yet graduates do not seem to appreciate this need.

What can be done about this problem? The authors have a number of suggestions ranging from schools holding termly equivalents of “parents' evenings” for local businesses and community organizations, to universities drawing on new ideas about how “to embed transferable, work-based skills into the curriculum”. Some of their ideas might help at the margin, but this gulf between employers and graduates has been around for decades now and is beginning to look intractable. Remember the moment in the 1967 movie “The Graduate”, when the skill-challenged character Benjamin, played by Dustin Hoffman, is being steered into a career in plastics? The gulf then between graduates' expectations and those of their employers was little (if at all) different from today.