The ‘Miracle’ of Graduates

12 months earlier and all you could do was flip burgers.How does this miracle happen? It’s the same ‘miracle’ parents perform in the 4 years when their stroppy teenagers go from 16 to 20. The children turn 20 and are surprised how much their parents learned in just a couple of years!The students were always capable of more than burgers or pulling beers. Capable of making much greater contributions to employers.So what does western society do with the best qualified generation ever with their great ability to learn complex technology? Well, lets give them repetitive and menial jobs. Hire them casually. No responsibility. Tolerate other employees treating the students badly as they are only temporary. And often sack them with a week’s notice or less.Amazing!This is just one of the large pools of talent that we ignore in white collar work. If 100,000 to 150,000 of our better students in Australia (and comparable numbers in other countries) were doing higher skilled, more responsible part-time jobs, it would have a big impact on Australia’s overall productivity.Who would do the jobs the students were doing previously? Leave the detailed analysis to the economics guru, Ross Gittens. However, about 5 forces get triggered. For example, more of these low level jobs head off to India; the price of labour for making burgers goes up, so more automated equipment is bought; the price of burgers goes up, so some people buy less, etc.One thing is guaranteed: there is no permanent skills shortage. That’s an impossibility despite the thousands of ‘chicken little, sky is falling’ articles by recruitment firms, HR consultants, etc.At Abacus we are very active in the specialised area of part time under-graduate recruitment – it is a much better, lower risk way of hiring graduates. And a great low cost, productive resource for your team. We call them SMARTS.Einstein says insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result. Given the HUGE failure rate in graduate recruitment, with each costing OVER a year’s salary when they walk out the door within 2 years, it is time to Think Different.To learn more about SMARTS, visit our website: http://www.abacusrecruit.com.au/smarts.pdf