With the arrival of the graduation season, what are the must-have features new graduates need to know to be get hired? What new graduates need to improve? The Workforce Development Agency, MOL & Taiwan jobs conducted “The 2019 Novice Employee Survey” on 1116 companies. As high as 60% of the companies answered that the advantage for new graduates is they are “more open to accept new things”. However, 50% of the companies consider new graduates not having enough soft skills and the key point is “new graduates don’t report their problems actively.”
According to the survey results, as high as 60.57% of the companies think that comparing to senior employees, new graduates are “more open to accept new things” and “have better understanding and skills in emerging technologies, and internet information” (49.64%), indicating that for employers, the biggest advantage for new graduates of Generation Z is that they learn faster, dare to try new things and have better understanding and skills in new technologies. For this reason, they are usually more imaginative and innovatively creative.
Half (50.17%) of the companies give “less-than-5-points” to new graduates for their soft skills. Additionally, 57.83% of the companies think that new graduates need to work on “ not reporting their problems actively”, then their “low stress-resistance” (55.71%) would improve. Among the companies who participated in the survey, many of them suggest that the best way for novice employees to adapt to a new workplace is that they shouldn’t “be afraid of asking for assistance from senior employees, and they should ask more questions, pay more attention, and learn more“(84.68%), and they need “to observe how other people in the workplace are doing their jobs right and learn more related to the company culture” (63.98%). New graduates need to establish the value of “take the initiative”, ask for assistance or advice from senior employees so that they will get better and better in working.
As for the hard skills in the workplace, there are close to 60% (59.15%) of the companies giving thumbs up to new graduates’ hard skills, yet there are still around 40% (40.85%) of the companies who consider new graduates not having enough hard skills because they “lack the professional skills required for the job” (49.60%), and “do things wrong or in a wrong order” (42.46%). Relatively speaking, what new graduates lack is work experience and sufficient professional skills; therefore, they are advised to accept challenges whenever they are given the opportunities and use their free time to learn to improve their professional skills.
How long should a new graduate stay at a job that is good enough for employers? 41.94% of the companies answered at least “one year.” The bigger the companies, the percentages that consider at least “ one-year” long is higher which indicates that big enterprises value the stability and loyalty of new graduates more and more. A new graduate who changes his/her jobs too fast and too many times would give an impression of “low stress resistance”, not to mention learning from scratch for every job is bad for accumulating professional skills. So, unless you are very sure it is an industry that you are not interested in, we suggest that new graduates stay at a job for at least 1 year.
The staff of the Workforce Development Agency would like to remind new graduates, before entering the job market, they may use career assessment tools to assess their potentials and preferences to find a suitable job, set a career goal and work on their hard/soft skills via participating in vocational training to improve their competitiveness in the job market and ultimately become a first-class talent that companies would like to recruit. Currently, relevant information of pre-employment training and on-the-job training is available at Taiwanjobs (https://www.taiwanjobs.gov.tw/) and the online vocational training site (https://ojt.wda.gov.tw/). For more information, please visit the website.
The “2019 Rookie Employees Survey” was conducted during May 6 to June 4, 2019. Valid samples are 1116 ones; a 95% confidence level with a sampling error of plus or minus 2.9%. The website where the survey is posted: (https://reurl.cc/8kzGg.)