Here’s a little article from newsletters that college career counselors read…
Thought you might like to know what is going onnnnn.

Employers are looking for more professionalism from the college students and recent grads they hire for internships and entry-level jobs, according to the 2010 Professionalism in the Workplace Poll conducted by the Center for Professional Excellence at York College in Pennsylvania.

The study questioned more than 400 business leaders and human resources executives across the United States. Its key finding: 38.2% of the respondents said that less than half of all new college graduates demonstrate professionalism in the workplace.

That’s roughly equal to the 37.3% of respondents who said the same thing in last year’s survey.

Meantime, a quarter of the survey respondents said that professionalism in new college grads has decreased in recent years, while 15% said it has increased.

“If there is good news from this survey, it is that things are not getting worse,” says David Polk, a professor of behavioral science at york and principal of Polk-Lepson Research Group, the organization that conducted the study.

That said, there’s plenty of room for student/grad improvement.

8 Specific Problem Areas:
In one part of the survey, participating employers were asked to rate (on a scale of 0 to 5) the importance of several qualities related to professionalism – and to then use that same scale to rate the prevalence of those qualities in college grads.

The result: Grads are falling significantly short in 8 key areas:
1. Accepting personal responsibility
2. Displaying a sense of ethics
3. Being competent in verbal and written communication
4. Taking initiative
5. Projecting a professional image
6. Thinking independently
7. Demonstrating passion for their work
8. Being open to criticism

Employers, as a group, gave each of these traits an importance score of between 4.25 and 4.5 – but all of the traits received a prevalence score of only about 3 (some a shade under, some a bit over).

“It was really surprising to see the importance ratings alongside the prevalence ratings,” says Polk.

“New employees are lacking the professional qualities that are deemed to be important. The largest gap exists for accepting personal responsibility and for decisions and actions and being open to criticism.”

Another area of employer concert, according to the study’s findings: IT (information technology) etiquette – or, too often, lack thereof.

Just over 38% of the respondents said they’re seeing more IT etiquette problems among their new-grad hires – about the same as last year (39.1%).

But the proportion of employers who said they’re seeing a decrease in IT-related etiquette issues plummeted from 44.8% in last year’s survey to 10.7% in this year’s.

“Some of these problems in the workplace are the same things we’re seeing in the classroom,” says Polk. “Students and employees alike are text messaging, surfing the Internet, and responding to cell phone calls at inappropriate times.

“It appears that for many, the need to be in constant contact with friends and family has become an addiction. The addicted no longer see it as rude to be obsessively responding to calls or text messages.”

Students/Grads Often Agree
For the first time, the year’s Professionalism in the Workplace Poll also questioned about 400 college students and recent graduates nationwide, to get their take on the professionalism exhibited (or not) by new college grads.

“There are some really interesting findings from the students’ responses,” Polk stresses. “Many of [them] mirror what business leaders and HR professionals had been telling us.”

An example: 55.3% of the employers in this year’s survey said that young workers today display a stronger “sense of entitlement” than their counterparts did five years ago.

A little over 52% of the students in this year’s survey said the same thing.

The study questioned 430 employers and 436 students/grad in all.

Source: York College of Pennsylvania news release (with accompanying five-page executive summary of the 2010 Professionalism in the Workplace Poll), October 21, 2010.