GUEST COMMENT: Middle class white British grads? No thanks....
A bit harsh, I admit and not a statement that I will leave unqualified in this article, but what has happened to the quality of applicant that is produced by British educational system in the past ten years?
Worryingly there are two strands to the British grad problem; one being attitude and the other being knowledge. Simply put, the ones who are bright enough to do the work don't want to do it and the rest just aren't up to it (in the short term at least).
Even more worryingly for British society, I am only really talking about the top end of our educational system, i.e. top university grads [I won't call it Oxbridge, these days it's wider than that] for front office roles and "the rest" for support roles.
Lower down the educational spectrum, we can all see and hear the results of the last ten years of (mainly) Labour education policy every time we have to deal with a call centre or go into a shop. At this end of the market, I agree with Terry Leahy (Ex-CEO of Tesco) when he said that standards in UK schools were often "woefully low". Can you believe that we have neglected our educational system to a point where one in five of our fifteen year olds is "functionally illiterate" (source OECD Dec 2010)?
Taking the British front office graduates that have been in my teams over the past few years, there has been a prevailing attitude that because they have got onto the grad scheme of Megabank, they have "arrived" and that as such they should be instantly recognised as a "Master of the Universe". I fully acknowledge (to them as well) that they have the world at their feet, but WORK is required before the world will fete them as the next trading wizard.
Their notion of "entitlement" is what I find the most corrosive; they maybe uber-bright, but very little of what they know is applicable to the trading environment. I am afraid that reading markets and making money has to be learnt (the hard way) and respect earned - not given as of right.
Now, I freely admit to anyone that I wouldn't hire a 21 year old "me" for my team: I was nowhere near as bright as the grads and interns that have started working for me. However, I would have got nowhere if I started with "the world owes me a living" attitude that I see in
round after round of interviewing new grads.
To their credit, when we've hired "red brick" university candidates into front office roles, they have proven the work ethic that is required to succeed. Even so, the words of Terry Leahy (again) about having to "re-educate his workforce in basic skills" strike a chord, when really they shouldn't. I work upon the basis that a non "top University" grad will take a solid two years to make into a productive member of the team.
Earlier I said that I would qualify my original assertion; I qualify it thus: it applies to the white Anglo-Saxon candidates that I see. The British Asian and British African grads I come across are far more likely to combined intelligence with the right attitude for the job. Why this is the case I am not sure; I suspect that the work ethic has been drilled into them by their parents. This would seem to be something that white middle class Britain has lost in under a generation.
People often ask why the investment banks are stuffed full of foreigners. Simply put the foreign grads (and non-Anglo Saxon British grads) are much better educated and have the right attitude to work.
Now, all of the above is a generalization, there have been exceptions to it, but, over 20 odd years I have interviewed and hired many hundreds of British and foreign graduates, which I believe makes for a representative enough sample. The standard is declining and the average white, British, grad doesn't cut it.
The writer is a Trader, with 20+ years of hiring graduates, and increasing concerns as to the state of UK education.
