Executive Summary

Sheila Sanders

Managerial Communications

11-10-13

Online Ziegler

“To succeed in today’s workplace, young people need more than basic reading and math skills. They need substantial content knowledge and information technology skills; advanced thinking skills, flexibility to adapt to change; and interpersonal skills to succeed in multi-cultural cross-functional teams,” spoke Chairman and CEO J. Willard Marriott Jr. This is very true when you really think about it with professional jobs here today. It’s not all about how much knowledge you have school related because most of the time the things we did learn in our math, science, or social studies classes we don’t get to even apply in our daily lives at work. For the most part, we use what we learned in our first weeks of training for some of us or from shadowing other employees we work with. Instead some of the skills that are most important for four-year college graduates are oral communications, teamwork/collaboration, professionalism/work ethic, written communications, and critical thinking/problem solving. Many of what skills can be taught to us from experience.

I have my associates and only have a little over a year until I have my Bachelor’s. I work in a pretty professional work setting at Wells Fargo Home Mortgage as a Home Preservation Specialist in the Bankruptcy Department. I feel like I don’t use any knowledge of what I learned in school but everything about the position I was taught at a 3-week training. I feel like anyone could do most of the jobs out there if they just have experience from other jobs similar and are provided the necessary training to do the job. How would training be different for a high school graduate rather than a college graduate for my job? The answer is it wouldn’t be any different. We would still have to sit through the same training and have the same expectations.

Professionalism was rated highly by employer respondents across all 3 educational...