Graduates in Industry

Psi Psi

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9780415788533
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351840330
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

There was much development of both education and industry in post-World War II Britain. There was, on the one hand, an extension of public education to the secondary school stage and the substantial financial help that was available, which meant that increasing numbers were going to university. On the other, there had been immense advances in scientific and technical knowledge and its application to industry. These advances in industry produced an increase in the demand for trained graduates. This book, first published in 1957, examines this correlation, and provides guidance for both graduates and hiring managers. This title will be of interest to students of human resource management and business studies.

CHAPTER I

WHY EMPLOY GRADUATES?

THE question whether to employ university graduates is part of the wider question what amount and sort of labour is needed to carry out the work to be done and what amount and sort of labour is available. In industry an increasingly larger proportion of jobs needs to be filled by men with academic achievements beyond those of the secondary school and Higher National Certificate, or with above-average capacity for administration and leadership, or both.

Side by side with this higher standard has gone the increasing proportion of school children reaching a university. Before the war there were some 50,000 full-time students; now there are some 88,000. It would not be true to say that every young man with the makings of a good manager or a good scientist gets swept into the stream. For a variety of reasons, this does not happen. Some are too eager to start earning in their teens, or their parents want them to do so. Some public school boys of good calibre give up the idea of going to a university if they fail to get into Oxford or Cambridge. Some children, mainly of professional people, though well able to profit by going to a university, cannot get to one because their parents’ income is above the modest upper limit within which grants may be made. Again, a long period of professional training, for example to be an accountant or solicitor, may make it difficult for parents to provide for a university education as well. It is true, nevertheless, that a larger proportion than ever before of the more intelligent children of university age in fact go to a university and this proportion is still increasing.

There is, however, no exact correspondence between the proportion of the population going to a university and the proportion of work that needs to be done by university people either in industry or elsewhere, nor between the qualifications acquired at a university and the qualifications sought by employers. The present shortage of scientists and technologists, for example, is too well known to need stressing, and it is complicated by shortages at lower levels—of technicians and laboratory assistants.

Reactions to this situation are likely to vary widely between different industries and different firms: the outlook of each will be governed by different considerations. There is, first, the nature of the work to be done. It may be highly complicated, as much of the work in electrical engineering or in the manufacture of aircraft, or it may be comparatively simple. Secondly, the nature of the work may be fairly stable, or it may be undergoing, or about to undergo, fundamental changes either in the end-product or in the process of production.

The size of the undertaking is another matter of considerable importance. Size will be governed to some extent by the nature of the product and by the effect and assessment of competition both at home and abroad. With increases in size may come increases in the responsibilities and problems of management.

Moreover, the nature and the amount of work to be done may not be adequately sized up. The firm may underestimate the effort it must make to maintain or to improve its relative position, and, as a consequence, it may underestimate the quality of the men it should recruit and also, therefore, its dependence, in the present situation, on the universities as a source of recruitment. That this may be true of some sections of industry at any rate was suggested in a White Paper on the recruitment of scientists and engineers by the engineering industry.* Shortage of labour at all levels may inhibit a firm from setting itself a standard higher than that determined by market conditions.

Even if the facts of the present and future situation are correctly assessed, the subsequent reactions to them may not be entirely uniform. A firm may realise that management succession will not be secured unless a certain proportion of recruits is capable of being promoted to higher posts. In spite of this, it may resist recruiting from the universities because it feels that the graduate is not as well fitted for its purpose as the young man who joins as a schoolboy and acquires his academic or professional qualifications by studying part time. On the other hand, a firm which may not have grasped the implications for its management succession of the universities’ near-monopoly of intelligent young people may nevertheless recruit graduates for the sake of “being in the swim”—it may recruit in the right market but for wrong reasons.

The answers of the fifty-one undertakings studied to the question why they employed graduates, with which the present chapter opens, are, indeed, as diverse as might be expected from this brief review of the sort of reactions that could be made to it.

Old and new employers of graduates

Perhaps the first thing to note is how many graduates these undertakings had on their books at the time of the survey and how long they had been recruiting from the universities as a matter of deliberate policy.* The number of graduates in any undertaking naturally influences outlook on such things as further recruitment, on the measures to be taken to attract graduates, and on the need for the introduction of formal training schemes. Eighteen “old” employers had been employing graduates since before 1945—one had done so for forty years. Twenty-five “new” employers had recruited graduates only since the end of the war. These firms, at the time of the survey, could not have had more than nine years’ experience of employing graduates as a deliberate policy: one had had only a few months’. The four gas boards have been included among the new employers as a more positive policy towards the recruitment of graduates was introduced after nationalisation in 1949, though graduates, most of them with degrees acquired after part-time study, had in fact been employed before then.

Eight firms, a sixth of all the private enterprise undertakings studied, had decided, either as a deliberate policy or because of the special circumstances in which they were placed, to recruit no graduates. But it happens that they had all, incidentally or unwittingly, taken on a man who had graduated in 1950. A return will be made later in this chapter to these eight firms: their attitude is of particular interest.

This distribution of old and new employers is itself worth some consideration, though the number of firms is small. Among the eighteen old employers none had fewer then 500 employees; ten employed at least 5,000 people. Two had under ten graduates and ten had a hundred graduates or more. (One, which did not or could not say how many graduates it had, was in fact a heavy recruiter. It certainly had many more than a hundred graduates and is therefore grouped among those with a hundred graduates or more.) Among the twenty-five new employers, six had less than 500 employees, and another eleven employed under 5,000 people. Ten had less than ten graduates altogether, and only four had a hundred or more.

Seventeen firms, a third of all these forty-three undertakings, had less than twenty-five graduates each, twelve had less than ten. There were nearly twice as many new firms as old ones among employers of less than twenty-five graduates. No firm with less than 2,000 employees had as many as twenty-five graduates. Only two out of the thirteen graduate-employing firms with between 2,000–4,999 employees had a hundred graduates but four out of six with 5,000–9,999 employees had a hundred graduates or more; and (excluding the area gas boards, which had well below this number) all those with 10,000 or more employees had at least a hundred graduates. Six firms, all with several hundred graduates, have been classed as giant employers of them.

Generally speaking, therefore, the larger the firm the larger the number of graduates employed. Equally, the heavier concentrations of graduates were also to be found in those industries with relatively complicated products or processes. Two out of three of the chemical firms had a hundred graduates or more, and six out of the eight electrical engineering firms. On the other hand three out of five of the firms in the metal manufacture and metal goods category had less than fifty graduates. Six of the nine consumer-goods firms had under twenty-five graduates.

Reasons for employing graduate scientists and technologists

In examining the replies to the question why graduates were taken on, no clear-cut divisions emerge. Many firms qualified their remarks in one way or another and in some firms the members of management interviewed were divided in their views. Opinions on the need for or the desirability of employing graduates shade off from positive to negative and are complicated and influenced by such things as geographical situation, the relative newness of the recruitment policy and the experience of members of management interviewed when they themselves first went into industry. In some instances it was found that a director or personnel officer had himself started out during the depression of the 1930s and felt some resentment towards a generation of young men who had been enabled to go to a university at the public expense, and to whom fears of unemployment were unknown. The material, in short, does not lend itself to exact analysis.

All but one of the forty-three firms who reported that they had a policy to employ graduates (though, possibly, on a very small scale) had some graduate scientists or technologists or both, but three were mainly concerned with arts graduates and with the problem of management succession. Of the remaining thirty-nine, all but three said that they employed scientists and technologists because some of their work had to be carried out by people who had achieved a certain standard of knowledge, though a degree was not necessarily the minimum standard required and might, indeed, be more than was required. For most firms, in fact, a degree was not essential, or was essential only for a proportion of the work for which they recruited graduates. Typical replies were:

We are in need of their trained knowledge.

They are essential for various of our development and design tasks.

The reason for taking on graduates given next in order of frequency was that they were needed as potential managers. But this reason was given only once for every twice that the graduates’ knowledge was mentioned and was never given as the sole reason for taking on a scientist or technologist. Among the ten firms employing under 2,000 people that are here relevant, only four, in various industries, gave “management” as a reason; among the eighteen medium-sized firms, nine gave this as a reason; and among the seven large firms and four gas boards, all with 10,000 or more employees, three firms (a metal manufacturer, a vehicles manufacturer and a food concern) and two gas boards gave this as a reason. None of the four large electrical engineers gave management as a reason. Of the sixteen firms giving management as a reason for taking on graduates, nine had under fifty graduates, and six of the nine were new employers; of the remaining seven, five had more than a hundred graduates, and only one was a new employer. Typical replies here were:

We want the best men available for higher executive posts and look to graduates to form the nucleus for these posts.

The trained mind learns the business more quickly and is therefore more suitable for management later.

The remaining reason given may be broadly described as the general educational value of a graduate. It was mentioned, however, by only eleven of the thirty-nine undertakings concerned with the recruitment of scientists and technologists. Seven of them were medium sized, two small and two large. Most were old employers. It is exemplified by:

We need a class of brain found in graduates.

Modern industry needs the outlook of the educated man.

As might be expected, for work at an advanced level on development or reasearch, graduates were recruited because only they were considered capable of carrying it out. This work was naturally concentrated to a large extent in those industries with complex products or processes: the chemical manufacturers, the electrical engineers and one of the vehicle firms are the main examples. For work below this level there was some evidence that graduates were sometimes employed because there was no one else to be had: laboratory assistants and others were in even shorter supply. A member of management in one firm said: “It is the semi-qualified staff who are really short”, and scientists in this firm complained of being employed in too junior work. A member of management in another firm said: “It is now difficult to get lab. boys. We don’t want to give menial tasks to [graduate] chemists but we may have to”. For other work, only five firms insisted that graduates were recruited because they were essential.*

Examination of these replies goes to show that recruitment was undertaken with varying degrees of enthusiasm. One of the chemical manufacturers, all the electrical engineering firms except one large one, two of...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• CHAPTER I WHY EMPLOY GRADUATES?
• CHAPTER II INDUSTRY AND UNIVERSITY EDUCATION
• CHAPTER III SELECTION
• CHAPTER IV INTRODUCTION TO THE FIRM
• CHAPTER V TRAINING
• CHAPTER VI IN THE FIRST JOB
• CHAPTER VII SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
• APPENDICES
• Index