Why I Don't Hire Fresh Graduates (11 Interviews with Entrepreneurs, CEOs, and HR Professionals)

Author: Song Sanxian et al.
Publisher:
Publishing Time: Not available
Features: This is not a textbook teaching graduates how to find jobs, nor is it a social survey listing the employment forms of current graduates in detail. Instead, through interviews with multiple recruiters, it analyzes their mindset and their perception of graduates in the form of case studies, telling us why they don’t hire fresh graduates.
Case Study: Too few suitable jobs for them
Mr. Xiao, who has engaged in various professions, entered the IT industry in 1999 by starting a personal website with a friend. Currently, he is the Executive Manager of an information service company. Website-related jobs are mostly done by young people, which is very trendy; graduates often admire them and often plunge into this field right after graduation. When I mentioned the situation of fresh graduates in the company, Mr. Xiao’s face was filled with the frustration of “seeing potential wasted.” However, he said it very tactfully: “I’m not suitable for them.”
In the spring of 2000, I started a community-based website with a friend, and the website quickly developed rapidly. At that time, it was the peak of the domestic internet boom, and investment also came in. We needed to hire a large number of people to form the company structure and move away from the personal website model to start formal operations. It was April, and the sky had already started to get warm. The recruitment venue was even hotter. After arriving early and setting up the recruitment booth, the students swarmed in like a tide. Most of them squeezed to the front of the booth to read the recruitment content, threw their resumes at us if they thought it was suitable, and then left. Some even turned around and left directly after seeing it wasn’t suitable. By the time the half-day session ended, we had a stack of resumes for various positions.
As people were leaving, Xiao Deng came back to me again. I mainly wanted to hire programmers at that time. I remember very clearly, before Xiao Deng, there was a “fat glasses” guy—round-faced with a pair of black-rimmed glasses—who came up and handed in his resume along with a CD, saying it was a program he had made during his time in school. Back then, the stage of mobile office work had not yet developed, and laptops were very expensive. We had actually thought about setting up a desktop computer at the recruitment venue, but then we thought that there probably wouldn’t be network conditions (at that time, it might have been possible to dial up the internet with a phone line), so if we couldn’t show them our website online, there was no need to bring a PC in for the trouble. So when the “fat glasses” guy showed me the CD and said it was a program he had made, I felt very embarrassed—I couldn’t see what he had actually done, and his action almost “shocked” me. Knowing I couldn’t let him demonstrate his skills on the spot, the “fat glasses” guy looked very disappointed. He asked me, “I heard website jobs pay well, right?” I said, “The absolute salary will definitely be higher than your classmates who do other jobs, but the relative salary might still be lower!” He was surprised, “What do you mean?” I explained it to him in detail: “In terms of absolute figures, you can say this way—if we hire you, based on your education level, your probationary salary will be 2,000, and after passing probation, it will be 2,500. If you perform well by the end of the year, there will be further salary increases. Meanwhile, your classmates who go to factories might only earn 600 to 800 yuan per month, and that’s only if the factory is doing well. So in terms of absolute figures, it’s definitely higher. But website jobs basically don’t have an 8-hour workday. If you can’t solve the problems, it’s not just about overtime or having no weekends—it’s even about thinking about how to handle things while you’re sleeping. So when you calculate the relative value of the unit work time, the salary might not be as high.”
After hearing this, the original disappointment on the “fat glasses” guy’s face was mixed with a sense of confusion, and I even thought it could be considered melancholic. After making a perfunctory inquiry about when we would notify him about the exam after reviewing his resume, the “fat glasses” guy left the crowd in a frustrated manner.
By the time the recruitment venue was about to close, people had been leaving one by one, and Xiao Deng came back to me again. I said “again” because I could already feel that this student had appeared before me several times that day. Xiao Deng was short, fair-skinned, and slim. He asked me, “Teacher, my education level is vocational secondary, and I’m not a computer major, but I think I can do the programmer position you require. Can I take the exam?” His voice was low, with a clear southern accent, his tone was humble and gentle, and his pronunciation was clear. In the slanted sunlight coming through the window, he quietly looked at me. At that moment, I had a feeling that this student was so steady and confident that he should have a chance. I said, “Website work is quite tough. Are you prepared for that?” He said, “I was also listening when you talked to that guy about the salary earlier. I’m not afraid of hard work and thinking, as long as I can deliver results, it’s worth it.” I took his resume, flipped through it casually, and said, “It’s great that you have such a mindset. We’ll probably have the exam in three or four days, so you should still prepare well. I hope you can join our company and work with us.” Xiao Deng smiled, and that smile was exaggeratedly described as “relieved” but should be more accurately described as pure happiness. He said, “Thank you, teacher. I’ll do well on the exam.”
Screaming at midnight while watching the ball game, not taking work seriously
During the first half of my new company’s chaotic operation, the performance of the newly hired fresh graduates left me both happy and worried: of the only two regular university graduates majoring in computer science, one was dismissed after working for only two months, and the other left without even a month. Other vocational college graduates also left and replaced a few times, while non-fresh graduates worked very steadily and effectively.
The one who was dismissed was named Xiao Wei. The reason was that he stayed up late watching the game. That year, there was the European Cup. Among the young employees, there was a group of die-hard fans. It’s usually a happy thing for young people to gather and watch the ball game together, but Xiao Wei, taking advantage of his higher income than other employees (which was a failure on our part in setting salary tiers based on education level), first connected a satellite antenna in the dorm to watch ESPN. Xiao Wei used a half-trick, half-coercive method to collect money from the fan employees and bought the most expensive one. Then, every night when watching the game, he bought a lot of food and drinks and had everyone chip in. This was too difficult for some children from rural backgrounds. Adding to this, Xiao Wei’s sportsmanship was also terrible, and in the end, it became that he was the only one watching the game.
First, employees complained that Xiao Wei screamed loudly while watching the game at midnight, making it impossible for others to rest. At that time, there were many graduates from other places working in the company, and the company rented collective dormitories for employees. Later, Xiao Wei even fell asleep at his desk several times during working hours.
Website work was very tough at that time, whether it was editing, design, or programming. Basically, everyone had a roll of straw mat under their desk. The company had a 24-hour operation, except for the on-duty staff. If you worked overtime or took a break at noon, you could find an empty place in the deep office area to lie down and rest. Even if you took a 10-minute nap on your desk during working hours, we wouldn’t interfere as long as it didn’t affect your work. But Xiao Wei didn’t go to any other place to sleep—he just lay on his desk and slept for two or three hours at a time, severely affecting the work mood of his colleagues. After warning him twice, he still acted as he pleased.
So I asked the technical department head, Da Lin, about Xiao Wei’s work progress. Da Lin said he was also very troubled. Originally, Da Lin had arranged for Xiao Wei to work with A Fa on developing the company’s public email system, but now almost all the work was being done by A Fa. The connections between the work Xiao Wei was supposed to do and the existing website functions had made no progress. At the weekly company meeting, Da Lin had already “shouldered” this work for two weeks, and there was really no reason to find an excuse for it this week.
Considering that Xiao Wei was also showing an increasingly obvious trend of not fitting in with his colleagues during daily work, we decided after discussing it: to ensure the work atmosphere and clean up the environment between employees, we would take this guy as an example: give him half a month’s salary as compensation and let him leave immediately.