22

The night after my social experiment with the sure and senseless band teenagers my wife reminded me that I may have an especially jaundiced view of those fine little fellows, as the entitlement mentality of the average American is a sure way to send me over the edge. Perhaps I was just being too hard on them, all evidence to the contrary. But my thoughts were reinforced the next day as I was talking to one of the fellow chaperons who I had met on the trip. It turns out that he was a software engineering executive at a mid-sized corporation. He laughed and said “We are all in big trouble. The same thing happened to me. But it’s worse than that. I can find lots of kids to hire these days, kids that come from fancy universities and have great degrees, but they are almost completely incapable of solving problems outside of a narrow band of well defined issues. Against the advice of my recruiting department I have started looking at second-tier schools where I can find kids who didn’t always get the best grades but know how to achieve an objective and make something happen. These kids that come from privilege just can’t seem to add value.”

Comments

[laurence haughton]

An orthopedic surgeon said much the same thing to my son yesterday. He was explaining the gaps in pre-medical school education and said that his son (a philosophy major) was a better innovative problem solver than he was. "Give me a test with four choices and I'll ace it," he said. "But outside of a narrow band of well defined issues my son is a better problem solver."

[William]

Hire for talent? Sure... but hire for problem-solving skills and being team-oriented? Hands down, yes!