Hiring Graduates
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oh well - all depends I suppose. I have found and heard a few cases where people are too busy talking about the way they do things and the things they have done, rather than doing things to fit in with the way everyone else does things. And they want to continue doing it their way, regardless. Whereas a graduate doesn't even have a way to do things yet, so you can give them one :) Plus, the people I know were more terrified when they got their first programming job than thinking they know everything. Some great people I knew at uni probably WOULD have a problem with customers and timeframes because they just program all the time and creatively and they really DO know a massive amount - and you can't let anything, like eating, or customers, get in the way of programming the thing, whatever the thing is. True hackers. Of course, if you can control them and get them to work on their work, then they will be brilliant and you'll get a lot of random extra contribution besides.
"Your typical day is full of moments where you ask for a cup of coffee and someone hands you a bag of nails." - Scott Adams
Yeah that's all true. I wonder why they don't teach practical things at university in addition to the technical stuff? It would sure make life easier for the employers. I guess that's why doing a co-op is such a good idea as others mentioned, for both the potential employer and the student.
standgale wrote:
Some great people I knew at uni probably WOULD have a problem with customers and timeframes because they just program all the time and creatively and they really DO know a massive amount - and you can't let anything, like eating, or customers, get in the way of programming the thing, whatever the thing is. True hackers. Of course, if you can control them and get them to work on their work, then they will be brilliant and you'll get a lot of random extra contribution besides.
I used to be one of those guys, not necessarily brilliant but very hackerish, running your own company will grind off those rough edges pretty quickly, but in this day and age it's rapidly becoming the only choice for an uber hacker type person. Programming has become corporatized so heavily and programmers have become a near commodity (not the great ones but the adequate ones) that no corporation really want's to tolerate a classic hacker type antisocial sort of programmer any more. They expect meetings and cubicles and reports and all that foofarall that drove me away from working for the "man". All you really need these days to make a good living with that type of personality is several good ideas or one great idea, an excellent business partner who can tolerate you and a computer with high speed internet access.
"I don't want more choice. I just want better things!" - Edina Monsoon
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Yeah that's all true. I wonder why they don't teach practical things at university in addition to the technical stuff? It would sure make life easier for the employers. I guess that's why doing a co-op is such a good idea as others mentioned, for both the potential employer and the student.
standgale wrote:
Some great people I knew at uni probably WOULD have a problem with customers and timeframes because they just program all the time and creatively and they really DO know a massive amount - and you can't let anything, like eating, or customers, get in the way of programming the thing, whatever the thing is. True hackers. Of course, if you can control them and get them to work on their work, then they will be brilliant and you'll get a lot of random extra contribution besides.
I used to be one of those guys, not necessarily brilliant but very hackerish, running your own company will grind off those rough edges pretty quickly, but in this day and age it's rapidly becoming the only choice for an uber hacker type person. Programming has become corporatized so heavily and programmers have become a near commodity (not the great ones but the adequate ones) that no corporation really want's to tolerate a classic hacker type antisocial sort of programmer any more. They expect meetings and cubicles and reports and all that foofarall that drove me away from working for the "man". All you really need these days to make a good living with that type of personality is several good ideas or one great idea, an excellent business partner who can tolerate you and a computer with high speed internet access.
"I don't want more choice. I just want better things!" - Edina Monsoon
The fairly brilliant guy I know is working for a start-up gaming company started by a friend of his. In first year uni, we had a Java lab where the point was "using buttons". We basically had to put a button on a form and make it do something when clicked. Pretty retarded purpose to spend 3 hours on. Anyway, he didn't like the buttons in Java because they lacked customisability and exciting functionality - so what do you do? You write your own buttons of course. Pretty cool for a beginners level programming course. (He had experience in BASIC, as most of us with any programming experience did, but I believe that's all) Of course the tutor wouldn't mark his program and made him do it again using the proper buttons. That guy (the tutor) was a bit of a .
"Your typical day is full of moments where you ask for a cup of coffee and someone hands you a bag of nails." - Scott Adams
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The fairly brilliant guy I know is working for a start-up gaming company started by a friend of his. In first year uni, we had a Java lab where the point was "using buttons". We basically had to put a button on a form and make it do something when clicked. Pretty retarded purpose to spend 3 hours on. Anyway, he didn't like the buttons in Java because they lacked customisability and exciting functionality - so what do you do? You write your own buttons of course. Pretty cool for a beginners level programming course. (He had experience in BASIC, as most of us with any programming experience did, but I believe that's all) Of course the tutor wouldn't mark his program and made him do it again using the proper buttons. That guy (the tutor) was a bit of a .
"Your typical day is full of moments where you ask for a cup of coffee and someone hands you a bag of nails." - Scott Adams
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Rob Manderson wrote:
Did any of us???
:) Of course you did. Now what was the it I was referring too?
Michael Martin Australia "I controlled my laughter and simple said "No,I am very busy,so I can't write any code for you". The moment they heard this all the smiling face turned into a sad looking face and one of them farted. So I had to leave the place as soon as possible." - Mr.Prakash 24/04/2004
"It" could be anything but you would still be nude!!!
regards, Paul Watson Ireland & South Africa
Shog9 wrote:
And with that, Paul closed his browser, sipped his herbal tea, fixed the flower in his hair, and smiled brightly at the multitude of cute, furry animals flocking around the grassy hillside where he sat coding Ruby on his Mac...
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The company I work for is having a terrible time hiring quality software developers. It seems that they just don't exist. We received in total about 20 CVs from various sources. We interviewed 5 of those, only one got to the second interview stage. We are thinking that perhaps the best thing to do is to spend our budget on a couple of graduates fresh out of university and train them up. The previous company I worked for did that, but I wasn't involved with that aspect. Does anyone have any advice for hiring graduates?
Upcoming FREE developer events: * Glasgow: Agile in the Enterprise Vs. ISVs, Mock Objects, SQL Server CLR Integration, Reporting Services, db4o, Dependency Injection with Spring ... * Reading: SQL Bits My website
We are part of a college and we hire plenty of graduates.
Colin Angus Mackay wrote:
Does anyone have any advice for hiring graduates?
The guys who get the highest scores aren't always the best guys. I never used to do much with references but with graduates it is very useful. These kids just spent four years being lectured by someone. Go ask that someone what they think of the kid. And don't ask questions that have answers from a book e.g. In OO, what is an interface. These guys just graduated, they remember all the names but little of the meaning. I also put a lot of weight on the projects they did as opposed to their written exams. Ask to see the project, look at the code and ask them to explain what they did and why they did it that way. Last bit of advice, and this applies to any programmer IMO, is to ask; When did you start using computers? Our best hires have always been guys who started young and have computers at home. Our worst hires are super clever kids who took the computer course having never used computers before but thinking it was a good career move. The good guys will show a passion for computers. They go home and code, they wake up in the mornings and code, they do their own projects and not just what college told them to do. Finally; Don't let them have root privileges. One of our grads did "sudo rm -r" on /.
regards, Paul Watson Ireland & South Africa
Shog9 wrote:
And with that, Paul closed his browser, sipped his herbal tea, fixed the flower in his hair, and smiled brightly at the multitude of cute, furry animals flocking around the grassy hillside where he sat coding Ruby on his Mac...
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Colin Angus Mackay wrote:
Does anyone have any advice for hiring graduates?
The two things I would value in a candidate (especially a graduate) is someone who is good at problem solving and perhaps more importantly willing and enthusiastic to learn. With a graduate they may not have the experience but hopefully with those traits they can be worked into a quality software developer. I.e. a bit like an internship by the company investing some time in them and hopefully they will return the favour later on. But then again I may be biased as I'm beginning on the road to becoming a graduate :rolleyes:
Well said. Although for many small companies this means a big investment of time and effort from the existing staff.. which in turn reduces productivity. If you have the time to take this view it's great. But many small companies don't have that luxury. I'm a one-man-band, and have tried getting help from other contractors but have not yet found anyone who can code to a level I am happy with. The last one managed to write a single function 600 lines long in his part of my system.. urgh! Needless to say my aim would be to find a good graduate (or even near-graduate looking for temp work!) and start moulding their skills :)
'Howard
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The company I work for is having a terrible time hiring quality software developers. It seems that they just don't exist. We received in total about 20 CVs from various sources. We interviewed 5 of those, only one got to the second interview stage. We are thinking that perhaps the best thing to do is to spend our budget on a couple of graduates fresh out of university and train them up. The previous company I worked for did that, but I wasn't involved with that aspect. Does anyone have any advice for hiring graduates?
Upcoming FREE developer events: * Glasgow: Agile in the Enterprise Vs. ISVs, Mock Objects, SQL Server CLR Integration, Reporting Services, db4o, Dependency Injection with Spring ... * Reading: SQL Bits My website
Let me answer the question negatively. The following aspects are what I don't like in young graduates of CS, but almost all of them exhibit it (may be, a result of the dilution of educational standards, perhaps, as engineering education got mobilized to masses--esp. in India). -- Inability to think differently about the same issue. Intransigence (as a virtue) is one thing. But the lack of that ability to think on the fly is quite another. Software is intangible. Even if I have to get the full meaning of an idea across, the other fellow has to be able to leave a repetitive (perhaps rotten) track, and think about the different dimensions of the problem. -- A queer obsession with what is "practical." A lot of university graduates think (and perhaps have been encouraged in the university to think) that what they do at the university / college is not going to be useful in practice. As a result, if I ask them to explain very basic things, they often do not know anything beyond superficial sort of knowledge. The CS graduates might be able to answer very basic things like, for instance, how quick-sort works. But scratch the surface and ask, e.g., something like the following: In quick-sort, you partition the data into two branches. Is this the reason why the complexity is O(N log_2 N)? The rationale being, the first term, N, because you partition N no of times, and the second term (the log_2 term), you have to divide the data by partitioning. It's surprising how many BS in CS will *very confidently* give you a perfectly wrong answer to *that* question--both here in India, and out there, in the US. (And note, I am *not* talking about *detailed* questions like comparing shell-sort with quick-sort. I am just asking a little bit below the surface about quick-sort. Yet, I've seen university-educated people go so easily wrong!) Of course, none is going to write his own quick-sort in the job. But the insights you gain in studying some great algorithms like that *always* come in handy in writing *any* good program. It's a question whether you have allowed your mind to develop in a disciplined way or not. If you are going to be negligent about some very basic things like quick-sort, by relying on an explanation like the standard library has already implemented it, and then start glorifying "practicality" in your answers, well, even if you keep a whole Web site explaining the relativity theory, it is obvious that both your software and your physics is going to be mediocre. -- A tendenc
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The company I work for is having a terrible time hiring quality software developers. It seems that they just don't exist. We received in total about 20 CVs from various sources. We interviewed 5 of those, only one got to the second interview stage. We are thinking that perhaps the best thing to do is to spend our budget on a couple of graduates fresh out of university and train them up. The previous company I worked for did that, but I wasn't involved with that aspect. Does anyone have any advice for hiring graduates?
Upcoming FREE developer events: * Glasgow: Agile in the Enterprise Vs. ISVs, Mock Objects, SQL Server CLR Integration, Reporting Services, db4o, Dependency Injection with Spring ... * Reading: SQL Bits My website
I have to say that this hiring graduates thing is a catch 22 situation. I understand companies want experience for a post to get the best of the best, but at the same time I don't like this narrow way of thinking. These guys are fresh, if no one gives them a chance, how can they become experienced? It frustrates me. They have 4/5/6 year long degree, surely that's enough to get them in the door? Happened to me, took me 3 months before i even got an interview. Most graduates are keen, interview them, give them a semi-difficult time by asking them questions. But don't play with them with this "explain on whiteboard" stuff. ;)
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The company I work for is having a terrible time hiring quality software developers. It seems that they just don't exist. We received in total about 20 CVs from various sources. We interviewed 5 of those, only one got to the second interview stage. We are thinking that perhaps the best thing to do is to spend our budget on a couple of graduates fresh out of university and train them up. The previous company I worked for did that, but I wasn't involved with that aspect. Does anyone have any advice for hiring graduates?
Upcoming FREE developer events: * Glasgow: Agile in the Enterprise Vs. ISVs, Mock Objects, SQL Server CLR Integration, Reporting Services, db4o, Dependency Injection with Spring ... * Reading: SQL Bits My website
The good: you can bend them to your style and way of thinking They are keen Willing to learnHave few preconceptions (not always though) They are cheap They might even has a grasp on OO. The Bad: As soon you train them up (2 years) they leave They very rarely get to use MS Languages in Uni They take up a lot of time in the beginning. Too keen to code rather than think first then code.
Grady Booch: I told Google to their face...what you need is some serious adult supervision. (2007 Turing lecture) http://www.frankkerrigan.com/[^]
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The company I work for is having a terrible time hiring quality software developers. It seems that they just don't exist. We received in total about 20 CVs from various sources. We interviewed 5 of those, only one got to the second interview stage. We are thinking that perhaps the best thing to do is to spend our budget on a couple of graduates fresh out of university and train them up. The previous company I worked for did that, but I wasn't involved with that aspect. Does anyone have any advice for hiring graduates?
Upcoming FREE developer events: * Glasgow: Agile in the Enterprise Vs. ISVs, Mock Objects, SQL Server CLR Integration, Reporting Services, db4o, Dependency Injection with Spring ... * Reading: SQL Bits My website
One of the best things I ever did was to bring in a Post Grad to do research work. The Uni paid half their salary, the guy got to publish about the work he did with us, and we got a head start on some research that we were planning on doing. (Oh - and I got to go to a rather nice dinner at the University). Seriously - give it a look at.
Deja View - the feeling that you've seen this post before.
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standgale wrote:
Plus - if you get graduates they will not be "stuck in their ways" and they will (hopefully) not think they actually know anything, so they will be easier to integrate into you companies ideal work strategies and methodologies. I know you didn't really ask WHETHER you should hire graduates, but I think the "suitability for brainwashing" is so seldom brought up normally that I thought I should
Hmm..I feel exactly the opposite about this. Most graduates seem to think they know it all already and have a hard time learning how coding and design happens in the real world outside an ivory tower where considerations like what the customer actually needs and wants and budgets and time frames etc all come down like a sack of rocks on their heads. Sadly some of them never seem to lose this attitude and you can see it on display here sometimes in the lounge.
"I don't want more choice. I just want better things!" - Edina Monsoon
John Cardinal wrote:
Most graduates seem to think they know it all already and have a hard time learning how coding and design happens in the real world outside an ivory tower where considerations like what the customer actually needs and wants and budgets and time frames etc all come down like a sack of rocks on their heads. Sadly some of them never seem to lose this attitude and you can see it on display here sometimes in the lounge.
I think that's partly what we've been seeing in interviews. And for the fresh graduate themselves I can quite agree that many have an "I know it all" attitude. I know I certainly did. If it wasn't for me starting my own company I might not have snapped out of it. As it was, I had to, rather quickly. These days I am more aware of what I don't know and where my limit are.
Upcoming FREE developer events: * Glasgow: Agile in the Enterprise Vs. ISVs, Mock Objects, SQL Server CLR Integration, Reporting Services, db4o, Dependency Injection with Spring ... * Reading: SQL Bits My website
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The company I work for is having a terrible time hiring quality software developers. It seems that they just don't exist. We received in total about 20 CVs from various sources. We interviewed 5 of those, only one got to the second interview stage. We are thinking that perhaps the best thing to do is to spend our budget on a couple of graduates fresh out of university and train them up. The previous company I worked for did that, but I wasn't involved with that aspect. Does anyone have any advice for hiring graduates?
Upcoming FREE developer events: * Glasgow: Agile in the Enterprise Vs. ISVs, Mock Objects, SQL Server CLR Integration, Reporting Services, db4o, Dependency Injection with Spring ... * Reading: SQL Bits My website
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The company I work for is having a terrible time hiring quality software developers. It seems that they just don't exist. We received in total about 20 CVs from various sources. We interviewed 5 of those, only one got to the second interview stage. We are thinking that perhaps the best thing to do is to spend our budget on a couple of graduates fresh out of university and train them up. The previous company I worked for did that, but I wasn't involved with that aspect. Does anyone have any advice for hiring graduates?
Upcoming FREE developer events: * Glasgow: Agile in the Enterprise Vs. ISVs, Mock Objects, SQL Server CLR Integration, Reporting Services, db4o, Dependency Injection with Spring ... * Reading: SQL Bits My website
We offer internships to students from a local university for a year before their final year - this works very well, as they learn lots of real world stuff, and usually come straight back to us for a proper job. You could consider it a big year long hands-on interview
-- Help me! I'm turning into a grapefruit! Buzzwords!
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Yeah that's all true. I wonder why they don't teach practical things at university in addition to the technical stuff? It would sure make life easier for the employers. I guess that's why doing a co-op is such a good idea as others mentioned, for both the potential employer and the student.
standgale wrote:
Some great people I knew at uni probably WOULD have a problem with customers and timeframes because they just program all the time and creatively and they really DO know a massive amount - and you can't let anything, like eating, or customers, get in the way of programming the thing, whatever the thing is. True hackers. Of course, if you can control them and get them to work on their work, then they will be brilliant and you'll get a lot of random extra contribution besides.
I used to be one of those guys, not necessarily brilliant but very hackerish, running your own company will grind off those rough edges pretty quickly, but in this day and age it's rapidly becoming the only choice for an uber hacker type person. Programming has become corporatized so heavily and programmers have become a near commodity (not the great ones but the adequate ones) that no corporation really want's to tolerate a classic hacker type antisocial sort of programmer any more. They expect meetings and cubicles and reports and all that foofarall that drove me away from working for the "man". All you really need these days to make a good living with that type of personality is several good ideas or one great idea, an excellent business partner who can tolerate you and a computer with high speed internet access.
"I don't want more choice. I just want better things!" - Edina Monsoon
Hi, This topic is really interesting to me (I am a recent graduate - I spent a 6 months as a chalet host in the alps before moving onto a development role). I studied Electronics at uni and now work primarily in c#. When i moved into the role i understood the basic syntax of c, c++ and c# and have done a little bit of programming in each(embedded system and windows programming). Although i try to keep up with best practises for code layout and use it is a tough job learning how to use different IDE's, general concepts of SW engineering, good code use, the .NET API and other APIs etc. I suppose this should be in its own topic but what would the experienced users of this forum say is a good way to develope my career. Become more focused on .NET SW or continue dabling with windows programming, embedded system and hardware development?
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The company I work for is having a terrible time hiring quality software developers. It seems that they just don't exist. We received in total about 20 CVs from various sources. We interviewed 5 of those, only one got to the second interview stage. We are thinking that perhaps the best thing to do is to spend our budget on a couple of graduates fresh out of university and train them up. The previous company I worked for did that, but I wasn't involved with that aspect. Does anyone have any advice for hiring graduates?
Upcoming FREE developer events: * Glasgow: Agile in the Enterprise Vs. ISVs, Mock Objects, SQL Server CLR Integration, Reporting Services, db4o, Dependency Injection with Spring ... * Reading: SQL Bits My website
The company I'm starting with today said they can't find any .Net programmers with the level of experience they require, so they had to lower the bar in terms of what they were looking for, and they STILL couldn't find anyone. I guess it's so bad they had to settle for me (no real .Net framework knowledge, but can write in any language you might care to mention). :) We're in San Antonio, and they advertised the job in Austin and Houston, and evidently, anyone that *did* meet their requirements wanted to relocate/commute, much less come to San Antonio to interview. At my last job, we had a Stanford graduate who was one of the best natural programmers I'd ever seen. He had that kind of programming skill that they don't teach in any school, if you know what I mean. As to your question, the problem would be finding the guy that can adapt to your requirements. I think the best way to approach it is to 0) Call them in for a face-to-face interview. Tell them the interview may last all day (so they have to be there early in the morning - testing promptness here). 1) Ask if they have a laptop, and if they do, tell them to bring a it with all of their preferred development tools on it, and a wireless card if their laptop didn't have a built-in one. 2) Tell them to bring any books they think they'll need. 3) Prepare your network to allow a wireless connection that disallows anything but web access. If the interviewee doesn't have a laptop, provide a desktop machine that contains all of your company's dev tools on it. You may also have to allow access to a database server if the project requires database functionality. 4) Prepare a project with a detailed list of requirements that the interviewee will have to implement. The object of this project isn't to produce anything really useful, or even necessarily to be finished. It's more to see if the interviewee can follow specs and see how he responds to nebulous requirements that don't specify any/many details about how something needs to be done. You can also see if/how he comments his code. I think you get the idea - come up with something that could be finished in about six hours by someone with the desired level of experience, and see what happens. Highly motivated programmers should be able to finish the project before the end of the work day. This is much better than asking prospective employees how to reverse a string in place.
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Yeah that's all true. I wonder why they don't teach practical things at university in addition to the technical stuff? It would sure make life easier for the employers. I guess that's why doing a co-op is such a good idea as others mentioned, for both the potential employer and the student.
standgale wrote:
Some great people I knew at uni probably WOULD have a problem with customers and timeframes because they just program all the time and creatively and they really DO know a massive amount - and you can't let anything, like eating, or customers, get in the way of programming the thing, whatever the thing is. True hackers. Of course, if you can control them and get them to work on their work, then they will be brilliant and you'll get a lot of random extra contribution besides.
I used to be one of those guys, not necessarily brilliant but very hackerish, running your own company will grind off those rough edges pretty quickly, but in this day and age it's rapidly becoming the only choice for an uber hacker type person. Programming has become corporatized so heavily and programmers have become a near commodity (not the great ones but the adequate ones) that no corporation really want's to tolerate a classic hacker type antisocial sort of programmer any more. They expect meetings and cubicles and reports and all that foofarall that drove me away from working for the "man". All you really need these days to make a good living with that type of personality is several good ideas or one great idea, an excellent business partner who can tolerate you and a computer with high speed internet access.
"I don't want more choice. I just want better things!" - Edina Monsoon
You might consider that some of the best technical skills out there are not Graduates. I have seen this often .. really brilliant folk who drop out college. I think rembember one famous 'Non-Graduate' - ahh ... 'Will' something or other - you know the guy. Anyway he dropped out of Harvard to start a software company. He was technically brilliant and eventually became the wealthiest man in the world. Sound like a fairy tale! Don't let the next 'Will' slip through your fingers, because he was not a graduate. ;-)
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bryce wrote:
some of us clever trouser types to be found here on CP have quite some experience in it :)
...and I do it in the nude while drinking beer!
Michael Martin Australia "I controlled my laughter and simple said "No,I am very busy,so I can't write any code for you". The moment they heard this all the smiling face turned into a sad looking face and one of them farted. So I had to leave the place as soon as possible." - Mr.Prakash 24/04/2004
:shudder:
Graham Sally: It's a scientific fact that if you say "naked" three or more times, to any man, he has to cross his legs - Coupling
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The company I work for is having a terrible time hiring quality software developers. It seems that they just don't exist. We received in total about 20 CVs from various sources. We interviewed 5 of those, only one got to the second interview stage. We are thinking that perhaps the best thing to do is to spend our budget on a couple of graduates fresh out of university and train them up. The previous company I worked for did that, but I wasn't involved with that aspect. Does anyone have any advice for hiring graduates?
Upcoming FREE developer events: * Glasgow: Agile in the Enterprise Vs. ISVs, Mock Objects, SQL Server CLR Integration, Reporting Services, db4o, Dependency Injection with Spring ... * Reading: SQL Bits My website
Odds are, as soon as the kid gets trained by your company, he/she will leave for a higher paying gig.
:josh: My WPF Blog[^] Without a strive for perfection I would be terribly bored.
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Odds are, as soon as the kid gets trained by your company, he/she will leave for a higher paying gig.
:josh: My WPF Blog[^] Without a strive for perfection I would be terribly bored.
I've notice that with some of the recent grads we've hired and friends of mine have hired, although they only lasted a year before they left for twice the salary. And speaking of salary has anyone noticed that almost every college grad, at least in the US, comes out expecting to be given te job simply because they have a degree and expect to be paid $50,000 USD+ a year to do it, hell when i graduated almost 2 years ago my first job and the one i'm still at paid me 30k now they've given me some nice bonus's and very nice raises, but i'm only now coming close (might be there in a year or so) to what most of these people think they'll get by having a piece of paper which is rapidly becoming as meaningful as a HS diploma. Also if any of you know of a way to nicely burst their salary expectations bubble i'd love to hear it.
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Hmmm..normally I would think you're taking the right approach. I'd take a seasoned developer with no formal training at all over a recent graduate. In fact I'd rather have a keener with almost no experience over a graduate but that's probably just me. I feel like it would take at least a year to rub all the ivory tower stuff off the graduate so they could be half ways useful. You may run into the problem that a graduate will expect a ridiculous salary right out of the gate and may take the experience they get with you and move on to something higher paying since you obviously can't pay them what you would pay an experienced developer. That's a tough one. I think if you choose to do it then you should go all the way and make it a big deal with your company, liase with the universities, maybe co-op and stuff. Seriously...you can't even headhunt someone with experience from another company? Or let someone work remotely from home? Perhaps you're not offering enough incentive? -- modified at 1:11 Thursday 16th August, 2007
"I don't want more choice. I just want better things!" - Edina Monsoon
I work with and have worked with in the past a lot of graduates and the like and the main problem I see is not the ivory tower thing (although that can be a problem for those students who graduate and go on to work in the University environment) but the enormous void between university and the 'real world' From my point of view as an engineer and developer/programmer (by default since nobody else will do it here!) it seems obvious that a particular idea will translate into a workable solution but is often the case that a graduate just does not see that a solution is not practical. If only universities ran courses in experience!! :)
Apathy Rules - I suppose...
