Do graduates lack the skills to be work-ready?

As we wave goodbye to another summer, a fresh cohort of graduates are navigating a challenging job market. The employers looking to take them on are facing a challenge of their own – a debilitating skills gap – and graduates offer one way to help plug it. 

But those employers may face a problem: new graduates may not have the skills they need either. Previous CMI research showed nearly 80% of employers said graduates don’t arrive fully work-ready.

So, we asked the CMI community on LinkedIn: what's the most commonly missing skill among today’s graduates?

Source: CMI LinkedIn survey, 912 respondents 

Over half (58%) of respondents listed resilience as the most commonly lacking skill, followed by communication (36%). Perhaps unsurprisingly, only 3% said the biggest problem was that graduates lack digital skills.

A lack of resilience is a common criticism of the younger generation. In the most recent edition of the Institute of Student Employers’ Student Development Survey, 46% of employers voiced concerns about graduate resilience – compared with just 37% of employers the previous year. 

But this is a nuanced point. In the comments on LinkedIn, Jon Over raised the question of how anyone claiming graduates lack resilience is able to measure that, suggesting that people are perhaps comparing today’s graduates with a rose-tinted version of their own first steps on the ladder. 

• Read more: Are you a recent graduate? Try these four things to get yourself workplace ready

“You can measure communication to a certain extent by observing how graduates conduct a meeting or present a dissertation,” he wrote. “But how do you measure resilience? Or are we just measuring them against our own standards, ‘back in my day,’ ‘when I was a graduate’.”

Who should fix this?

Other commenters acknowledged the skills gaps but differed over where the responsibility for plugging them lies. 

Some felt that it’s down to colleges and universities.

“How can higher education institutions bridge the gap between academic learning and real-world leadership readiness?” asked Sulaiman Sulaiman, who wrote that “adapting with resilience” was one of the most overlooked skills, alongside “the ability to think critically” and to “lead with presence”.

For Tamra Booth, qualifications are just an “added bonus”. She said the task lay with employers, who should be giving more opportunities to people at a younger age.