This year’s grads aren’t chasing startups
The fantasy of graduating from college and immediately going to work with the next Mark Zuckerberg is dying.
For the first time in years, fewer college graduates are enamored by the idea of working for startup companies. This year’s college graduates say they want the security and stability that comes from employment at large established companies, according to a survey by Accenture.
The number seeking jobs at large companies is up 37 percent over last year’s graduating class, according to researchers for the business management consulting firm, who describe this year’s graduates as more like their parents’ generation than the millennials that preceded them in college.
Millennials are known as an entrepreneurial group — a generation skeptical of big business and drawn, instead, to small startups where they can get in on the ground floor, innovate, make their mark and maybe get rich off of stock options if the business hits it big. But working for startups is tough. Only a few grow into a Facebook or Google. Most don’t survive. And this year’s graduates — who fit into the next generation, Gen Z — are in no mood for risks.
“They’ve seen the classes before them and their predecessors feeling underemployed,” said Teri Hill, managing director for Accenture. “This group fears that the most.”
To compile its report, Accenture surveyed 1,000 U.S. students between the ages of 18 and 24 who are graduating from college in 2017, and 1,000 students who graduated in 2015 or 2016.
Accenture found that 54 percent of the people who graduated a year ago consider themselves underemployed, or working in positions that don’t fully utilize their skills. Fortynine percent accepted a lower salary or benefits than they anticipated, and 44 percent found it difficult to get a job.
Rather than being drawn to an entrepreneurial experience, this year’s graduates stress the significance of getting a good salary and training on the job, according to the report. Eighty-four percent expect their first employer to provide formal training.
That is exactly the opposite of what small startups typically offer.
“They hire real smart people, but it’s millennials leading millennials,” said Christine DiDonato, founder of Career Revolution, a workplace leadership training consultant. “It means working many hours, having no development and a lot of growing pains.”
Still, new graduates may be surprised if they think they will be nurtured and trained at large companies. After the financial crisis, companies slashed their training budgets. Most training money goes toward top executives with the assumption that the benefit will trickle down to the workers.
And with plenty of college applicants, companies select individuals who have all the skills needed rather than people who need training, said Kenneth Tsang, an analyst for the National Association of Colleges and Employers, a group that includes professionals in college career services, university relations and recruiting.
Large companies use internships to train and weed through possible full-time job candidates, but even those internships have been reduced recently, Tsang said.
Last year only 46.2 percent of graduates received job offers as they were finishing college, and the results diverged greatly based on the students’ degree, the group found. Only 27.8 percent of communications majors received job offers, compared with 61.5 percent of those in computer science. Pay was also dramatically different. While the average was $47,000, graduates in computer science were offered $64,000, while those who got jobs in communications made $35,000.
In the Accenture survey, 69 percent of 2017 graduates expect to make more than $35,000. Among people surveyed from the 2015-2016 graduating class, only 49 percent were making $35,000.