Training Versus Experience?

Question

It occurs to me that industry in the UK is becoming obsessed with training staff. Although this sounds like a good thing, I think people's valuable experience is being overlooked in favour of what some upstart at head office thinks would be a good thing to have their staff do. They seem to be very fond of training up graduates for management positions when promoting a long standing member of staff would seem more sensible, for how can a graduate with no experience in an industry know more than some person who's worked in it for years? I'm a university student myself, so it's not like I'm just bitter, I just think it's wrong, unfair and just plain old bad for business. What do other people think?

Answer 1

I think there are two sides to this. The promotion often requires skills that a lower level job may not provide and this is where training is very important. Personal experience suggests that a mixture of both is important to achieve. I left university and went into a different field to my degree, I gained experience and then worked full time and studied for a masters and diploma to qualify in the new area and progress up. I therefore had excellent experience and on top of that the additional knowledge to do the job above me, which I have achieved.

Answer 2

Most academic courses teach a wealth or things that will never be used when the student enters a real working life so they are not really intended to be a training course for a real job. What they are, however, is a measure of academic ability and intelligence.

At the start of a new management job the graduate will invariably know less than the most junior staff but management expect that they will learn the job quickly and that their academic ability and intelligence will enable them to go beyong actually doing the job to a point where they can innovate, finding better ways for all the staff to do the job. In short, they will be better managers.

Experience tends to teach people how to do the job to a good standard but as it has always been done.

Answer 3

I agree with you! I do firmly believe in training people and ensuring that they are kept up to date with relevant legislation's etc., which are pertinent to their job, but I do find it very odd that blue chip companies (and SME's for that matter) are requesting applications from graduates only, when the press are constantly reporting the fact that graduates are coming out of university without the ability to "communicate appropriately in a business sense". My own surmise of the situation is that some companies want to take on graduates because they are more "mouldable" to their specificity than people with experience.
What a GREAT question. Well done you!

Answer 4

Its a cheaper way to go. If they promote, then they have to pay more money, as opposed to bringing in someone new to do the job who starts at the bottom of the salary tree.

Answer 5

There is no sustitute to experience, but comapnies do that to save cost, and new graduates have to be paid less.

Answer 6

Yo are so right.