Most employees and executives believe today’s entry-level workers are not well-prepared for their jobs, according to research conducted by General Assembly, a tech talent and training solutions provider.

Less than half (48%) of employees–and only 12% of mid-level executives–believe today’s entry-level employees are well-prepared to do their jobs. General Assembly found in separate surveys of employed adults and vice presidents/directors in the US and UK.

“The entry-level employee pipeline is broken,” said Jourdan Hathaway, chief business officer at General Assembly. “Companies must rethink how they source, train and onboard employees. There are evidence-based approaches to improving workforce readiness. Technology apprenticeships and skill training programs, for example, provide employees with experience that mimics a real work environment, allowing them to build communication and collaboration skills alongside technical skills.”

The study’s findings include:

• Significant group won’t hire today’s entry-level employees: More than a quarter (27%) of VPs and directors would not hire today’s entry-level employees. Neither would 23% of employed adults, including a third of Baby Boomers (33%).
• New hires lack soft skills: Roughly half (49%) of executives and 37% of employees selected a lack of soft skills as the top reason entry-level workers seem unprepared, followed by not having the right attitude (28% of executives, 30% of employees) and not having the right technical skills (13% of executives, 16% of employees).
  • More than two in five Gen Z respondents (40%) agreed that soft skills are the top shortcoming of today’s entry-level workforce.
• Employers don’t provide enough training: One-third of executives (33%) and more than a quarter of employees (26%) said their employers don’t provide adequate training to new employees.
  • People who believe entry-level employees are unprepared for their jobs were more likely to work at companies that didn’t provide enough training for new hires, with 58% of this group saying their employer doesn’t do enough.
  • Nearly one in five (19%) employees said their employers provide little to no training to new hires.
  • More than two in five executives (41%) said their companies do not offer employees a learning stipend or training/education budget–and of those who do, a sizable proportion (43%) report employees use these stipends only sometimes, rarely or never.

The survey also found that most employees (64%) and executives (74%) believe employees themselves should be responsible for their job readiness. However, many said that employers (63% of employees, 66% of executives) and educational institutions (53% of employees, 73% of executives) should also share that responsibility. In the UK, employees were twice as likely to say the government should be responsible, with 24% saying so compared to only 10% of Americans. UK executives were more than 7x more likely to say this than their US counterparts.

“When we see a trend impacting so many people, we have to take a step back and consider that the system needs to change,” said Lupe Colangelo, director of alumni engagement and employer partnerships at General Assembly. “People clearly need more support to enter the workforce and succeed. We can’t expect individual employees to close today’s skills gaps on their own. Businesses, governments and educational institutions must come together to modernize how we approach workforce readiness.”

Additional insights from the research can be found here. General Assembly surveyed 1,180 employed adults in the US and UK from October 9 to 11, 2024 and 393 vice presidents in the US and directors/VPs in the UK from October 10 to 23, 2024.

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