A study conducted collaboratively by The Conference Board, Corporate Voices for Working Families, the Partnership for 21 st Century Skills, and HR Society for Human Resource Management has shown today’s high school and college graduates are ill-prepared for the 21 st Century Workforce. Industry and Educational Institutions must work together to better prepare our future workforce. The Volusia Manufacturers Association May’s General Meeting will present what the Volusia County Schools are doing to prepare their students for the workforce.

With the lack of jobs these days, it’s often wondered by the newly educated, job seeking graduate, what skills do I need to be successful in the workforce? In 2006, a study was conducted by a team from The Conference Board, Corporate Voices for Working Families, the Partnership for 21 st Century Skills, and the Society for Human Resource Management to find out answers for this burning question. Knowing how employers view these new workforce entrants is an important first step in enabling both these new entrants and U.S. business to succeed on the global economic scene.

The four participating organizations jointly surveyed over 400 employers across the United States. These employers articulated the skill sets that new entrants—recently hired graduates from high school, two-year colleges or technical schools, and four-year colleges—need to succeed in the workplace. Among the most important skills cited by employers were:

• Professionalism/Work Ethic

• Oral and Written Communications

• Teamwork/Collaboration and

• Critical Thinking/Problem Solving

In fact, the findings indicate that applied skills were viewed as more important than basic knowledge and

skills, such as Reading Comprehension andMathematics . So, while the “three Rs” are still critical to any new workforce entrant’s ability to do the job, employers strongly emphasized that applied skills like T eamwork/Collaborationand Critical Thinking are “very important” to success at work as well. The results of the study showed that young people need a range of skills, both academic and applied, in order to be successful in the 21 st century U.S. workforce.

Via EPR Network
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