You Have a College Degree, but Can You Pass the Google Test?

In this tight job market, many students (and their parents) are wondering if they are getting the best preparation to insure that they get hired.

With the focus on the need for technical skills in this increasingly technological world, perhaps students are not getting enough exposure to what are often (and I would say unfortunately) called the “softer skills.” I call them the “C” skills: collaboration, cooperation, communication, critical thinking, complex problem solving and conceptual reasoning.

These are skills that companies are saying that they value. Recent surveys of Fortune 500 companies by Hart Research Associates (It Takes More than a Major) and The Chronicle of Higher Education (The Role of Higher Education in Career Development: Employer Perceptions) show that companies value these kinds of skills over mere technical knowledge. The assumption is that you have basic computational and communication skills, but that is not enough.

“Employers are highly focused on innovation as critical to the success of their companies and they report that the challenges their employees face today are more complex and require a broader skills set than in the past,” according to the Hart Research Associates report.

The Google Test

A recent article by Thomas Friedman in The New York Times shows what one company, Google, is looking for in its new hires. There were some surprises.

Traditional benchmarks such as grades and test scores are of little predictive value. At Google, they even question the need for a college degree in all cases. On some work teams at Google, 14 percent of the members did not have a college degree.

The five top factors for getting hired at Google are:

General Cognitive Ability – Do you have the ability to pull together disparate bits of information?

Leadership – Can you be an emergent leader as opposed to a traditional leader?  When faced with a problem, do you, at the appropriate time, step in and lead? And just as critically, do you know when to step back and stop leading to let someone else take the lead?

Humility and Ownership – Do you have a sense of responsibility and a sense of ownership to step in and try to solve a problem? Do you have the humility to step back and embrace the better ideas of others?

Getting the Right Stuff

So, are students learning these skills in college?

If they understand the importance of these skills, students certainly can get them. But they have to push for seminars, workshops and other small classes where they will practice leadership, humility and ownership.

Sitting in the back of a large lecture course and taking one exam and writing one paper is not going to do it. Students need to take a broad curriculum, not overly specialized or narrow. By being exposed to a variety of subjects and disciplines, students learn to make connections across fields and find similarities and meanings.

Students also need to seek opportunities to work in teams, presenting, cooperating, collaborating and disagreeing with their peers. They need to find internships and summer jobs where they will get practical experience.

The key is that students need to be purposeful in the courses they choose and the faculty with whom they work. Today’s students must take responsibility for their own learning.

Not everyone will work for Google or other top companies, but – large or small or new or old – companies are all looking for “C” skills. They may be called “soft,” but they are hard to learn, durable and robust. And they will make all the difference.