I’m done with my time working full-time inside businesses. I much prefer working as a freelance writer. But I was struck by something that I overheard the other day. Two business people were talking about how they had no interest in interviewing or hiring fresh new college graduates with liberal arts degrees, especially those with English degrees. They wanted people with good, solid business degrees.
I sighed and continued to focus on my meal, but then I heard the next part of their discussion. They bemoaned the quality of their current staff and their poor writing and communication skills. Projects were not completed on time, customer relations were poor, and management covered the same problems over and over again because of poor communications throughout their organization. Why could they possibly do about that?
I put my book away, paid my tab, and left before the urge to lecture them (or beat them about the head and shoulders with my hard back book) became overwhelming.
Give me college graduates who can write well and I can teach them virtually anything else that they’ll need in a business setting. I’m not talking about engineering or programming or jobs with specific technical skills. I’m talking about conducting business. Clear written communication is the key to so much in business, and yet the very people who might well have those skills are specifically selected OUT of the hiring process.
Why? It’s a form of discrimination. It’s the old boys’ network in its last gasp. English degree? What good is that in BUSINESS?
Useless indeed. Give me a well educated English major or liberal arts graduate any day over someone who can’t write, regardless of their degree.
What Businesses Value Versus What They Really Need by Randy Murray, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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