RESPONSIBLE ENTREPRENEURSHIP VISION DEVELOPMENT AND ETHICS

New perspectives in developing the relationship between the university and the business… 405
2) The employers’ experience about young employees is strongly contextual, and as a consequence
it is difficult to draw conclusions based on divergent opinions on youngsters’
behavioural changes.
3) The employers’ opinions show that their opinions were formed based on concrete cases
and situations, which they extrapolated on the larger group of youngsters. It is interesting to
point out that when employers were dissatisfied, they signalled different aspects and characteristics
of their discontent.
4) To summarize, we can add that when problems are identified about youngsters’ transitioning
from student to employee status, there is no determining cause, but a multitude of
causes, of great variety, which call about a series of effects.
In what regards the sources that generate difficulties in youngsters’ integration into the
workplace, the interviewees’ opinions were extremely different and varied. In three cases only
the opinions pointed to “students’ poor training” or the family’s influence on the behaviour
of the future employee in the workplace. The other opinions pointed to varying aspects, such
as: “badly chosen field of activity”, “the individual’s discipline and personal ambitions”,
“employers’ high standards”, “students’ burnout, with implications in time shortage for
extracurricular activities”.
The third question in the interview guide referred to employers’ preoccupations for creating
a good environment for youngsters’ development in the workplace, the opinions converged
towards coaching, training and specialized professional training, an idea expressed
by 7 out of 10 interviewees. In this sense, one of the relevant opinions highlights the importance
of youngsters’ professional training upon graduation:
“…development and implementation of instruments for personal development through
coaching (young employees lack soft skills at work), medium and long-term continuous training
for hard skills” (financial director, multinational company).
Other viewpoints touched tangentially on “the organisation of open days in companies”,
“information campaigns in universities”.
To conclude, we can highlight that most employers see training and coaching as the best
methods to train employees in order to assimilate them easily into the organisation. These
convergent opinions indicate a certain validation of the importance of these training instruments
by the interviewees.
As regards the percentage of young graduates aged 25 and under, the interview groups
were divided in three categories: no higher education graduates employed in the company –
2 companies, 25%-35% young graduates aged 25 and under – 4 companies, 80%-100%
employees aged 25 and under – 4 companies.
Analysing the data, we cannot conclude upon a major tendency within the companies,
and, consequently, cannot conclude that most companies hire or discriminate against young
graduates. Yet is important to remark that certain profiles of employing companies encourage
young employees – thus, IT and Advertising companies have the highest percentage of
young graduates.
With reference to the question on the knowledge accumulated by employees during their
studies, we can remark that the interviewees’ opinions differ depending on the profile of the
company and the filed they majored in.