In my last blog, I have discussed about how you can save some money and re-training costs by hiring a fresh graduate instead of an experienced professional. In this blog, I will provide you with few other reasons why you should prefer fresh graduates over an experienced person.
Flexibility: In my experience, I have found less experienced people more flexible as compared to very experienced professional. For example: I had this one intern, let’s call him Mr. X, who was very self-motivated to learn. Thus, Mr. X will come early every morning, and read all the required process documents and training documents before he started his work. He would still work his core hours with some of my other experienced team members, but he was always willing to put in some extra time to learn new things. His hunger for learning new things helped me a lot, as he would come on weekends sometime and finish some of the important tasks of my projects.
Happier workforce: I am not saying that fresh graduates are always happier at work. I am saying that……….. Since they don’t have any past experience to compare their existing job with, they wouldn’t complain as much as few experienced professionals would, who might have worked in different companies and have seen different company cultures and practices. For a fresh graduate, your culture and practices will become his primary bench mark, since he will grow with your company, and learn all the practices and procedures established by your company. Also, smaller incentives like free bagels, donuts or lunch will go a long way for him as compared to other people, who might have seen different (better) days.
More growth opportunities: Obviously, you can have various growth opportunities for your experienced professionals depending on your company’s policies. But trust me, you will have way more opportunities for your employee’s growth, if you hire a fresh graduate. For example: I work in a Software Industry. In my company, we have various job ranks for our engineers. Ranks go from 1 to 6 depending on their experience and capability. Let’s say, if I hire an experienced professional on “Engineer Level 5”. Unfortunately, after his promotion to the next level, “Engineer Level 6”, I might not have clear defined path for his growth. And that employee will feel stagnant in my company, and might try to leave for another job. Imagine, if I hire an “Engineer Level 1”, a fresh graduate, for the same position . I will have more opportunity to grow him within the company in a given hierarchical structure of the company. Thus, I would recommend you to hire a fresh graduate, if you already have few experienced people in your team to provide a direction.
I hope these tips will help understand the importance of hiring a fresh graduate in comparison of an experienced professional. Let me know, if you have any other reasons why you would prefer hiring a fresh graduate instead of an experienced professional. Please feel free to share your opinion here. Thanks. – Bhavin Gandhi
Bhavin Gandhi's Blog 
Verna
September 11, 2013 at 6:18 AM
IDK…the article is divisive and bent toward one group over another–the very young and impressionable. If we took a glance and understood that “brain drain” of countries–developedand developing comes from the very people that re-engineers write this “stuff”. You do not get a pass just because you are foreigner. Who turns over their entire IT World to others whose only claim is they are not from here? It’s like saying, why don’t we get rid of the parents and keep the children? They can grow up without the benefit of training and values. There is room for us all and I question authors that seperate vs. collaborate and add their values and cultural norms from other countries to apply to American corporations. What would it look like if the Silicon Valley and corporate America looked like all “offshore” people? Wait, it does already. So what happens to diversity? It goes to those re-writing our rules and values from a place that does not value the full spectrum of diversity. #DangerWillRobinson(swinging my arms)…
Bhavin Gandhi
September 18, 2013 at 12:39 PM
@Verna: First of all, I would like to thank you for providing me your detailed feedback. Unfortunately, I have to disagree with your argument here, since it is not clearly focused on the subject of the blog.
My blog is in no way discounting the need of the experienced people in the work force. If that’s all you got from it, then maybe you haven’t understood my reasoning on every point, which I have explained above.
All of my arguments are based on specific reasons, which I have explained above. And I do stand by those examples, since I have seen them in real life.
Though I do agree that experienced employees have a real need in growing your organization and providing the direction, I have to stick by my point for this particular blog, since I am basing my arguments on three specific foundation stones……flexibility, employee’s happiness, and more growth opportunities.
I hope, this answers your question. Right? As always, I welcome different perspective on my blogs, so do provide your feedback on other blogs, I would love to read them. Thanks – Bhavin Gandhi