From cap and gown to corporate frown: New grads struggle to impress

The poor workplace skills of recent college graduates have made companies think twice about hiring them, new research shows.

The young adult research platform Intelligent.com reported Friday that 1 in 6 companies were hesitant to add freshly minted degree holders to their payrolls.

The most common challenges the business leaders reported were lack of motivation or initiative (50%), unprofessional behavior (46%) and poor communication skills (39%).

Intelligent.com said the findings show the need for companies to beef up their new employee training programs so recent graduates can better adapt to workplace culture and expectations.

“It can be easy for managers to buy into stereotypes of Gen Z and dismiss them entirely,” said Huy Nguyen, Intelligent’s chief education and career development adviser. “However, companies have an equal responsibility to prepare recent graduates for their particular workplace.”

The survey found that 94% of companies hired recent graduates in 2024, roughly three-quarters experienced issues with them and 60% ended up firing some of them.  

Hiring bosses responding to the survey said graduates who showed initiative, a positive attitude and a strong work ethic were more likely to get hired and succeed in their roles.

Among those surveyed, 84% said they plan to hire new graduates in 2025; 10% were undecided and 5% said they would not hire any.

The survey comes as retirements by older workers have added to labor shortages in education, health care and other skilled professions.

Intelligent.com commissioned Pollfish to survey 966 managers of U.S. businesses with at least 10 employees through mobile apps in August. The margin of error for the nonrandomized sampling of screened participants was the equivalent of plus or minus 3 percentage points at the 95% confidence level.