In my discussions, I was constantly impressed by the need to distinguish between what one might call the lower level (junior) and higher level (senior) positions. Higher level positions are those that require supervising a set of subordinates. These positions call for decision making, leadership, innovativeness, an overall view of things, and higher order thinking and learning skills. The lower level positions are those of subordinates at the bottom of the ladder. They do not have any subordinates themselves. They are generally required to do what they are told to do.

By and large, the higher level positions require abilities of a global, less specialised kind. For instance, a secretary in a company may need the skills of writing business letters, but the writing skills that a CEO needs are more global and flexible, not those specific to business writing. Knowledge of a specific discipline is important for junior positions, but increasingly less so for senior positions. A junior engineer begins to climb up the ladder when (s)he learns to go beyond the boundaries of engineering per se. The sense that I got from the discussions that I have had is that either the employer takes care of the in-house training needed for specific tasks that a job calls for, or the employee picks up the necessary skills through experience. What an employer expects from a university graduate are global skills, adaptability to new situations, and the ability to learn new things.

Even though the initial appointment of a fresh graduate may be at the lower level, employers are looking for people who can rise to the higher level positions. Therefore it would be useful for us to ask what steps we can take to produce graduates who can meet the requirements of the demands of the higher level positions. ¹

Footnotes

1. Looking back, I find that most of the qualities that the people I interviewed gave greater emphasis to higher level positions.