New graduates find the corporate ladder harder to climb
Today's graduates, such as the 2,000 students leaving the Warsaw School of Economics (SGH) this year, will find themselves pushed into lower-paying, entry-level positions, human resources executives said. (See the List, page 14.)
"It's no longer enough to be a student of SGH, speak fluent English and have a two-month intern experience in a big international company," said Jacek Kasprzak, country manager at human resources company Antal International, which last year placed almost 400 people in mid- to high-level management positions.
Students can also forget about climbing the corporate ladder at lightening speed - a common occurrence in the last five years. "No longer (can) a 24-year-old move to a middle managerial position in a major international concern within three years," Kasprzak said.
In the early 1990s, international companies preferred to hire young and inexperienced, but ambitious, graduates than to bring on established managers who had gained much of their experience in the centrally planned economy and often could not speak English.
But today, companies have a larger pool of qualified, multilingual candidates already in the work force to choose from, recruiters said. That is why graduates from schools such as SGH are having to abandon their dreams of taking over the corner office as managing director before they turn 30. They also need to bring down their salary expectations, Kasprzak said.
"There are still plenty of brand-new graduates who come to us with zl. 5,000 gross and a company car as the bottom-line expectations for their first real job," he said.
The reality, however, is that an entry-level job in marketing or banking tends to pay about zl. 2,000-zl. 3,000 a month - probably enough to buy a bicycle. A 1997 survey conducted by international students' association AIESEC showed that the expectations of SGH students are some of the highest in the country. An average SGH student estimated the gross salary paid at his or her first job to be zl. 2,865 a month, while a graduate of the Economy Academy in Krakow expected to earn zl. 1,343 a month.
The students vary greatly on how much they think it costs to maintain a comfortable living standard. Students at the Krakow Academy said last year that a "comfortable" salary was zl. 2,834. But SGH's students said it was at least zl. 6,634.
According to the Central Statistical Office (GUS), Warsaw's average gross salary amounted to zl. 1,616 in the first quarter this year, while Krakow's amounted to zl. 1,172. Warsaw, however, has the lowest unemployment in the nation at 2.2% - the average is 10.2%. That is one reason salaries here often are as much as one third higher than that of other large cities, recruiters said.
While those dynamics make the job market strong, they do not make it dynamic enough to meet the students high salary wishes. The good news, however, is that students should have little problem finding jobs, said Piotr Wielgomas, chairman of the managing board of Bigram Personnel Consulting.
Graduates will benefit from their hard-earned knowledge of finance and marketing, and also because they have learned the art of marketing themselves in the interview. They also have drive, he said.
"Today's 30-somethings already feel the breath of those job-hungry, young and energetic students who fluently speak at least two foreign languages and exactly know what they want from life," Wielgomas said.
In many ways, he said, today's 30-something managers are being paid back for the pressure they put on the older generation in the early 1990s.
"Just like eight years ago when today's 40-45 year olds were getting frustrated when the younger generation was taking over management positions," he said. "Those who came in then have to constantly upgrade their professional experience if they want to stay in."
Today's middle and top-level executives often climbed the career ladder very quickly, sometimes able to skip over a few rungs on the way. But fresh graduates are finding the climb slower and more difficult, Wielgomas said.
"If in three to four years you became the financial director of a company, you wanted to become managing director in the next three or four," Wielgomas said. "And that simply does not happen any more."
One reason for the shift is that the companies themselves are not moving and growing as fast as they were two or three years ago. At the beginning of the country's transition to a market economy, recruiters said, any product was a novelty and Poland's market of almost 40 million people quickly sucked up the new offering. But almost 10 years have passed since then, and opportunity is not as abundant as before.
"Five years ago (a company) entering the market with any product was deemed to succeed," Kasprzak said. "If a company increased its sales by 30% over a year it wasn't a success but a failure."
Another development is that companies have slightly turned away from the idea of just bringing in young blood and instead are focusing on training their existing staff, said Wojciech Borsucki, managing director at Hill International.
"In this respect the human resources market is becoming more and more similar to Western European ones," he said.
"It's no longer enough to be a student of SGH, speak fluent English and have a two-month intern experience in a big international company," said Jacek Kasprzak, country manager at human resources company Antal International, which last year placed almost 400 people in mid- to high-level management positions.
Students can also forget about climbing the corporate ladder at lightening speed - a common occurrence in the last five years. "No longer (can) a 24-year-old move to a middle managerial position in a major international concern within three years," Kasprzak said.
In the early 1990s, international companies preferred to hire young and inexperienced, but ambitious, graduates than to bring on established managers who had gained much of their experience in the centrally planned economy and often could not speak English.
But today, companies have a larger pool of qualified, multilingual candidates already in the work force to choose from, recruiters said. That is why graduates from schools such as SGH are having to abandon their dreams of taking over the corner office as managing director before they turn 30. They also need to bring down their salary expectations, Kasprzak said.
"There are still plenty of brand-new graduates who come to us with zl. 5,000 gross and a company car as the bottom-line expectations for their first real job," he said.
The reality, however, is that an entry-level job in marketing or banking tends to pay about zl. 2,000-zl. 3,000 a month - probably enough to buy a bicycle. A 1997 survey conducted by international students' association AIESEC showed that the expectations of SGH students are some of the highest in the country. An average SGH student estimated the gross salary paid at his or her first job to be zl. 2,865 a month, while a graduate of the Economy Academy in Krakow expected to earn zl. 1,343 a month.
The students vary greatly on how much they think it costs to maintain a comfortable living standard. Students at the Krakow Academy said last year that a "comfortable" salary was zl. 2,834. But SGH's students said it was at least zl. 6,634.
According to the Central Statistical Office (GUS), Warsaw's average gross salary amounted to zl. 1,616 in the first quarter this year, while Krakow's amounted to zl. 1,172. Warsaw, however, has the lowest unemployment in the nation at 2.2% - the average is 10.2%. That is one reason salaries here often are as much as one third higher than that of other large cities, recruiters said.
While those dynamics make the job market strong, they do not make it dynamic enough to meet the students high salary wishes. The good news, however, is that students should have little problem finding jobs, said Piotr Wielgomas, chairman of the managing board of Bigram Personnel Consulting.
Graduates will benefit from their hard-earned knowledge of finance and marketing, and also because they have learned the art of marketing themselves in the interview. They also have drive, he said.
"Today's 30-somethings already feel the breath of those job-hungry, young and energetic students who fluently speak at least two foreign languages and exactly know what they want from life," Wielgomas said.
In many ways, he said, today's 30-something managers are being paid back for the pressure they put on the older generation in the early 1990s.
"Just like eight years ago when today's 40-45 year olds were getting frustrated when the younger generation was taking over management positions," he said. "Those who came in then have to constantly upgrade their professional experience if they want to stay in."
Today's middle and top-level executives often climbed the career ladder very quickly, sometimes able to skip over a few rungs on the way. But fresh graduates are finding the climb slower and more difficult, Wielgomas said.
"If in three to four years you became the financial director of a company, you wanted to become managing director in the next three or four," Wielgomas said. "And that simply does not happen any more."
One reason for the shift is that the companies themselves are not moving and growing as fast as they were two or three years ago. At the beginning of the country's transition to a market economy, recruiters said, any product was a novelty and Poland's market of almost 40 million people quickly sucked up the new offering. But almost 10 years have passed since then, and opportunity is not as abundant as before.
"Five years ago (a company) entering the market with any product was deemed to succeed," Kasprzak said. "If a company increased its sales by 30% over a year it wasn't a success but a failure."
Another development is that companies have slightly turned away from the idea of just bringing in young blood and instead are focusing on training their existing staff, said Wojciech Borsucki, managing director at Hill International.
"In this respect the human resources market is becoming more and more similar to Western European ones," he said.
