Make Sure Your First Job Provides Plenty of Training (and Fun)

When I was a senior in college, I received many form emails from Epic.

It was apparent that they had scanned the resume I had posted on Monstertrak, matched up some keywords, and adding me to their mailing list. It really turned me off.

I think the obvious counter to this is: why on earth would we spent so much money and time training you if you're going to leave you first job within 2 years? I see this from "our" perspective but what about the company and their bottom line?

A.J, that's interesting, I think a lot of companies went that route when they were having trouble hiring a few years ago, but I can't really vouch for whether or not they still do. In general, companies all need to learn proper online recruiting etiquette, and most seem to be coming around.

Devin, Good question. The only option companies really have if they want to keep employees around these days is to spend the money on what employees are looking for. There's no unspoken rule that you cant stay at a company for more than 2 years, it just happens to be that companies aren't engaging workers for more than 2 years. Every employee that a company keeps saves them about $10,000 in recruiting costs, so even if you keep half your people more than 2 years you are probably saving money in the long run by spending money on training.

I also know that Epic (and many other companies) offers a paid sabbatical if you stick around for 5 years. So obviously they are at least thinking about retention.

-Ryan

I work with many companies that inspire fun and long term training for new employees.
Working with new hires to illustrate and train transition skills from the school to work. I agree college does a poor job of preparing students for the work world. Many HR reps. tell these school what they are looking for and colleges keep to information and do nothing with it.
Training should be fun and easy -

The point is that an undergraduate degree today is worth about as much as a high school degree was 30 years ago.

So what's changed, I wonder? College never was–and never was intended to be, I expect–a set of career training wheels. How did previous generations do it while GenY continues to struggle? And what does that say about GenY? As Devin correctly suggests, you might want to look at this from the employer's viewpoint.

I agree with Devin & Sean. I don't see how, when hiring young GenY's like us, they're able to pull it off. They're offering a lot of training for someone who probably isn't going to stick around long. I think it's good to offer training, but a better approach might be to make the classes electives.
Employees who like the workplace and the company they work for could have the opportunity to take the training, but those who aren't going to stick around would just pass on through.

To turn this on it's head, though… I think some GenY's should band together… to form a college. Call me crazy, but that's what entrepreneurs did in the 30's and 40's. They didn't like the stogy old school system, so colleges sprang up everywhere. That's how Historically Black colleges got founded.

As a graphic designer, the very best classes I had were from a professor (David Kasparek) who gave us real world situations and pressures, and taught classwork through them,

They can afford to train you for that long because they turn around and bill their customers hundreds of dollars per hour for your services. (The training is specific to Epic software so these aren't going to be transferable skills you are learning.) Even if you do leave after two years I'm sure they've easily recouped their investment. Plus, because you still feel like you're in the college bubble, you'll easily be convinced to work 60 or 80 hours a week at an entry level salary. The major drawback to this approach is the rather cult-like culture, due to the incestuous nature of a company where 98% their employees have only ever worked for them.

Sure it's great at first, but it quickly becomes apparent how small of a cog you are in their high-turnover machine.

I have worked at Epic for over 5 years now. I'm constantly amused by the cult references and the assumption that Epic over-works us and under-appreciates us. The fact of the matter is that Epic does an excellent job of hiring VERY self-motivated, hard-working people who tend to over-work themselves in an effort to grow and prove their abilities. We make continuous efforts to recognize the hard work of co-workers and I personally have never felt under-appreciated. I have over-worked myself at times and have definitely put in some long weeks, but the work has always been challenging, completely rewarding, and I take great pride in what I do here.

Some of the things we take the most pride in here at Epic are our customer support, application knowledge, and willingness to go above and beyond for our customers. The foundation for these things is built during the training process and perfected once we're out there actively supporting our customers. Not to mention that there are excellent ongoing training opportunities offered every single day (most of which are "electives"). We consistantly get the highest marks in the industry for a variety of our products and almost always for our customer support. We have a super-small sales team and rely mostly on word of mouth. The rankings we get, in turn, refer customers to us and bubble us to the top of many short-lists. Therefore, the return on investment for training isn't necessarily on the hourly rate we charge our customers (which is on par with the industry standard), but also on the contracts that come our way based purely on hiring smart people and investing the time an energy to set them up for success.

I'll wrap this up by saying that I've had a number of friends who have left Epic and now work at public corporations. They sincerely miss Epic's culture, high standards, the ability to enact change, and especially the high caliber of people they worked with here.

I support Epic's training processes 100% and believe the ROI is MUCH higher than you can possibly quantify.

PLEASE NOTE:
This message was NOT written on Epic's behalf and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the company as a whole. This is the opinion of one employee based on over 5 years of experience working at Epic.

P.S. Just an FYI, It's either "Epic" (preferred) or "Epic Systems Corporation", not Epic Systems.

Why shift the responsibility for corporate training to the corporate environment. Every student and taxpayer pays a significant amount of money to provide every university student an education that is suppose to prepare them for the industry they have spent 4 years preparing to be in. Every university has requirements that every student must meet to graduate, preparation for the corporate world should be included if it is that important. However, Epic is a horrible example of the direction that preparation for corporate america should go. The reality is that "Epic's" turnover rate is significantly higher that it should be. WHY…They take advantage of students, underpay there employee's and have found success in the process. If it is such a grand place, then why dont people stay. No matter how you add it up, 2 + 2 always equals 4 and corporate diversion talking points do not change bad working environments.

Voluntary turnover for salaried employees nationwide is around 14%. At Epic, it's 10%.

Just thought I'd throw that out there.

As I mentioned, I've worked at Epic for over 5 years and have a very big disagreement with your statement that Epic has "bad working environments." If you define bad working environment as a window office situated on a beautiful campus with free juice, popcorn, milk, etc., an amazing, cheap cafeteria, and the ability to make a difference with a group of very intelligent co-workers, then I guess maybe I agree with you. I'm not sure if you work there or not, but if you don't you have absolutely no basis for the statement. If you do work there, why are you putting up with it? You can quit, or at Epic, you can actually move to make a change. Come up with an action plan and make it happen, that's the beauty of Epic…you can actually do that.

As for the shift of corporate responsibility…Epic is not driving the trend, it's simply an indicator of how bad universities are actually doing at preparing people for the real world. On top of that, I'd challenge you to find a university that trains its students in health care IT, Cache, and Epic culture…oh, wait a minute, why would a university ever do that? It is the responsibility of the corporation to provide its employees with the tools they need to succeed at that particular corporation and no university will EVER tailor their curriculum to match those of any one corporation. I greatly respect what Epic has done to educate me and I find it invaluable. Not to mention that the market indicators indicate that it is extremely successful.

Finally, the turnover rate in the IT industry as a whole is very high. I can't quote any exact numbers, but I'm pretty sure we're under the industry average. In addition, since we do hire most of our employees right out of college, of course many are going to move on in 3 – 5 years. How many college graduates stay in their first jobs much longer than that in any industry these days?

PLEASE NOTE:
This message was NOT written on Epic's behalf and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the company as a whole. This is the opinion of one employee based on over 5 years of experience working at Epic.