The study “The professional future of students, the commercial profession and the impact of technology” by HubSpot offers a cross-perspective between young talents and managers regarding their feelings about the company, training, sales functions and their professional future.
The study seeks to understand their feelings, while questioning those who currently occupy the positions of sales managers that these students aim to occupy in several years; she recalls that the perception of the working world differs between the students who will soon be entering the company, and the managers currently in post. While the start of a professional career after several years of study was optimistic a few years ago, 2021 students have negative feelings (71%) about entering the world of work. Conversely, 50% of managers invited to rethink their state of mind at the end of their studies say they felt anxiety before entering the corporate world.
Students feeling misunderstood about the difficulties encountered in entering the job market
Currently, students primarily describe themselves as worried (30%), fearful (27%) and lost (26%). These feelings were less present in today’s managers at the start of their careers. Thus, they remember being worried at 27%, fearful at 20%, and lost at 15%. To a lesser extent, 16% of students say they are skeptical (compared to 8% of managers at the time) and 8% jaded (compared to 6% of managers) as they approach their entry into the labor market. Conversely, the start of professional life more often evoked positive feelings in managers (71% who cite at least one), than to students (47% cite at least one).
While most students do not yet feel ready to start their professional life, 73% consider that their training prepares them well for entering the job market (18% say they are very well prepared, 55% fairly well prepared and 27% poorly prepared). However, managers appear to be less convinced by the effectiveness of current training courses to professionalize students: 49% believe that they prepare them poorly, including 17% very poorly. All the same, 51% think that student training prepares them well, and only 10% very well. While many students feel that their parents (69%) and supervisors (67%) are aware that it is difficult for them to integrate a company today, they are less likely to perceive this awareness from their school or university (61%).
The health crisis has a profound impact on study conditions and work
Managers are rather satisfied with the way their company reacted to the crisis. Indeed, 70% consider that they have been personally well supported by their company since the start of the pandemic, and 65% that the same applies to their young employees. Students are also very attentive to the benevolence of companies towards them, and find it difficult for them to integrate a company today. They have the feeling that companies do not really understand the challenge that this represents in their lives and that integration support is not satisfactory. However, the integration of young employees is at the heart of the concerns of the majority of managers (75%), although they sometimes feel limited in their actions.
The crisis has also influenced the way in which young people and managers perceive their working conditions and the future. With regard to students, 81% note at least one impact of the crisis on their studies or their choice of career. Half of them (47%) encountered academic difficulties, with overall difficulties in following lessons (40%), some going so far as to have to repeat a year (11%). As for managers who occupy a commercial function, 89% have noted an impact of the health crisis on their daily work. For half of them (48%), this translates into an increase in investment in work: 26% note difficulties in disconnecting from their work, and 23% note that they work more. These changes in the role of manager, but also in the workload, have direct consequences on the work balance of supervisors.
The commercial profession: a profession of the future, loved by those who do it, but which hardly attracts young talents
Sales positions attract more than a third (37%) of students. This limited figure can be explained by the name itself of “commercial” which may seem obsolete and reductive today: a number of varied and attractive professions integrate commercial functions without however insisting exclusively on this dimension. A gap appears when managers, exercising sales functions, are asked to describe the attractiveness of their profession among young people. They are thus 66% to think that these are professions which seduce the students, wrongly.
However, becoming a salesperson could prove to be a wise and fulfilling choice for today’s young talent. Indeed, 74% of managers in a sales position say they like their job or have learned to love it. More specifically, 66% say they love their job, among which 28% feel the same passion as when they started. In addition, 7% now love their job whereas this was not the case at the beginning and 1% have retrained to become salespeople and are now satisfied with it.
New technologies: capable of meeting the need for supervision and social links among young talents?
Managers and students appear divided on the impact of technology on their working conditions: 46% of students and 54% of managers believe that it allows them to manage their time more flexibly, while 54% of students and 46% of managers rather feel that it obliges them to make themselves available permanently. Likewise, if 51% of students and 49% of managers say that technology allows them to save time, the other half of those questioned (49% and 51% respectively) rather attribute to it an acceleration in the pace of work. . The integration of new technologies therefore remains a major challenge.
While they are severe in certain respects, managers and students alike also widely perceive the advantages of digital technology at work. Thus, 64% of students believe that technology makes it possible to facilitate the training of young recruits, a point on which managers are even more convinced (73%). Finally, 68% of managers consider that technology is now sufficiently present in business and 76% that it is efficient. Regarding teleworking, which has become a norm due to the pandemic, 55% of students now see it as an essential element of their future working life, but 42% fear above all that it represents a brake on their learning. As for managers, 58% note that teleworking simplifies their daily life but 41% rather deplore that it complicates their supervisory work.
Methodology
Study carried out from August 26 to September 8, 2021 on a sample of 160 students at university or business schools. This sample was drawn up using the quota method with regard to criteria of gender, type of training and region. 254 private sector executives having a commercial function and supervising at least one person. This sample is representative of the executives of the private sector which was constituted according to the quota method, with regard to the criteria of sex, age, category of agglomeration, region of residence, size and business sector.
(c) Ill. Pexels
–
–
–
