Q for fresh graduates: What do you think of the career of ‘management trainee’?

Management trainee, a career that sounds very imaginative, has attracted countless outstanding graduates to join. As the starting point for one's career planning, it can be said that there are thousands of troops squeezing a single-plank bridge. That's no exaggeration. But in reality, what is the situation like for real management trainees?

I believe that many students with good academic performance will be offered many positions in the name of "trainee". Many students will feel that such positions are unclear, especially except for those who are already well-known. Apart from management trainee programs (such as the management trainee programs of many FMCG companies and some industrial companies), not many people really know what a management trainee is like. When choosing an offer, of course salary should be considered, but more people believe that they are more curious about the future of management trainees.

I have never been in a fast-moving consumer goods company. I only know that the management trainee of fast-moving consumer goods can describe it in one sentence as "national publicity and single-digit recruitment. Entry requires not only strength. And luck”. Many people know that management trainees are well paid, but many well-known fast-moving consumer goods companies have visited more than 10 top universities across the country. In fact, the final number of recruits is only about 10 people, but they have done a lot of tricks. , in fact, the purpose is to establish the image of the company through these very few positions, "I am awesome, it is right to come here".

So now on campus, students are forming groups one after another and going in pairs to recruit for the "Management Trainee" project. In fact, when it comes to management training, management training, and comprehensive recruitment, I often find that these types of companies are extremely polarized companies. That is to say, the top schools are often from top schools, while the bottom ones are very low-end, such as the fast-moving consumer goods industry, such as the hotel industry. Low-end employees only earn a few thousand yuan, while high-level employees receive high salaries and benefits. So for this kind of company, it is basically impossible to promote people from the bottom. Only future management talents who meet the requirements can be delivered through the management trainee program (except for poaching corners from other companies in the future). Therefore, some top companies still have no management training programs so far. Because in many cases, the average quality of these recruited people is very high, and you can just promote talents from these people. There is no need for such a project, unless you are in a period of rapid growth or there are development needs in some remote cities, that is another story Of course, the management training from such programs are basically rooted in second- and third-tier cities.

Of course, some companies are even more unique, that is, they do not recruit management trainees among fresh graduates, but specifically recruit those who have worked for about three years, such as CLP Childcare, which I worked as a headhunter in the past. Conservation Leadership Program (CLP) project, so naturally such companies themselves cannot see the recruitment of management trainees on campus. Looking back at the campus, there are now many companies recruiting management training, including state-owned enterprises and private enterprises. Of course, some companies are withdrawing from the management training market.

As for the trainee program, in addition to management training, there are also many names such as sales trainee and technical trainee. Of course, what these trainees do in the program actually depends on the position. Sales is sales, and technology is mostly what matters during factory recruitment. The main reason is that the sales elimination rate is very high, and sales managers actually have very high requirements for personal qualities. It is not feasible to promote through performance in daily work, so the management needs a trainee program as a supplement. In fact, there are many positions in technology, and the requirements for majors are universal. An engineering student can do technology, logistics, and quality. Many people are suitable for which positions. It is difficult to know at the beginning of the interview (interviews are effective in identifying talents. Ratio, even the most advanced assessment center only has an accuracy of 65%-70%, and due to the lack of experience of the interviewers, the effectiveness of many interviews will be less than 20%, causing a lot of trouble in the future), then through the rotation of the trainee program Waiting for the steps, you will know what this person is good at, what he likes to do, and what he is suitable for.

When it comes to the treatment of trainee projects, it is basically the same for foreign banks > FMCG/pharmaceutical industry > other industries, of course state-owned enterprises. Anyone in the banking industry who recruits more than 15,000 people a month for management training has heard of it. Of course, these people are basically taken by students with graduate degrees (but they must also be graduate students from very good schools, and some returnees from overseas). FMCG management trainees are paid as high as over 100,000 a year.

Therefore, it is undeniable that many students choose these projects for this "income". What I want to say here is that although remuneration is very important, how long the management training program has been carried out and how well the company accepts the management training program actually determine whether the student who applied for the job successfully transitioned from trainee to supervisor. The main factor for managers. Salary is actually a later consideration in this type of project. There is no other reason than that many trainee programs will turn sour in the end, fail or even turn into a so-called gimmick in campus recruitment.

First of all, the trainee program is actually equivalent to the initial stage of the leadership program in the company. However, compared with the leadership program, it mainly determines that you are a "high potential talent" through interviews and other processes. Not through daily work observations and feedback. So the reliability and validity are very easy to be challenged by company insiders and even senior executives. The so-called high potential talents actually rely on your own existing skills, knowledge, emotional intelligence and your own learning agility (Learning Agility, which is a learning attitude that is full of curiosity about the world around you) and are obtained in an environment. Accelerate hatching.

In enterprises, people are generally divided into people with good performance, people with normal performance and people with poor performance. The proportion of the last type is generally less than 5%, and the first type of people does not exceed 20%. , but among the 20% of people, research actually shows that only 29% of people are high-potential talents. A salesperson is a good salesperson if he can complete 200% of the target, but the sales manager's sales ability is secondary. The main ability lies in cultivating the team and allowing the team to work together to achieve the overall sales performance target.

Therefore, a high-performing employee may not be a high-potential talent. After all, I started my career with my sales ability. Not everyone can succeed if I give up my sales ability and focus on my management ability. Therefore, as mentioned before, in some companies, the method of promotion through high performance may bring difficulties to the development of the company. This is the reason why. Whether it’s leadership programs or many trainee programs, it’s a money-burning job in the human resources department. The cost of each training, the man-hours taken up, the man-hours taken up to match yourself with a mentor, the time cost of HR and supervisors for follow-up, and the investment of various resources, it is really scary to calculate it in detail.

The calculation unit for leadership projects in the training budget I saw is one hundred thousand US dollars. For a company of some size, the budget for a decent leadership training project is basically hundreds of dollars a year. Thousands of dollars are not uncommon. Think about it, just for the business trip expenses and hotel expenses in leadership training, if 100 people are calculated as a unit, the travel expenses are calculated as 3,000 each time (round-trip air tickets + hotel accommodation), then how much it will cost, this type of project is generally done in one year I have to fly a few more times. In addition to the hotel rental fee + wine fee and the cost of hiring an external tutor. 1 million yuan is only enough to rent the venue + drinks. In addition to the time cost of other follow-up personnel mentioned earlier, if the middle-level managers of foreign companies are based on a monthly salary of 30,000 yuan, their one-hour coaching per day may cost 200 yuan. And after a project is completed, how many hours of coaching will it cost? . So you know why management training programs, especially serious management training programs, are so exaggerated that they only need the top students when selecting candidates. Otherwise, the student salary will be a small number, and the investment will be a big loss.

So many executives who have no vision or are from grassroots background are very resistant to this kind of project. So how depressing would it be if you entered this project because of it, but when you look back and find that one or two years later it was not what you thought it would be? There are many such cases. The failure rate of management training programs in China once exceeded 50%. Many excellent companies in China had management trainees in the 1990s and early 2000s, but they have quietly withdrawn in recent years. Some of them are Because of making wedding clothes for others (which is at least a good thing for the participants), all the people who were trained were hunted down, and quite a few of them were due to changes in senior management, which ultimately led to the abortion of the project. Of course, some industries have formed industry standards for management trainee programs, such as banking, medicine, and FMCG.

So, before accepting an offer, in addition to the amount of money in the offer, please also ask how old the project is and how it is going.

In actual practice, I have even heard of people who don’t even know what they are recruiting people for, but they openly say in campus recruitment that they are recruiting for management training (after all, there is a gap of more than half a year between recruitment and employment, and some relatively new or companies in the period of explosive growth do do this. ) Of course, if the company is obviously not yet capable of carrying out management training programs, then it would be understandable if it also recruits people in the name of management training programs. That's either a gimmick or a nice way of saying job rotation. A well-known shipping company had a management training program in China a few years ago. It was good, very good. It recruited top students, and there were also job rotation opportunities around the world. I was very excited about it. But his family no longer does management training. Why, because although the students are very good, these people later switched jobs to other companies, and the company spent so much money in vain. Such companies are by no means uncommon. There are still many companies that are still under the policy of pursuing profit first, and their ideas about management training will differ depending on the top management.

Second, many trainee programs are actually a simple job rotation, which actually deviates from the original intention of many outstanding students to apply for the position and get on the helicopter for promotion. I believe that many outstanding students hope that they can realize their life dreams of being a supervisor for one year, a manager for two years, and a director for five years through the trainee program. I'm going to pour cold water on everyone again. This is basically impossible. After all, no matter how good you are, after going through the trainee program, you will only know your expertise in different positions, help you have a clearer career direction, and also let the company's senior management through the trainee program. A chance to learn about your performance, that's all.

It is really necessary for trainees, even those management trainees from the most famous companies, to become managers after the two-year project. Yes, there are indeed some in the banking industry and some other companies, but those positions are basically Only available in tier 2, 3, and even tier 4 cities. Recently, an intern applied for a job at a foreign-funded bank and was interviewed. During the interview, he was directly told that after our management training program was completed, he would be employed. Then, he heard that he would not stay in Shanghai at all, but the young girl, who is from Shanghai, refused directly. Therefore, due to the shortage of talents in tier 2 and tier 3 cities, management trainees have indeed delivered some talents at a relatively fast speed. In areas such as Shanghai and Beijing where talent is hot, good companies rarely appear. And some other trainee programs, such as the so-called technical trainees in many manufacturing companies, are actually designed to allow you to go through a trainee life and finally become a qualified engineer (so these companies do not necessarily only recruit front-line people. 2 lines also watch). Although Generation Y college students are generally eager to succeed, after all, there are so many seniors in the society, and the value of experience often exceeds ability. As mentioned before in the sales post, Know-how (know what to do through experience).

Of course, job rotation is always beneficial. After all, where a person’s energy can shine the most, job rotation is still a good opportunity. You must know that if a company has fixed positions, sometimes it is a very difficult process to switch to C&B even for recruitment. There is a company that is No. 1 in the world in the industry. One year, more than 50% of the people in the human resources department changed jobs (the HR here is basically very good in English, and the HR system is as complete as a textbook, and the process is very smooth, so Going out generally means going out. 50% growth is normal, and 200% growth has been heard of). The big HR boss couldn’t stand it. After looking at the employee survey data, he felt dissatisfied that he was too hard-working and his work scope was too narrow. He resigned. There are many young HR personnel. Think about why the attrition (turnover rate) of my HR department is so high.

So we launched a one-year management training program for the new batch of college students. In one year, these students who had just stepped out of school were rotated through four HR departments with different functions. I remember that there was a girl who was actually quite capable. She was HR BP in the first three months, and her second position was In our recruitment department, the third one is the Employee Service department, which is responsible for payroll, and the fourth one is the human resources and legal department. Later, when we were having dinner and chatting about her rotation experience, she described it to me. The position of HR BP, as mentioned before, basically requires experienced people in the industry to do it well. Then she did the same job carefully from beginning to end. She organized a BP regional meeting and entertained a bunch of big bosses.

In the Staffing department, almost 3 months were only enough for her to understand the recruitment process, plus make some reports for herself and recruit interns. The ES department was more fun, just following ADP all day long ( A well-known foreign-funded company that does Payroll outsourcing), stare at them and calculate the difference with the data we calculated, and answer all kinds of strange questions about wages raised by online employees. As for the legal position, she did nothing. She was in meetings all day long, but did not participate in any actual opportunities (that was either formulating company rules or going to court to litigate, what can a recent graduate do). So after going round and round, in the end she still didn’t know what she was good at. I believe that the level of the trainee programs of many companies with famous-sounding names is not much different from mine. Of course, the final result of that project was that it was automatically aborted when the big HR boss’ assignment expired and returned to his Home Country. Those HR freshmen who completed their rotation stayed in the last department they were rotated into.

Third, it is possible for trainees to lose their jobs after the project ends. As I said before, there are many companies that just get excited and think that there is management training in my industry, or that I want to get management training from other big-name companies, and that’s when I think about it. This kind of management trainee has an uncertain future. Because management training is not about recruitment, but all resources must be allocated in the later stage to be carried out well. Another situation may be related to the unique headcount of foreign companies. Large foreign companies have different definitions of headcount. Generally, one person has one position, but the trainee project is very special. This headcount is frequently changed within the company. In some cases, the HR department will act as a sponsor to manage these people. However, if the trainee program is to be implemented one day, then if it is to be implemented, the department will not have the personnel to release these people. It's a headache. Of course, HR will still actively work hard to arrange those trainees until the last minute, but during the financial crisis in 2009, there were indeed some foreign companies whose trainees eventually became the first batch of people to go home. Because all the receiving departments are cutting people off, how can I still get people to come in?

In short, trainee programs mostly accomplish their mission through job rotation (learning by doing), mentoring (learning from seniors) + a small amount of classroom teaching. Of course, in an enterprise, according to numerous research theories, the growth of an employee is 70% learning by doing, 20% guidance and 10% training. To become an excellent training graduate, in addition to choosing the right company, you must always maintain a heart for learning. That is the prerequisite for this project to boost your abilities.