Why Gen Z Grads Are Getting Fired—And What Career Services Can Do About It

A recent Fortune article highlights a striking trend: 60% of employers surveyed report terminating Gen Z hires within months of hiring. More concerning: one in six now say they're hesitant to hire recent college graduates at all.

If you're watching employer partnerships weaken or hearing concerns in your campus recruiting conversations, the disconnect between employer expectations and new graduate performance has reached a critical point. But it's also created clarity: employers are telling us exactly what's missing and what they need instead.

When the gap is this well-defined, we have a roadmap for intervention.

What Employers Are Telling Us

Three-quarters of surveyed companies said some or all of their recent graduate hires were unsatisfactory in some way. The specific concerns break down into two categories: professional competencies and workplace behaviors.

The competency gaps employers cite most:

• Lack of motivation or initiative (50% of terminations)

• Poor communication skills

• Disorganization

• Unprofessionalism

The behavioral issues causing problems:

• Chronic lateness to work and meetings

• Inappropriate workplace attire

• Unprofessional language and communication style

• Inability to handle assigned workloads

When asked what would make college graduates more hirable, employers had a clear answer: a positive attitude and more initiative.

The Real Problem: Preparation, Not Generation

This isn't actually a generational problem. It's a preparation problem.

The data reveals systematic changes in how students access professional socialization during their college years. The shift to remote work and learning during formative college years, reduced access to part-time employment and internships during the pandemic, and institutional assumptions that professional competencies develop without explicit instruction have combined to produce graduates who lack exposure to workplace norms that previous cohorts acquired through earlier and more consistent professional experiences.

The strategic advantage? Workplace readiness is teachable. Professional behaviors can be developed through intentional intervention. The question is whether institutions will treat career readiness as an optional enhancement or as essential to degree completion.

Five Strategic Interventions Career Services Can Implement

1. Embed Professional Development Throughout the Student Experience

Waiting until senior year to address workplace readiness is too late. Students need repeated exposure to professional norms and expectations starting in their first year.

What this looks like in practice:

• Integrate professional development modules into first-year orientation and first-year seminars;

• Partner with academic departments to include career readiness components in introductory courses;

• Create a scaffolded professional development curriculum that builds across all four years; and

• Require participation in career readiness activities as part of degree requirements, not as optional programming.

Why this matters: Employers aren't firing graduates for lack of technical skills. They're terminating employment because of professional behavior gaps. These behaviors need to be normalized as early as possible.

2. Create Real-World Practice Opportunities

Students can't learn professional norms theoretically. They need opportunities to practice, receive feedback, and adjust their behavior in lower-stakes environments before entering the workplace.

Practical applications:

• Establish employer-in-residence programs where professionals spend extended time on campus in multiple capacities;

• Facilitate micro-internships and project-based learning where students work with real employers on real problems;

• Host workplace simulation events: students dress professionally, arrive on time, participate in meetings, and receive feedback on their professional presence; and

• Partner with alumni to create mentoring relationships where students observe professional behavior in action.

Implementation tip: The key word here is "feedback." Students need to know when they're missing the mark. Create assessment rubrics for professional behavior and use them consistently across all career services interactions.

3. Address the Specifics Employers Are Flagging

When employers cite specific workplace behaviors—chronic lateness, inappropriate attire, unprofessional communication—these aren't vague complaints. They're pointing to concrete gaps that require explicit instruction.

Targeted programming to offer:

• "Reading Professional Culture: How to Assess Organizational Norms and Adapt Your Behavior";

• "The Unspoken Rules: Workplace Expectations That Nobody Tells You";

• "Professional Communication Across Channels: Email, Slack, Zoom, and In-Person Etiquette"; and

• "Taking Initiative in Entry-Level Roles: How to Show Motivation Without Overstepping".

Resources to create:

• Industry-specific visual guides for appropriate professional attire;

• Professional communication templates with contextual variations; and

• Decision frameworks for common workplace scenarios: When should I speak up in a meeting? When should I ask for help? How do I disagree professionally?

Why this matters: Many students genuinely haven't been in professional environments. Explicit instruction addresses real knowledge gaps rather than assuming prior exposure.

4. Reframe "Soft Skills" as Essential Professional Competencies

The skills employers say they need most—positive attitude, initiative, communication, organization—are often treated as nice-to-haves rather than must-haves in our programming. That needs to change.

How to elevate these competencies:

• Rebrand them as "professional competencies" or "power skills" rather than "soft skills";

• Create assessment tools that measure these competencies alongside technical skills;

• Require students to demonstrate these competencies through portfolios, reflection papers, or behavioral interviews; and

• Partner with faculty to integrate these competencies into course learning outcomes and assessments.

Partner with employers to validate: Ask your employer advisory board to articulate exactly what "positive attitude" looks like in practice. What specific behaviors signal initiative? What does professional communication sound like in their workplace? Use their language in your programming.

5. Build Career Readiness Into Degree Requirements

Optional programming reaches motivated students who are already developing professionally. To address the broader gap, career readiness needs to shift from optional service to institutional requirement.

Institutional models that work:

• Professional development transcripts documenting career readiness activity completion;

• Credit-bearing career readiness courses integrated into general education;

• Graduation requirements that include demonstrating specific career readiness competencies; and

• Career readiness outcomes integrated into program-level accreditation (this requires partnership with academic affairs).

Addressing resistance: Frame professional readiness the same way you would any other essential competency. Students must demonstrate proficiency in writing and quantitative reasoning before graduating. Professional readiness deserves the same standard.

What This Looks Like at Scale: Curriculum Integration

If these interventions sound ambitious, they are. But they're also increasingly necessary.

The most effective approach isn't adding more career services programming for students to attend voluntarily. It's partnering with academic affairs to embed career readiness throughout the curriculum—in the courses students are already taking, with the faculty who are already teaching them.

This is curriculum integration: weaving career readiness competencies into existing academic requirements so that every student, not just those who walk through the career services door, develops the professional competencies employers expect.

Where to start:

• Identify one academic department willing to pilot career readiness integration in a gateway course;

• Work with faculty to map NACE Career Readiness Competencies to existing course learning outcomes;

• Develop assignments that ask students to apply course content in professional contexts; and

• Create assessment tools that measure both academic learning and career readiness development.

Example: A first-year writing course could require students to draft professional emails, provide peer feedback, and reflect on how communication expectations differ across contexts. Same course, same credit hours—but now explicitly developing professional communication skills alongside academic writing.

The Stakes and the Opportunity

When employers stop hiring your graduates, the ripple effects are real: declining employment outcomes, weakening partnerships, diminished institutional reputation.

Systematic intervention creates different results. Stronger graduate outcomes. Deeper employer relationships. Career services positioned as a strategic driver of student success.

Career services professionals have the expertise and positioning to close this gap.  If you're thinking through next steps for your institution, I'd welcome the chance to discuss which systemic approach might be best for your culture and constraints.

Praxis Partners works with career services offices and institutions to design scalable approaches to career readiness integration. If you're ready to address workplace readiness gaps systematically, let's talk.

Contact: rose@thepraxispartners.com