Q: how many archaeologists does it take to ruin an industry?

[Odinn]

Does the industry expect this of Graduates?

Or do Graduates think that because they have a degree they are already professional archaeologists and do not believe they need any further training? Fast track promotion and unrealistic pay expectations is my experience.

I don't think the industry does expect graduates to turn up able to dig from day one. It would be nice though and I have argued with various university types that they should be offering more vocational options too, but to no great effect. After all, if the graduates are prepared by their university course for life in commercial archaeology in that way then they may well progress faster.

It has been my experience that many (not all) graduates come onto site thinking they know it all and that they should be running the place from the outset. This is particularly true of those with Masters degrees and PhDs. They don't seem to want to serve their time in the field and learn the ropes. I have seen a number of new graduates walk out of the job after only a day or two when they realised what the job actually involved and what their place in it was.

Since training is the issue under discussion, another of my pet peeves is that many staff want it all handed to them on a plate. We have the annual review system to discuss their progress and identify training needs, but they see it as an unnecessary waste of their time, because they claim nothing ever comes of it. However, this is a self-fulfilling prophecy because they do not try to make it work. Where staff have embraced the system and used it to their advantage by actively seeking the training opportunities and justifying them against the identified needs in the annual review system then they get the training and progress within the unit. Where they sit back and whinge about the lack of training without trying to help themselves they get stuck in place and don't progress. As a manager, back when I was, I could do some things to help staff with training, but I had a lot else on my plate too and could not spend all my days trawling around for courses to send them on. When we did organise training related to fieldwork, rather than all the mandatory council courses that we had to do, all too often all we got was complaining that this was not the training they wanted or that they were wasting their time indoors when they should be in the field. It seems to me that it does not matter what you do, people will just complain anyway and brand you as being against them despite your attempts to help them.