Turn employer feedback into a program discussion

An employer tells you graduates are not ready for the job. That single sentence sounds like feedback, but it is not usable yet. Your job as a partnership director is to turn a broad complaint into specific evidence that faculty can act on, without promising a curriculum change that is not yours to promise.

Why this conversation goes wrong

Employers speak in generalities because that is how the problem shows up for them day to day. A supervisor sees a new hire freeze on a customer call and files it under "they need more training," without stopping to ask what exact skill was missing or where it should have been taught. If you take that sentence and forward it to faculty as is, nothing happens, because faculty cannot redesign a course around "not ready." If instead you respond by agreeing on the spot that the program will change, you have made a commitment you cannot keep and skipped the people who actually own the curriculum. Both mistakes come from the same root cause, treating an opinion as if it were already evidence.

How to prepare

Read whatever notes exist from prior conversations with this employer before you sit down together. Know which courses in your program touch the general skill area the employer is likely to raise, without pretending you can speak for what faculty teach or why. Prepare three questions you will ask no matter what the employer says first. Ask for one specific situation where a graduate struggled. Ask what behavior the employer expected instead. Ask whether that behavior is something the employer's own team teaches during onboarding or something they expect a new hire to bring on day one. That last question matters because it separates a curriculum gap from a training handoff problem, and employers rarely draw that line on their own. If this feedback session is part of a bigger relationship, it may follow site visits or classroom observations, and planning an employer site visit for a program review is worth reviewing before you go further with this employer.

What to say

Dana, a supervisor at a partner employer, opens with a familiar complaint. "Your graduates understand the theory fine, but they fall apart once they are actually on the phone with a customer."

Luis does not agree or defend the program. He asks for the specific moment. "Walk me through one recent call where a new hire struggled. What were you expecting them to do at that point?"

Dana thinks about it and gets specific. She says new hires can talk to the customer or type up the service request, but not both at the same time, so they either go silent while typing or ask the customer to hold too often.

Luis follows with the question that matters most. "Is documenting a request while staying on the line something your team walks new hires through during onboarding, or do you expect people to arrive already able to do that?"

Dana pauses, then admits it is a little of both, her team assumes people pick it up, but they also notice hires from certain other programs adjust to it faster.

Luis closes the exchange without overpromising. "That distinction is exactly what our faculty and advisory group need. I will write up this example, along with what your onboarding does and does not cover, and bring it to them. They will decide how or whether the program responds. Before I do that, do any of your other supervisors see the same pattern? If so, I would like one of them on a short call so we bring more than one example."

Mistakes to avoid

Do not accept the first sentence as the whole story. A complaint like "graduates are not ready" is a headline, not a data point, and faculty cannot design around a headline. Do not promise a curriculum change in the room. You do not run the courses, and a promise you cannot keep damages the partnership more than a vague complaint ever did. Do not treat one supervisor as the entire employer. Ask whether the observation is shared, because a pattern across three supervisors carries more weight with faculty than one person's frustration. Do not skip the onboarding question. Whether a skill is supposed to be taught on the job or expected on arrival changes what faculty can even do about it, and skipping that question is the single most common way this conversation produces feedback nobody can use. Do not end the meeting without a next step, even a small one, like naming who gets the summary and when the employer will hear back.

How to practice and score it

This conversation is easy to rehearse because the shape repeats across employers and industries, only the specific skill changes. Set up a roleplay where your counterpart plays a supervisor with a vague complaint and a real but underspecified frustration behind it. Your goal in the roleplay is the same every time, extract one concrete example, ask the onboarding question, and close by describing what happens next without committing to an outcome. A manager reviewing the roleplay should check for three things, did you get a specific situation instead of a general impression, did you ask whether the skill is expected on arrival or taught after hire, and did you avoid promising a change that only faculty can approve. DealSpeak's education practice conversations are built around this kind of recurring, high stakes exchange, so you can run it several times with different employer personalities before it happens for real. The same structure works for other conversations you handle, including one where you might help a working parent compare evening programsbecause both depend on asking the right question before you offer a solution.

Employer feedback only becomes useful once you separate what happened from what someone assumed should happen. Ask for the example, name the training context, and let the people who own the curriculum make the call. That is what turns a complaint into something a program can actually act on.