TEXT OF STORY

Steve Chiotakis: It’s hard enough for recent college graduates to find jobs in today’s tough economy.
Now there’s a new survey out, which says prospective employers think they’re unprofessional. Marketplace’s Nancy Marshall Genzer reports.

Nancy Marshall Genzer: The 500 business executives who took the survey complained that young employees fresh out of college were disrespectful, didn’t have a good work ethic and weren’t professional-looking.

TODD MCCARTY: Is there a belly showing or not? Piercings or tattoos that are more broadly shown than they need to be?

Todd McCarty is senior vice president of human resources for Readers Digest. He says he could live with the piercings and tattoos. But text messages and e-mails with typos? That drives him crazy.

MCCARTY: No punctuation, bad spelling — it’s not getting the message clearly across.

David Polk conducted the survey. He’s a sociologist at York College. Polk, who’s 61, says part of the problem is the same thing baby boomers used to complain about — the generation gap.

DAVID POLK: We threw away the tie-dye shirts and bell bottoms. We’re out there calling the shots and quite frankly we’ve gotten conservative in our old age.

And Polk says tattoos and piercings could become the norm after the boomers retire.

In Washington, I’m Nancy Marshall Genzer for Marketplace.