They have cell phones, BlackBerries and Palm Pilots and live by instant messaging and the Internet. Yet many graduating college students get bad grades from employers for their communications skills.

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When Debra Vargulish recruits on college campuses for Kennametal Inc., for example, the students she meets are often inarticulate and shy.

"They seem to be way better at using technology than older people. It's actually the content that is missing," said Vargulish, a training administrator at the Latrobe-based global tooling company. "A lot of them don't know what to say at all, and that's not good."

Communication skills often top the list of qualities employers seek not just for entry-level jobs but for executive and blue-collar positions as well. But the qualities persistently are at the bottom of what potential recruits bring to an interview. When the National Association of Colleges and Employers recently asked employers what skill was most lacking in college job candidates, good communication skills was first.

David Reese, president of Reflex Staffing and a retired human resources executive with Bayer Corp. and PNC Bank, recalls interviewing MBA students on campus and asking one who had significant work experience to describe his ideal job.

"His answer was, 'I don't know. I haven't found it yet,' " Reese said, adding, "he didn't find it with my employer, either."

Reese also remembers asking a market research candidate to describe her strongest set of skills. Her memorable answer: "My computer illiteracy." Then there was the time an aspiring executive told Reese he was "an experienced manager, defective with both entry level and seasoned professionals."

Kennametal's Vargulish said students often fumble their words at career fairs and are too shy to look her in the eye and offer a handshake and hello. The awkwardness also can show up among new employees in the office, she said.

"They are so used to using a BlackBerry, instant messaging their friends, that a lot of them don't understand how to create a formal company memo to their boss or a group of executives," Vargulish said. "A lot of them don't understand how to use the telephone, which is kind of odd. It's not so much using the technology as knowing what to say."

Paul Baruda, president of a professional reference checking service in Rushville, Ind., has lost count of how many times otherwise qualified people have been dropped from further consideration for employment because they couldn't "say, 'Boo!' to a goose."

Baruda, who serves as an employment expert for the jobs Web site Monster.com, said articulating thoughts clearly and concisely will make a difference in both a job interview and subsequent job performance.

"The point is, you can be the best physicist in the world, but if you can't tell people what you do or communicate it to your co-workers, what good is all of that knowledge," he said. "I can't think of an occupation, short of living in a cave, where being able to say what you think cogently at some point in your life isn't going to be important."

Baruda, who is married to an English teacher, fears we are in a downward spiral with students hearing sub-standard English at home and on the radio and television. "I don't think the ability to communicate effectively has gotten any better. As a matter of fact, I think it has gotten worse," he said.

Communication skills are particularly key today as work places move toward team projects. Managers at the Traco window plant in Cranberry, currently in the process of adopting so-called lean manufacturing techniques aimed at improving productivity and simplifying the work flow, expect shop workers to alert them to quality and other production issues.

"We rely on them to be our eyes and ears. They need to communicate with each other and up to management," Rich Sedory, Traco's director of human resources, said. "It's a new role. The day of an independent contributor sitting at a machine for eight hours pushing the button or pulling a lever, that's not how it's done anymore."

The definition of communication skills can vary with the position, said Leslie Bonner, a former bank human resources executive who is coordinator of organizational development for Solutions 21, a business consulting firm.

It could mean avoiding street slang and using proper grammar for a customer service job such as a bank teller. But for an executive, it might mean the ability to sell, persuade others, think on your feet and succinctly make a point.

"My experience is that it's the No. 1 aspect employers look for," Bonner said of communication skills. "It's just like your appearance. It's the first and most noticeable thing about you. If you are a poor communicator, more than likely you're not going to make it through the interview process."

Gay Fogarty, a Pittsburgh leadership and career coach, said she finds people even at the executive level who lack the ability to describe what they are good at doing and what they enjoy doing. She also sees executives who don't do a good enough job of understanding their audience and altering their style or presentation accordingly

For example, styles may clash between subordinate and boss when the boss only wants to hear the highlights or the big overview and the underling insists on laying out all of the details and working slowly up to the results.

"It drives the boss crazy. They don't want to hear it. They don't have the time," Fogarty said, noting it can happen the other way, too. "A boss can need the details and you are a big picture person. All he's doing is asking 20 questions."

Robert L. Fayfich, a corporate communications veteran of Westinghouse Electric Corp. who now consults to corporations and nonprofit organizations, gave one client a funnel to put on his desk to remind him of the need to winnow information so it is focused and appropriate for his audience.

Fayfich said boards of directors typically want to hear "top-line detail" on a situation with options, recommendations and reasoning. They don't usually want a great deal of background detail or technical jargon they may not understand.

He is often brought in by a corporation to teach up-and-coming executives how to better communicate. That may mean losing interfering traits such as ignoring some people and acting in a condescending way to others.

To Fayfich, communication is at the heart of what any business or nonprofit leader does. They must have the ability to understand where they and an organization are going and be able to communicate that to other people, getting them involved from both a physical and emotional perspective.

"It's probably the most misunderstood and misapplied skill of any leader, in either the profit or nonprofit world," he said.

It's important for leaders to align what they say with what they do because others are watching, Fayfich said. Enron Corp., for example, had plenty of official ethical standards, but its disgraced executives behaved in opposition to them.

"It's typically called walking the talk. People pay attention to what you do, not what you say," Fayfich said.

"Communications to me is not just verbal, not just body language, but it is the actions that you take."