>For employers in 2012, a college degree means the candidate can write a coherent essay and stick at something for more than 5 minutes. These attributes matter more than domain knowledge in most jobs since you can teach a skill (including programming) but it's difficult to change haphazard tendencies or any of the ghastly other behaviors that seem more common than ever.
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>Unfortunately, these days some people with degrees still struggle with written communication and meeting deadlines. FWIW there's a groundswell of opinion out there that traditional attributes no longer mean much, but there is one predictor that still holds true: table manners. Believe it or not, the way somebody uses the menu and silverware and socializes at the table, probably tells you as much about a candidate as anything else.

I've always heard that, with quite a few employers, how you treat the people you run into BEFORE you get to the interview holds quite a bit of weight on whether you got the job or not. Not so big a problem for me since I grew up learning that you don't treat people differently based on what their job is - so I always try to approach security, receptionists, admin, etc with a pleasant manner.

(shrug) Don't know if it every helped me get a job, but that wasn't why I did it.