A recent Accenture survey found that 77% of those set to graduate from college in 2013 expected to receive formal training in their first jobs. But only 48% of those in the classes of 2011 and 2012 reported being trained.

"There's a disconnect between employers' expectations of grads entering with relevant skills and the reality," says Katherine LaVelle, a managing director in Accenture's talent and organization practice -- which is that few college grads have job-specific skills on day one. Adding to the problem? "Given economic constraints, lots of employers have looked to cut back." Training is an easy budget line to trim.

But some companies that hire young people train extensively and claim that if you focus on skills, it's worth the cash. That's true not only in the long run -- LaVelle notes that trained employees "don't quit as quickly" -- but sometimes even in a new hire's first weeks.

Most major investment banks outsource a chunk of their new employee training to a company called Training The Street, which runs two- to two-and-a-half-week programs emphasizing financial skills. Founder and CEO Scott Rostan describes his program as "very real time, very hands on, and very practical." One popular exercise? Would-be bankers get a spreadsheet full of financial data "that is basically ugly," Rostan says, and needs to be formatted. Instructors "explain how to do it, step by step, methodically, all the keystrokes to make it better." This usually takes about 15 minutes. Then, during the course of the program, students keep coming back to the spreadsheet to try again. By the end of the program, "most of them can do it in two, three, four, five minutes or less."

Such drills have a parallel in sports, Rostan says. "We're training these people to be world-class athletes, so it's about going to the gym and getting the reps down and getting your muscle memory in tune."