plug and playadj.
Relating to a new employee who needs little or no training. Also: plug-and-play.
Example Citation:
In their quest for "plug and play" workers, companies look on university and college campuses for new employees.
—Debbie Therrien, "The value of grey hair pays off in the workplace," The Hamilton Spectator, June 18, 2002
Earliest Citation:
Companies are desperate to find "plug-and-play" workers, and Patchell says companies don't care whether potential employees are 28 or 52, as long as they can hit the ground running.
—Neal Weinberg, "Career Crisis," Network World, September 14, 1998
Notes:
In the computer world, plug and play is used to describe a piece of hardware that gets installed and set up automatically after you attach it to the computer. (It's a flaky system still, so plug and pray is the more usual situation.)
