i have seen more and more companies ask for a lot of years’ experience and skills, padding a position that doesn’t pay for what they are demanding a person has to have in order to get an interview. they do it on purpose. it lets them get a person with most of whgat thgey want but then lower the salary because they are missing a couple “must-have” skills.
I got about a third of the way through that malarkey before I decided the author knows not of what he speaks.
There IS a skill gap. Particularly in the skilled trades: plumbers, pipefitters, welders, electricians, carpenters, boilermakers, and on and on.
I know this from personal experience after having worked with construction contractors for decades. They complain that young people don’t want to get into the trades because they don’t want the manual labor; as a demographic, they would much prefer playing with technology all day.
Therefore, if I were a mature skilled tradesperson, I would sell myself to the highest bidder. Good ones ought to be able to pull $70k - $100k per year, and their market value seems destined to rise in the foreseeable future.
I got about a third of the way through that malarkey before I decided the author knows not of what he speaks.
There IS a skill gap. Particularly in the skilled trades: plumbers, pipefitters, welders, electricians, carpenters, boilermakers, and on and on.
I know this from personal experience after having worked with construction contractors for decades. They complain that young people don’t want to get into the trades because they don’t want the manual labor; as a demographic, they would much prefer playing with technology all day.
Therefore, if I were a mature skilled tradesperson, I would sell myself to the highest bidder. Good ones ought to be able to pull $70k - $100k per year, and their market value seems destined to rise in the foreseeable future.
I think the third reason is probably the biggest. Most jobs, unless it is really complex, have duties that can be learned with 6 months to a year, and most employees can probably be made to be productive enough that the companies can make a profit from their work within a few weeks.
The companies, for whatever reason, decline to train. I think a lot of it is due to a highly subsidized education system that it is cheaper for companies to pay the taxes to subsidize education rather than pay for the training themselves.
The FIRST year Java got big they were asking for 5 years of Java programming experience.
IT IS A SCAM.
I’ve seen this 1,000 times.
As an employer the only “skills gap” I see is the lack of the skills to get up, take a shower, show up for work on time every time and Saturdays when we need it. Oh yes a positive work attitude too. If you can master these skills you not just have a job you will have a career.
We had a meeting with the local school board. The wanted to know what we were looking for in High School graduates. I told them this and they just stared at me.
One teacher pulled me aside an said that what I want is what he has wanted in students for the last 15 years.
It’s been my experience that OJT is far superior to hiring experienced but unemployed workers. Hire at a living wage and train in house with some control over the work practices and attendance of the employees. Of course, the government will have to give businesses the leeway to hire the best available entry level employees, set reasonable work rules, and control the content of the training programs. Of course, this is impossible and companies are scratching to make a profit in spite of the governments control and obstruction.
Oh, by the way, isn’t the UAW doing great running GM?
That's a stupid statement.
If you can't do the job, you ain't got the skills.
A lot of companies are jerks. No question. But who is going to spend big bucks training people that can't do math, can't show up on time, or even consistently. IOW, ignorant with no work ethic.
I’ve heard this siren call for my entire life.
Meanwhile, many large companies (especially) reject some very, very, VERY well-qualified job applicants .. often without so much as an interview... and sometimes without even saying No.
(The situation is only made much worse, of course, by the Great Obama Depression, but the kinds of hoops job applicants often have to try to jump through ... can be ridiculous. The companies lose out not getting some excellent and very capable workers....Meanwhile, some of these companies’
foreign competitors do not seem to suffer from nearly the same degree of this self-inflicted damage...?)
It’s about money. Companies want to pay the same wages as 25 years ago. Here is an ad from the ST. Louis, MO craigslist:
http://stlouis.craigslist.org/mnu/4389762283.html
2) Our society has decided that hard work is unnecessary, so kids want easy degrees and low expectations. They have no work ethic, skills, or patience. They become unemployable right from the start and never recover.
Bad feedback loop -- workers who are not employable, and companies which cannot provide a decent incentive as to why a worker would really want to be employable.
Gonna be a rough ride.
In my observation, companies are totally unprepared to hire anyone who has not done the EXACT same job somewhere else and therefore does not require training. If the company makes blue, left-handed widgets and the applicant has experience in blue, right-handed widgets - no good!
Many companies are not really serious about hiring. If a genius who will work for $35K comes along, they will take him, otherwise they’ll keep looking.
When business starts to boom, and they need people to meet the demand, then they sing a different tune. Those oil wells out in the Dakotas, they need rig men and truck drivers, and they attract them from all over the country by paying whatever is necessary. They’ll take less-than-perfect guys if they’re willing to show up and work.
My wife’s company scours the horizon for Machinists and solid mechanics. There is a major skills gap.
Not a bad article, really. Nails a few things directly.
If hiring was done by shop personnel these issues would go away. There is only a skills gap because HR buffoons say there is. They have rediculous hiring matrices that few people would ever get through. Irony abounds now that I am self employed. Companies that never would have hired me now pay me 3 to 4 times as a contract engineer and hire my company to manufacture parts for their aircraft. Even after 10 years of this they would still never hire me.
Anyone who is interested should learn machining. Good money to be had and all the old farts are retiring with few, if any, replacements.