Skills Gap?

[will]

Here's another article pointing out the fact that potential employers who say they can't find people qualified to take certain positions are just looking for trained turd counters, not people with brains who can learn.

macroblog.typepad.com/macroblog/2012/06/the-skills-gap-still-trying-to-separate-myth-from-fact.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+typepad%2FRUQt+%28macroblog%29

[sookie]

According to a couple of small business owners I know (one has a high tech machine shop in MI, the other an autobody shop in OR), the risk of hiring someone without skills and training him is this:

Training is time intensive and expensive (often requiring sending them somewhere to learn the equipment they'll be using). Employees are less "loyal" than they used to be (same with employers), and so there is a high risk of funding the training of someone who is going to be working for a competitor shortly.

The guy in MI lost his employee to Leatherman group in Portland. They could afford to pay more and of course Portland is generally considered more enjoyable than the LP of MI, near the Great Lakes.

That's a big part of their hiring concerns.

[baldrick]

Employers should be asking themselves why their employees are less loyal. Employers no longer put any investment to speak of into the employees, try as mush as possible to avoid providing pensions or realistic retirement benefits, and are removing insurance coverage where possible. They lay people off at the drop of a hat, and suck as much short term profit from the business as possible. Employees aren't blind or stupid, and return the disloyalty by going where they get the best deal. Employers need to re-learn to make it worthwhile for an employee to stick around.

As for skills, unless you can afford UTI, or something similar, where are you going to get the training? Companies sure don't want to train their people in any meaningful way, anymore, and the old public school associated trade schools are gone.

[will]

Sure. It goes both ways. I'm not a loyal employee. Why? I have made several people millionaires and then been shown the door. It doesn't bother me too much, because I am skilled enough to survive anyway and tend to be extremely independent to the point of preferring to be on my own, but it has proven to me that I'm on my own whether I want to be or not. Everyone else has the same kinds of stories. Now, where did I get those skills? I got them by working. If somebody had not shown some form of forward thinking, I would still be mopping floors in a trucking company maintenance garage or driving a taxi. I got those skills by starting at a low wage. Both sides knew it was a temporary situation, because I was unskilled and cheap. Once I became skilled, I wouldn't be cheap any more. That's the deal. I didn't mind working for not much more than the minimum wage in order to build up the ability to make more. The employer who hired me got 60+ hours of work out of me for the cost of 40 dirt cheap hours. When I wanted a bit more money or a saner work schedule and the employer didn't want to budge, it was time for me to move on. Same happens everywhere, to everyone who can move. Had that employer decided I was now worth more than barely above the minimum wage for 40 hours in order to get 60+ hours worth of work out of me, I might have stayed. But my time was worth more to somebody else, so I left. It's a straight forward calculation. It's one employers are now making, and one employees have been prevented from making by a bad economy.

When the economy turns, the trained idiot syndrome will bite lousy employers, because then they will not be able to fill positions with perfect fit people and they will also lose the perfect fit people they have.

I have very little sympathy with employers who are unwilling to hire people and train them. Not everyone can or even wants to move from Michigan to Portland. Train a few people and find the ones who want to stay put. It's a cost of doing business, and it's part of the process. If an employer can't afford to hire people he or she needs to do his or her work, then maybe that employer's business model sucks and that employer should consider shining shoes on a street corner instead.

I'm being harsh here, but I see a whole lot of myopic behavior, and I see a whole lot of entitlement mentality on management side. The irony is these are often the people who decry an entitlement mentality. If you can't hire good help, maybe the problem is you, not the people who you could hire. Lincoln Electric, the company who makes welders, is a perfect example of how to have loyal employees, be competitive, and make sure you can be loyal to your employees. I haven't stayed up on what their practices are, so things may have changed. If the rape and pillage mentality that junior MBAs typically have set in there, then it's no longer an example of anything.

Another example of how the junior MBA mentality creates disloyal employees and destroys industries is "Whatever Happened to the British Motorcycle Industry" by Brent Hopwood. Myopic management is the root of these problem when you boil it down far enough. Training employees to be disloyal is far easier than training them to do a job well, and employers seem to only do what's easy for the time being.

As a sometime employer myself, I generally pay more than the person was getting elsewhere, and I make it very clear what all of the issues are, including project specific duration of employment. When there are no misunderstandings and the employee knows you are sympathetic to his or her concerns and needs, it goes a long way, even if you can't pay the moon. People who don't or won't figure it out get what they deserve - disloyal employees.

[kitkat]

I think there is a big difference between the small business reality (maybe less than 100 employees, privately held of course) and the corporate biz reality. Small concerns are really in much the same boat as their employees...IOW a very competitive, cutthroat environment--and not to do well, necessarily, but just to survive. The dominant business culture comes from above. The big boys decided that 10% wasn't enough, they had to have 20, 30, 40% and above (gross--net is an accounting joke these days) about when they discovered that slave labor was again on the table, overseas. This 'how much can you do' mentality has trickled down throughout the biz world and since there is no small company that doesn't have a national level corp competitor, well, the latter sets the table. It's everyone for themselves these days, devil take the hindmost.

[will]

My take is that small businesses can compete, since their overhead doesn't include MBA bloat for the most part. In fact, a small business can often be more efficient and more responsive than a big corporation, partly because it doesn't suffer from excess business school thinking and financial calculation. A small business owner can make decisions quickly, commit resources quickly, and change directions quickly as opportunities arise. A small business that doesn't do these things is doomed, but a nimble small business can find a good niche. Well treated employees are a part of the success of a small business, because a well treated employee will be much more productive than an employee who is just a cog and know it.

Large businesses have proven over and over again that concentration is a lousy proposition for everyone except the people at the top, people who are completely insulated from the consequences of their decisions. Remember the old joke about the telephone company - we don't care, because we don't have to? That's the nature of large businesses now.

What's currently holding back small businesses is lack of demand and lack of capital available to them when there is demand.

[kitkat]

Yes, but--treating employees well in ways that don't have objective costs attached (loyalty, personal support etc) is one thing--which small biz can of course excel at compared to corps. But--insofar as wages/benefits go, those companies that actually *make* money very little is passed down the ranks as it once was considered "proper" to do. It is rather kept by the owners. I see this _all_the_time_. And, another wage driver is cost pressures from competition in other areas of the country (the south)-- and also small companies don't have the same sort of access to overseas slave labor that the big boys do...yet they must reduce labor costs as much as possible to compete regardless.

Two things--the dominant culture of ownership/management entitlement evolving out of all proportion to reality and two, overseas slave labor--those are the two primary factors that have driven wages down the last 30 years, IMHO.

[will]

You are pointing out what I call the junior MBA mentality. The problem is the junior MBA mentality now infects senior people. It was called the "ME Generation" for a reason. The most extreme examples have reached positions of power and influence, and will be a blight on the nation and its economy for another decade or so. I sure hope the next few generations are not infected with the same kind of self-centeredness.

[kitkat]

amen.