How to Avoid the Workforce Skills Shortage

What do companies do who already do those basic no-brainers you mentioned, and still can't find employees with the skills they need?

Then you have to start investing.

If you can't find people with the skills set you require, you may have to invest in training.

There are some ups to this expense and risk (employees that stick around), and that is training the employees with the skills you require. As far as keeping these employees, that is up to you, as you stated what you call the obvious.

I think make comfortable all the employees or should be friendly environment in the office and give good incentive.

Did you even read the post at http://bin95.blogspot.com/2013/07/USA-Workforce-Skills-Shortage.html ?? It is about the skills shortage, a couple ideas to get people trained with the skills. It is not about how to get people to work at your company over others, it's about getting people the skills needed to do the job. You really can't intelligently answer this without first reading the USA Workforce Skills Shortage article above.

This belongs in the commercial section.

Sometimes job advertisements are written with little likelihood of successfully finding candidates. Why? For several reasons. 1) The employer has un-realistic goals. 2) The only person who can do the job has retired. 3) Changing what they - the employer - wants in an applicant, to everyone's frustration! Another no no is the employer does not want to train anyone for the job. They are expecting a perfect fit, and can't / don't want to understand why that won't happen! If they do get someone who fits their criteria..they, the employer want to belittle the applicant by not paying what the job's worth - not what they think it's worth ! IE pay $17-00 when it should be $25-00 !

When you say "I've" been looking, it suggests that you're a smaller business as opposed to a large, ponderous entity. I may be wrong, but it's just the way it sounds.

If that's true, I could understand your frustration. I'm not quite sure I understand why young people who've spent two years at a trade school would not be aware that some actual work was involved with a job, and be interested in learning more about different applications of what they studied; whether it's in a shop, a mill, a strip mall, or a strip mine.

I guess you might tell the next candidate that if they had wanted to work at a desk job, they should have gotten an Associate's Business degree.

I'll have to agree with the other folks about the larger companies certainly, as far as attracting or keeping good people. The comment about incompetent management couldn't have been more appropriate. 9 times out of 10 good people really don't need them around, and know what it is that they need to do. When they're harassed and given a "bunch of junk" just so a manager can try and not feel insecure in his job and his life, it tends to make good people disappear.

And of course, it takes good people working to work new good people into the fold. If everybody in a shop is new and the manager is incompetent, anyone with any common sense who COULD have been good will have faded into black before they even get started.

If you are a smaller company, then I'd probably push that a little bit in interviews, i.e. a more hands-on management style from someone who actually knows what they're doing.

Larger corporations run on the bottom line, always, unless it's at the executive level. Head-hunting number-crunchers try and skim the payroll as much as possible, and many times they don't care if some guy with 12 years in walks, because they have no idea what a guy with 12 years in does for a company. They look at it like simply replacing a part with another lower-cost part, and making their charts look good at the quarterly meetings.

Good luck though, and you sound like someone a young guy should be happy that they found to work for.

As a high school teacher, this is a very interesting idea that I would be interested in pursuing with a company in my area. You may also want to consider getting involved in organizations like FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) at http:\\www.usfirst.org, and SkillsUSA, http:\\www.skillsusa.org. For those of you that graduated prior to 2002 SkillsUSA is VICA (Vocational Industrial Clubs of America) rebranded. There are many other contests and organizations that need your sponsor or mentorship at the local school, state, or national levels. This would be a great way of taking advantage of something the school is already doing (SkillsUSA is required for federal Perkin's funding). YOu share your expertise with the students and they get inspired. It is a win-win. By the way, I am at Sunnyslope High School in Phoenix, Arizona. I would love to talk to companies about mentoring my FIRST Robotics and SkillsUSA teams.

Excellent advice and info Nick B.

I know when i was looking at a career i was smart and lazy, I wanted a field that was easy work and high paying. I settled for Electronics Engineering, go figure.

If you provide a job that pays well, allows people to get in the profession easily and gives them the opportunity to advance in knowledge and pay in a timely manner you will have plenty of people.

Give people what they want and they will flood the market.

Like a restaurant, serve good food at a reasonable price in a timely manner you get many customers, but serve bad food with long waits for lots of money few customers.

For good or bad...... I have found if you enjoy or love your job......... people take advantage of you.....

Hmmm! Sad Story

it could be....... I didn't post what I think in its entirely.

because along with this, at first, you work because you like it, (usually because of ones lack of experience, (just out of college). You bring allot of it upon yourself.

After a few years, you realize what you're value is, after which you have the knowledge of your works value to negotiate.