The "Skills Gap" and hiring in the U.S.

[jeffcrom]

The idea that a “skills gap” is what ails the US labor market has become so widespread as to achieve one of the rarest conditions in contemporary American life: embracement by both political parties.

There’s just one problem with this idea, according to longtime Wharton professor Peter Cappelli. It may largely be a myth. Cappelli, the George W. Taylor Professor of Management, is a connoisseur of job-hunting stories gone wrong. One of his favorites was related to him by someone in a company whose staffing department failed to identify a qualified candidate for a “standard engineering position”—out of 25,000 applicants.

http://www.upenn.edu/gazette/0113/feature2_1.html

This is a long-ish article, but it's pretty interesting.

[Guy Berger]

I don't think you can entirely discount skills gaps as driving SOME unemployment at any given point in time, but it is probably playing only a small role in today's elevated unemployment rate. (In the medium run it would certainly play a big role in pay/compensation, but not the level of employment.)

I think these kinds of explanations ("people are unemployed because they lack skills") are popular because they have bipartisan appeal and buy room for some limited government intervention (or passivity, depending on your perspective).

[Jazzmoose]

This is a long-ish article, but it's pretty interesting.

Well worth my time; thanks!

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

I'm not entirely sure you can dismiss this. My experience in Britain, which may not be the same as the US, but I see no reason why not, is that a hell of a lot of people are getting by on qualifications, rather than skills or talent. (Just look at the last 30 years' worth of jazz musicians )

What employers have been doing for the last thirty or so years at least, is deskilling jobs; breaking them down into a series of tasks; and paying peanuts to minimally qualified monkeys. This ain't just McDonalds folks; in every walk of life that I've seen, from precision engineering to political advice, this attitude has become supreme. In Britain, this sort of thing has become so generally recognised that the meme 'the computer says no' has become a joke. But it isn't. To me - and sure, I'm old school - a job is not a set of tasks but more like a set of improvisations, because you['re generally dealing with people (even if you're a lathe turner making widgets) and people are inherently unpredictable.

But what happens when an economy gets a fucking great boot up the arse, as has happened over the last few years, is that there's fallout; crap companies falling by the wayside - we've seen loads of national chain stores (not just HMV) go belly up here recently. But other firms - of course - saying things are looking up for them, because they're doing something different. And doing something different requires a less prescriptive attitude over what a job is on the part of employers but also employees who can improvise to meet the unpredictable. And it's been tasked out of people.

My 2p worth.

MG

[danasgoodstuff]

Good article, pleased to see that his advice on how to get by the screening software is essentially what I tell my students in the job search class I teach here at the library.

[sidewinder]

And doing something different requires a less prescriptive attitude over what a job is on the part of employers but also employees who can improvise to meet the unpredictable. And it's been tasked out of people.

The revamping over the past couple of decades of GCSE's and A-Levels with emphasis on modular stages/rote learning 'by numbers' hasn't exactly helped, I feel.

Nor has the increased emphasis within businesses on use of standard frameworks and processes, to be applied on all jobs in a cookie-cutter fashion. Helps in terms of predictability/repeatability and quality assurance (plus ticks in the auditor boxes) but certainly doesn't help to promote innovation.

Edited January 24, 2013 by sidewinder

[.:.impossible]

Thanks. Good article.

[johnlitweiler]

Thanks for an important article, Jeff. I believed the primary job of Human Resources departments was to prevent competent empoyees from getting hired.

[JSngry]

One skill that appears to be sorely lacking is the ability to make a $22.50/hr living in a $7.25/hr world.