'Employers, unemployment is your fault'

George Rebane

In the 24oct11 WSJ, Wharton School academic Peter Cappelli posits that employers are putting too much blame on schools for not turning out educated workers who can do the available jobs (here).  Employers should instead take in the unqualified, and educate them in the skills needed as, he claims, they did in the old days.  This is another example of an inexperienced liberal academic spouting wisdom from his ivory tower.  As a worker in and manager of businesses over the last half century, I assure you that the world he imagines did not exist.  The limited OJT (on the job training) programs implemented then were possible because the minimum wage and hiring/firing situation was much more fluid and conducive to dealing with young promising workers – if they didn’t work out, they were shown the door with no chance of recourse.

And his claim that you didn’t have to know the job when hired is simply bovine scat.  Then as now, rapid productivity was the name of the game industry wide; things you were taught were only company-specific practices.  With some high school drafting under my belt, at 19 while Eisenhower was still President, I was hired as an entry level draftsman by Genge Corporation and sent to a big aerospace company in Glendale.  We were put on drafting boards located in trailers with no A/C, given small engineering rework tasks to draw up, and watched like a hawk.  If you didn’t cut it, you were out by noon.  Next case please.  (Fortunately I made it and quickly became a senior design draftsman to pay for my undergraduate schooling.)

The same happened when I walked into my first job as an electronics engineer while still completing my BS.  I was shown my desk, my bench space in the circuit design lab, and given the specifications for a device that had yet to be invented, let alone designed and built.  My job was simply to do it.  Period.  (Four months later I delivered the first synchro-to-digital converter.)

In both cases, you learned on your own time anything needed that you didn’t already know.  That’s why God invented midnight oil.  And I want to emphasize that my experience was nothing special or extraordinary.  Over the years my peers and I shared our war stories, and they were all the same.  And it never stopped – twenty years later I was hired to turn around an electronics manufacturing company with a unionized factory ready to go on strike.  As an established systems scientist I had never run a complex hardware (educational electronics) company.  The choice again was ‘learn or burn’.  In short, at all levels, from snot-nosed draftsman to corporate CEO, we all had to lay down a thick track of rubber when our wheels hit the pavement, else it was the door.

Today we have the ‘self-esteem’ generation still entering the workforce with degrees in gender studies, environmental assessment, and the like.  Alongside these aspirants, apologists like Professor Peter Cappelli, who admits to no private sector business experience, study the employment situation and conclude that corporations fighting for survival during a humungus recession (proceeding to depression) should hire and train as permanent employees the unqualified applicants whom the law no longer allows the employer to properly vet, who must be paid an unseemly and unearned minimum wage, and who cannot be easily discharged.  The government has made hiring and employment an expensive minefield of regulations and risk.  It is no wonder to any but the progressive mind that today businesses are hiring slowly if at all, and taking the extra time to employ only the best people they can find.

Comments

[Mikey McD]

100% pure truth. Well Said George. Peter Schiff mirrored your thoughts...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLmD9TeUC54

[D. King]

"It is no wonder to any but the progressive mind that today businesses are hiring slowly if at all, and taking the extra time to employ only the best people they can find."

Excellent link Mikey.

It seems to me that the progressive mind is stuck in the past. What I can't figure out is if their policies are nefarious or naive.

[bill tozer]

Excellent article, Dr. Rebane. Nothing to add except a line from the movie Ghost Busters. "I once worked in the private sector. It was horrible. They expected results!"

[Mikey McD]

Bill great citation (Ghost Busters)... I wanted to provide the link before D. King did...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjzC1Dgh17A

[Fred]

How much did you pay for for your "undergraduate schooling," by the way?

[bill tozer]

Bill Gates has taken some heat for lobbying Congress for increasing the threshold for visas issued to immigrant engineers and techies. Why? Microsoft can't find enough qualified skilled workers to fill their needs. It is no secret that males 40-55 have been a declining part of the workforce since at least 1970. I would argue that Reagen had an easier time in creating jobs back in the day because manufacturing jobs still were a good part of the labor force. Women on the other hand started to dominate the health care field (among other fields) with nursing degrees and such, resulting in more stable higher paying skilled jobs than their construction/manufacturing blue collar husbands. The percentage of women with college degrees has overtaken and exceeded their male counterparts. Many older males who have had long term employment in their field are also becoming painfully aware that their specific skill set they have perfected working for 'the company' does not necessarily transfer outside their company's doors or are outdated in the "new world". I am such a one, where my skills would not qualify me to walk merrily into a related field. Blaming the employer is just plain old blame without rhyme or reason. There are 4-6 million UNDER employed out there, i.e., those who are working less than the desired full time, those who have remained loyal to their employer during this downturn by taking furloughs, cuts/freezes in pay, less hours, etc. These underemployed workers are NOT counted in the unemployment figures. Has it occurred to anyone in the Ivory Towers that these employees will be first in line to be rewarded by their employers when hiring picks up and will receive more hours and compensation and are already trained? Millions of our underemployed will receive the benefits of a recovering economy and not appear in the unemployment stats. But, more to Dr. Rebane's topic. Obamacare and Romneycare's unspoken flaw is there are not enough trained doctors to met the needs of expanded enrollment of patients. Already ER visits have soared in Massachusetts because patients with health insurance have to wait longer to see their doctors and opt for the trip to the ER instead, creating exactly the opposite results intended. I tell the kids that its ok not to receive a 4 year degree if they opt for vocational school. Might serve them better in the long run.

[D. King]

If it was a snake, it would have bit you!

There is plenty of talent right here.

It’s the human resources department’s responsibility to hire. They now use a matrix which no longer has the experience of the potential employee as the most important parameter. What would be worse is if the government was to take over student loans and use the same matrix. And maybe Collages could use the same matrix for admittance and the curriculum could be adjusted to produce exactly what the employer’s human resources matrix calls for…and around and around goes the big progressive wheel!

[bill tozer]

Ok, I lied when I said not much to add. The trap is to fall into blaming the younger generation. Easy to do. "Gotta pay your dues. Gotta produce. Gotta step up to the plate and work well by yourself and with others or don't let the door hit ya where the good Lord split ya." My pet peeve is when working with new people, they keep asking/whining about raises within the second week on the job. I tell them the gotta wait 3 or 6 months and get some results under their belts. They already got paid to go through 6-8 weeks of training, a background check that is more exhaustive than the FBI background check, given everything thing they need from tools to resources and they only thing they want to know is when/what/where is the next raise, despite my repeating over and over that if you make the numbers for 3 months in a 6 month period, you advance, then wait 3 months, then make the numbers in 3 out of the next 6 months you advance again and again. But, no! They are impatient and need a lot of atta-boys to keep them happy. A lot of atta-boys. They need to be stroked. They call me "old school" cause I tell them I do not expect anything, no plaques, no certicates, no applause ...nothing except my paycheck and bennies for doing what I was hired to do. They get 2 weeks vacation from day one, yet they are unhappy that someone with 5 years gets 3 weeks, and someone with 10 years gets 4 weeks and I get 6 weeks. Like respect, it is earned not given. My nephew graduated last year with a degree in Business Administration. Could not find a job. Finally landed a job with an insurance company. He was handed a phone book and told to go get em. He is selling Medicare Part D and life insurance all over the valley, busy burning up the tires making house calls from morning to night. He earns every penny he gets and with that attitude he will make it just fine. Don't blame the employer for being reluctant to hire dead weight!

[Steve Frisch]

How convenient it is for people to "pull themselves up by their own bootstraps" when public university education is of high quality and relatively inexpensive; the American economy is growing on average at a 6-8% rate; major public investments are being made in infrastructure, technology, transportation and housing; the stock market and banking are still being overseen by the SEC, FDIC, and Fed; the US is still amongst the top global supplier of manufactured goods and intellectual capital based services; and personal savings rates driving the availability of investment capital are averaging 8%, as they all were in the good old days of the 1950's, 60's & 70's.

To bad these conditions bears little resemblence to the modern world.

My experience with younger workers, although slightly skewed due to our ability at SBC to attract the best and the brightest, is that they are ambitious, dedicated, hard working, intellectually self directed, technologically savvy, and relatively altruistic compared to my day and peer age.

I do think they require more feedback, which very well be a strength considering how technology is transforming the work place by requiring more laterally directed work teams to address complexity.

The do get a little tired of hearing how our generation had to walk five miles in the snow with thin shoes to get to school, as the classic Gen-X Saturday Night Live skit pointed out. They recognize this mind set as the farce that it really is.

[Russ Steele]

Steven,

The people you hire, what are their degrees, BS, MA, Phd, and in what fields of study? Your young workers sound like the 7 engineers that I hired from Cal Poly in the 1990s, all self-directed problem solvers.

[Greg Goodknight]

"I do think they require more feedback, which very well be a strength considering how technology is transforming the work place by requiring more laterally directed work teams to address complexity."

Somebody has been playing "Buzzword Bingo" far too often.

[stevenfrisch]

Greg, I am wondering if you will ever have anything nice to say? Must be tough being you.

Lateral communication is both a well known and increasingly widely accepted practice in modern business, being driven by the rapid expansion of communications technology, coupled with the need for organizations to assemble ad hoc work teams to address specific issues. It is particularly beneficial in cases when organizations may not have all of the skills required to address a problem and do not wish to invest in permanent human resources to address the issue.

Fortunately, young people who were conceived and wired in the digital age, get this.

[Brad Croul]

"Employers should instead take in the unqualified, and educate them in the skills needed as, he claims, they did in the old days."

You seem to be contradicting yourself in the above statement. Didn’t Northrop (or whomever) hire you and, if you had some powers of observation, and if they saw some talent, invite you to stay on as an employee, where you probably picked up some skills on the job?.

Employers training newbies is what apprenticeships and internships do, and these "olden" practices are still used today. I guess that, since unions are trying to “force” employers to train apprentices, apprenticeships have taken on a negative connotation in some minds.

Employers also provide funding for specialized, higher education and training. The government also does this for military personnel.

Those who desire more, sooner, still have the option of burning extra midnight oil, or finding alternative funding, from rich uncles to Pell grants, to support higher education costs.

Back a few decades ago the joke what that there were a lot of unemployed history majors - things haven't changed much. Highly specialized techies with science degrees tend to discount generalists with “arts” degrees, but I would call Steve Jobs a generalist and Steve Wosniak a specialist. I think there is room for both in the world.

[Brad Croul]

I would change the above to read, You seem to be contradicting yourself in taking issue with the above statement.

[Mikey McD]

Hiring = liability. Hiring the 'uneducated' is stupid liability.

[Brad Croul]

I think Cappelli is referring to the old, Catch 22, which goes something like, how can I get a job when employers tell me I have to have job experience first?

[George Rebane]

BradC 842am - Are you in agreement with Cappelli that employers make an unwarranted contribution to unemployment? I couldn't tell.

Please do not confuse internships and apprenticeships with the point that Cappelli seeks to make in his article. In good times of low unemployment and/or availability of talent, employers often train apprentices and interns. In times of high unemployment and tax/regulatory uncertainty, employers don't do that very much for reasons obvious to the Right, opaque to the Left.

[Fred]

Regulatory uncertainty? My, that sounds so risky. Pity the poor subsidized free marketeer...