“SKILLS SHORTAGE” IS A MYTH – EMPLOYERS SHOULD PAY MORE, TRAIN MORE AND EXPECT LESS
A management expert has blasted recruiters for demanding too much of young candidates – and suggested that companies invest more in training and developing their new staff.
He was talking about the American job market – but his comments are likely to chime with job-hunting graduates in the UK, who have been complaining for many months that employers’ expectations are unreasonable. To be eligible even to apply for many permanent ‘first jobs’, many graduates are being told they need to have around a year of experience under their belt.
Writing for the Wall Street Journal, Peter Cappelli – professor of management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania – said:
“Everybody’s heard the complaints about recruiting lately… that they can’t find skilled workers, and filling a job can take months of hunting. Employers are quick to lay the blame. Schools aren’t giving kids the right kind of training. The government isn’t letting in enough high-skilled immigrants. The list goes on and on.
“But I believe that the real culprits are the employers themselves. With an abundance of workers to choose from, employers are demanding more of job candidates than ever before. They want prospective workers to be able to fill a role right away, without any training or ramp-up time.”
He also claims the supposed “skills gap” – between what employers want and what skills workers can supply – is a myth. Employers simply aren’t offering high enough wages for the skills they demand, he says. That’s why they can’t get the staff they want:
“Some of the complaints about skills shortages boil down to the fact that employers can’t get candidates to accept jobs at the wages offered. That’s an affordability problem, not a skills shortage… And makes no mistake: There are plenty of people who could step into jobs with just a bit of training – even recent graduates who don’t have much experience.
“Unfortunately, American companies don’t seem to do training anymore… The amount of training that the average new hire gets in the first year or so could be measured in hours and counted on the fingers of one hand…
“The shortage of opportunities to learn on the job helps explain the phenomenon of people queuing up for unpaid internships, in some cases even paying to get access to a situation where they can work for free to get access to valuable on-the-job experience.”
Placing unreasonable demands on candidates isn’t only damaging for individuals, it is also stopping the economy from growing, Cappelli argues:
“To get America’s job engine revving again, companies need to stop pinning so much of the blame on our nation’s education system. They need to drop the idea of finding perfect candidates and look for people who could do the job with a bit of training and practice.”
Cappelli says there are plenty of ways to get workers up to speed without investing too much time and money. One idea is to put new employees on extended probationary periods, to give both parties the option of calling it a day of things don’t work out. That sounds like a good idea to us…
*Do recruiters demand too much from graduates?
What skills and experience do they say they require – and are their requests reasonable? What’s the most outrageous demand you’ve seen in an advert for a graduate role? And if it’s true that recruiters are demanding more of their young staff, do you think the should start paying more?
Very good article, I find it frustrating that recruiters and companies seem to want the perfect ready-made candidate without any flexibility, and don’t really want to invest themselves in training and letting a new employee find their feet. You have to tick all the boxes get it right first time. With the large numbers of applicants I guess they feel they can be fussy, but it’s really daunting!
Anna…. its not really daunting, in the sense that employers keep digging themselves into a hole, and keep on digging. We must be close to the Peoples Republic of China by now !!!!
Unfortunately for the UK, those factors giving rise to the UK Productivity Gap, specifically the predisposition of Business Managers within UK SMEs obsessing with short term financial issues at the expense of long term strategic commitments (such as Research and Development, Innovation, Human Capital, Training). Hence, the reason why Mr James Dyson sacked Professional Engineers within the UK before relocating the Malaysia.
These factors became clear to the UK Government during 2003 when a report was published by the DTI (UK Competitiveness, Moving To The Next Stage, DTI, 2003), and whereas students are being levied with disproportionate charges thanks to the Liberals (such as £9K+ University Tuition Fees per annum), employers can get away with proverbial murder… and need not provide either sponsorship or placements.
If employers aren’t part of the solution – they remain part of the problem, and such problems need to be addressed by the Government in order to assure that the UK becomes competitive.
I found myself applying for a role that was apparently suited to a graduate today, and felt bad that I, with my year’s experience in the same role (albeit without the 2.1 marketing degree they demanded) would probably put me in a better stead. But reading the spec, it was clear that they were really expecting someone like me with tested skills. I think this proves your point if those of us lucky enough to be second-jobbers are best suited to jobs intended for first-jobbers.
I’m really grateful that Graduate Fog picked up on this article because it’s good to have my suspicions confirmed. It ties in well with the other article about executive pay vs. junior roles/unpaid internships because it’s pure fallacy that the budget is too tight to hire.
There is such an oversupply of graduates that the recruitment/selection procedures used by many employers appear BONKERS to the educated individual. It is truly a case of being able to meet every single bullet point outlined in the job description – and job-hunters know that these can sometimes run to 20+. And often they describe the most menial of “skills” in such euphemistic language that it is impossible to tell whether I have that particular skill. For solid examples of this, just go to websites like Reed and TotalJobs and the “graduate” section. Pretty much all of the job descriptions are pure gobbledygook. Not only do I have to contend with deciphering the descriptions, but employers are demanding way too much for the salary. Most of the jobs in the “graduate” sections of websites do not belong there. If you stripped out all of the roles included disingenuously within this section, the truth would be apparent: finding a genuine graduate role is like finding a needle in the haystack.
The most absurdly demanding advert I have ever seen was a “graduate” role which required me to relocate to Holland (OK, I am bilingual); additionally, I needed to speak fluent English, Dutch and Swedish (strange combination); a legal education was necessary; plus, I needed extensive experience of working in the pharmaceuticals sector – preferably with some formal education in biology/chemistry/natural sciences etc. Starting salary (excluding relocation costs)? 17k. I didn’t apply.
There does seem to be an even more unreasonable expectation from employers these days; though I think I now fall into the category of too qualified/not qualified enough, so I can see my own laziness has left me in this situation.
And while I don’t feel sorry for the employers (users of people), I can understand that their goal is to make as much money as possible, and to do that they must milk and bilk employees as shamelessly as possible: hence, it’s perfectly reasonable to expect that as the economy worsens, management and business owners will be looking for ways to take any personal losses away from customers and employees alike.
Hey, just my thoughts…
I think that if employers are allowed to use our public resources bought and paid for by tax payers, then it is only reasonable to expect them to give back to the people. No one should be allowed to have an unfair advantage. Companies were not allowed to have a monopoly in the USA for a reason, but now stores like Walmart are exactly doing that. People talk about choices. It’s your choice to work for (A) or (Z), but is it really? When these companies have a monopoly on employment and there aren’t really many choices, what are people to do, starve? It is like in the old pirate movies. They tell you to walk off the plank and into the ocean in the middle of no where and eventually drown, or get killed by a sword. Yeah you have choices, sort of, but they both are bad. That is the current employment situation.