Now companies are blaming potential workers for not enough skills

[TheNewMe]

I've seen several articles on that topic lately.

Here is a response to that:

Quote:Why Companies Aren't Getting the Employees They Need
The conventional wisdom is that our education system is failing our economy. But our companies deserve a lot of the blame themselves.
By PETER CAPPELLI
Wall Street Journal
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Even with unemployment hovering around 9%, companies are grousing that they can't find skilled workers, and filling a job can take months of hunting.
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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.
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Some of the complaints about skill 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 skill shortage. A real shortage means not being able to find appropriate candidates at market-clearing wages. We wouldn't say there is a shortage of diamonds when they are incredibly expensive; we can buy all we want at the prevailing prices.
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Here are three ways in which employees can get the skills they need without the employer having to invest in a lot of upfront training....[titles of next three sections:]
- Work with education providers
- Bring back aspects of apprenticeship
- Promote from within
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Comments on this article also seen on reddit

A few years ago when the economy started going, the previous company I worked for noticed layoffs at other companies in their industry. They thought they could get good highly technical people for cheap wages. So they wrote up a job description demanding more skills than the job actually needed, requiring someone with a phd in a specific technical discipline, for a salary $20-$30k less than people in the current position were making who had bachelors or masters degrees. Plus, it was a geographic location no one would want to move to.

We laughed and laughed. If a company is laying off, the last thing they would do is lay off people in a hard-to-find technical discipline. Plus, the technical person would have their pick of jobs elsewhere, and with a pay raise.

That was probably the most fun we had at that job - being amused by the illogical thought patterns of the higher-ups. You couldn't tell them otherwise.

A couple months ago, my previous co-worker called because her manager wanted to know if I wanted to come back to that job. Apparently they hadn't hired anybody.


Oh, I just noticed... Given the Occupy Wall Street movement lately, will I get points off for quoting the Wall Street Journal?