Posted on 10/04/2009 5:04:23 PM PDT by BenLurkin
In a brutal job market, here's a task that might sound easy: Fill jobs in nursing, engineering and energy research that pay $55,000 to $60,000, plus benefits.
Yet even with 15 million people hunting for work, even with the unemployment rate nearing 10 percent, some employers can't find enough qualified people for good-paying career jobs.
Ask Steve Jones, a hospital recruiter in Indianapolis who's struggling to find qualified nurses, pharmacists and MRI technicians. Or Ed Baker, who's looking to hire at a U.S. Energy Department research lab in Richland, Wash., for $60,000 each.
Economists say the main problem is a mismatch between available work and people qualified to do it. Millions of jobs with attractive pay and benefits that once drew legions of workers to the auto industry, construction, Wall Street and other sectors are gone, probably for good. And those who lost those jobs generally lack the right experience for new positions popping up in health care, energy and engineering.
Many of these specialized jobs were hard to fill even before the recession. But during downturns, recruiters tend to become even choosier, less willing to take financial risks on untested workers.
The mismatch between job opening and job seeker is likely to persist even as the economy strengthens and begins to add jobs. It also will make it harder for the unemployment rate, now at 9.8 percent, to drop down to a healthier level.
It's become especially hard to find accountants, health care workers, software sales representatives, actuaries, data analysts, physical therapists and electrical engineers, labor analysts say. And employers that demand highly specialized training -- like biotech firms that need plant scientists or energy companies that need geotechnical engineers to build offshore platforms -- struggle even more to fill jobs.
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
Too many people trying to act 'Not White.'
47% of the population of New Orleans cannot read or write. Probably not a good place to have a 'Job Fair' but, you'd be racist if you didn't.
MRI technician. Interesting. How hard can that be? The doctor’s the one who has to make sense of the pictures. I wouldn’t think that’d be such a tough gig. I actually like all the weird noises it makes, the whole 70s sci-fi look and feel. I wonder if you can do it part time. Do you need a degree?
We are trying to find a software person with a unique skill set for a longterm job with good pay. We so far haven’t found what we need out of more than 100 applications. We’ve been looking for more than a month.
Perhaps those 55K-60K jobs used to pay 20K more than that.
That and the engineers I know that are getting "right-sized" and would be looking for a job were making 100K+.
More Democratic Party policy. And America’s laziness.
I have a friend who has 4 daughters. All graduate from college with liberal arts degrees. Journalism, Communist-era literature, physical education and religious studies. All are unemployed. But none will go and learn any skills.
Then we have the Elkhart Indiana folk who lost their jobs thanks to unions, environmental legislation, and stupid OSHA, etc policies. Now these people are wards of the state and are almost unemployable. “I can’t afford my Ford F150 and my house and plasma TV while working a WalMart!!!!”
Welcome to the Nanny State.
Part of the problem is that recruiters and management want people with the *exact* skillset they specify. That’s pretty rare and increasingly so the more specialized the skill becomes. They will pass over 100 qualified applicants that could pick up the skills OTJ or in a couple months of training to try to find one “perfect” candidate.
A great example is in software engineering: These idiot recruiters typically want “three to five years’ experience” in the latest fashionable programming language or system. Trust me, as a guy who knows a dozen or more programming languages, after awhile, they’re all the same. It doesn’t take long to pick up the umpteenth language. But no, they want you to have “three to five years experience” in this latest fad language.
Screw ‘em. When they get their heads out of their rectums, they’ll discover there’s plenty of people available who can learn quickly, will gladly do the work and be excellent employees. Just as soon as management fires HR recruiters and unlearns their idiotic MBA training.
Will you define the "unique skill set" that is needed?
What background are you looking for? Maybe I, or someone else on the forum, knows somebody.
Yeah, well. I hope they enjoyed it while it lasted. Times like these people need to lower their expectations. I mean, I guess they can live on unemployment insurance til it runs out. I'm a self employed service provider. I'm not getting as much business, and I'm having to lower my prices to get business. That's life. Enjoy the good times. Deal with the bad times.
You can’t find someone trainable? I would think now is a great time to hire someone on the cheap. Spending all that time looking has got to be a hassle. Don’t you at some point consider finding a young grad or something with the aptitude, and just train him?
There was a time when you could advance your career
and your pay by moving to a different area but that
is difficult to do now because of the real estate issues.
That’s the problem with a high tech economy where the only education choice for most people is a 4 year degree or high school. The 2 year degree programs in most states are pathetic, teaching very little to prepare the student for a career (with the exception of nursing and law enforcement) and focusing mainly on the student continuing on to a 4 year program at a university.
America needs tech schools now more than ever, but no one wants to fill the need because people that want to go to tech school aren’t willing to pay the big bucks that bachelors’ or AA degree program demands.
There’s plenty of ways for a person who works 40+ hours a week to get an MBA, but its almost impossible to get an AS while juggling a full-time job and family. To make matters worse, you can’t go to school full-time while on unemployment because that makes you unavailable for work (in Florida, at least).
So, the unemployed stay unemployed. The unskilled stay unskilled. The employers with good jobs can’t fill them with qualified applicants.
That's so true. It doesn't make sense to follow each new release of each new program or language. Coding is pretty much like math--logical and immutable. How many different ways can you do if, then, and, or?
And I was just making the same overall point about finding someone trainable. I'd think right now you'd get em on the cheap. And they might even speak English, or be American, if that matters.
It's so much more than the "upmteenth" language these days.
You have to know DDD, TDD, MVVM (or MVP, MVC or whatever), NHibernate, WPF, WCF, WWF, Mocks, Inversion of control frameworks.
It's an alphabet nightmare.
But it pays an enormous wage and the recruiters have a rolodex full of employers who are clueless about what it takes to get and keep anyone with that resume.
Aren’t there plenty of independent technical schools out there in almost every field? The tech industry is littered with certification programs that hiring managers actually respect.
We need someone productive immediately. We are a small company that can’t afford the time or the money to train someone.
I post more info a little later if people are interested.
I’ll post more a little later.
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