Wanted: Skills - The Right Know-how Puts Job Seekers in Driver’s Seat
January 18, 2007 | EditorThe following article does not mention MATC specifically, but it covers the need for technical job skills and WTCS’ roll in filling the need.
Job Skills Give Workers Great Advantage
The Capital Times
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
By Jeff Richgels
It isn’t quite like the prosperity of the late 1990s, but four years of economic growth are tilting the scales back in favor of workers.
The nation’s unemployment rate dropped to a six-year low of 4.6 percent last year, down from 5.1 percent in 2005, as the economy added 1.8 million jobs. In addition, wages grew a robust 0.5 percent in December, bringing the 2006 rise to 4.2 percent and average hourly earnings to $17.04.
The catch for workers is that they need to have the skills to match the available jobs in our increasingly high-tech economy.
In a recent survey, Milwaukee-based staffing giant Manpower Inc. found what it calls a “job seeker’s market” for educated professionals like accountants, engineers and nurses. Forty-five percent of U.S. employers indicated that they would have hired more permanent professional staff in the past six months if they could have found candidates with the right skills, while 38 percent said they are paying higher wages for the same positions compared to the previous year.
“This is a good time to be in the job market - if you have the skills that employers want,” said Jonas Prising, president of Manpower North America.
And the situation is only expected to intensify when the baby boomers start retiring: The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects a shortfall of 10 million workers in the United States by 2010.
Roberta Gassman, secretary of the state Department of Workforce Development, said the issue of worker shortages was not focused on during the recession that followed the dot-com bust at the start of this decade, “but even through that time this issue of a shortage of skilled workers was there.”
And with the economy growing again, Gassman added, the issue of a labor shortage has taken “center stage as something we’re all aware of and working hard to address.”
One prime area of worker shortage noted by Manpower is information technology, indicating the extent of the recovery from the dot-com bust.
Local IT consulting firm Beacon Technologies is one firm in the sector struggling to add staff. Beacon, which was founded in 1998, has 65 employees.
“We have many job openings right now and we’re having trouble finding people,” said Kristen Suttle, Beacon’s human resources manager. “I would say that’s our No. 1 issue right now. And I would say over the past year it’s become more difficult.”
Suttle said the situation is similar to the late 1990s, although salaries “are not where they were then, when people could just request any salary and they’d get it.”Suttle said it’s possible Beacon could double its business if it could find the qualified workers to fill its customers’ needs.
Technical skills: Positions are hardest to fill in manufacturing, specifically the durable goods sector, where 51 percent of employers surveyed by Manpower reported difficulty finding qualified professional candidates.
Today’s manufacturing often requires technical know-how far beyond the skills needed for the assembly lines of the past.
“The manufacturing that is growing is the manufacturing that counts on having a skilled work force - workers who are comfortable with technology, with laser equipment, with robotics,” Gassman said.
Medical device manufacturers Cardiac Science and Viasys NeuroCare say they must work hard to fill their skilled positions.
“It’s definitely gotten tougher,” said Lynda Melugin, director of human resources for Bothell, Wash.-based Cardiac Science, which has a plant in Deerfield that produces stress testers to detect heart abnormalities, automatic external defibrillators and electrodes.
“We certainly have some difficulty with some areas,” said Tracy Platt, global director of human resources for Fitchburg-based Viasys NeuroCare. “Some of the harder areas to find (workers in) are the regulatory areas, engineering and finance.”
Viasys NeuroCare, a unit of Pennsylvania-based Viasys Healthcare that includes Nicolet Biomedical, Nicolet Vascular, Grason-Stadler, and Toennies, makes neurological and neurodiagnostic monitoring products, vascular monitoring products and hearing screening products.
Blair Sanford, director of MBA career services at UW-Madison, said the shortage of skilled workers is benefiting many UW grads.
“The number of multiple (job) offers received by our graduates is at its highest level since 2001,” Sanford said. “I wouldn’t say the students are in control yet. There was a time with the dot-com craze where I think students were dictating a lot. The packages some students were getting (then) was amazing.
“It’s not quite to that level yet. Employers want good talent and are willing to negotiate for the right people. But they’re not sacrificing an offer just for the sake of getting a person on board.”
Benefits a lure: Employer job postings for new MBA graduates this fall were up 27 percent over a year earlier, which Sanford said was a good year, while salaries are up about 3 percent to 4 percent.
Undergraduates also are seeing solid job prospects, Sanford said, with accounting, nursing, pharmacy, and civil and environmental and electrical engineering among the areas of greatest demand.
Luke Whitburn, head of Manpower’s Madison office, said companies need to be proactive to snare quality workers with the skill sets to match their job openings. “The question really is, ‘How do you become the employer of choice?’ ” Whitburn said. “Smart organizations will bring recruiting and retention strategies to the top of their priority lists, giving employees a reason to commit to the long term, and to genuinely care about the success of the organization.”
In addition to higher pay, companies need to be creative with benefits like flex time and day care, Whitburn said.
Beacon’s top priority is retention, Suttle said.
The company enriches its benefits package every year, she said. This year, it added three new benefits: long-term care, vision care, and a Roth 401(k) option. Beacon also offers $2,500 annually to every employee for training.
“It’s treating our people well and supporting them so others can see that and hopefully want to work at Beacon, too,” Suttle said. “It’s based on what our people are telling us is important to them.”
Beacon also works with staffing companies like Manpower and develops relationships with companies so that if they have layoffs they may refer their displaced workers to Beacon, Suttle said.
Some of the workers staffing companies provide to Beacon are foreigners here on special H1 visas for skilled workers, an area Manpower said will grow in importance.
Cardiac Science provides compensation that is above average in the markets it operates in, Melugin said.
Cardiac Science also has annual training offers of $3,000 for continuing education certification programs, $5,000 for bachelor’s degree studies and $7,500 for advanced degrees studies.
And the firm works with staffing companies and local technical schools, and contacts companies that are laying off workers.
“They may be laying off two months down the road and need their workers to stay,” Melugin said. “So we’ll push the hire date (to then) so that takes the fear of finding a job off the mind of that worker and they will stay. It’s a win/win for everybody.” Viasys focuses on employee quality of life, Platt said, with flexible scheduling, skill-based placement and a fitness center on site.
“It’s looking at the total person instead of just the work self,” she said. As a global business, Viasys also can offer worldwide opportunities to its employees, Platt said.
Pay and work/life balance are the key issues for the current generation graduating from college, Sanford said.
“Companies we see here at Wisconsin that are successful give them attractive, competitive pay and interesting, challenging work experiences in a climate where they have time to enjoy other things, too,” she said. “They work really hard. They’re not slackers. But they have seen parents who have worked umpteen hours a week who haven’t had much time to spend with them in some case. And it’s almost a bit of a backlash.”
Sanford said she has seen a trend where companies - particularly public companies that must satisfy shareholders’ desire for short-term results - focus on hiring workers who already have the skill sets needed for their jobs.
“They need to hire people who are ready to go,” she said. “Even with interns, they’re hiring people to do a job.”
Beacon, which is private, looks for experience in its hires “because that’s what our customers want,” Suttle said. On-the-job training: Public companies Viasys and Cardiac Science look for desired skill sets but say they will train good candidates.
“We tend to look for certain attributes in people,” Viasys’ Platt said. “We look for innovative people, continuous learners and collaborative team players. And we look at people’s skill sets and try to match them to positions.”
Cardiac Science can hire good candidates who lack skill sets for its skilled manufacturing and place them in its unskilled (electrodes) manufacturing, then move them to the other lines as they acquire skills.
“We do a lot of cross training in the production part of the building,” Melugin said. Obviously, the best thing workers can do is gain the necessary skills, through schooling, internships and training programs.
The current state budget included $2 million in grants to tech colleges that have provided specific worker training for businesses in their districts. And Gov. Jim Doyle will be proposing a new $15 million “Jobs For The Future” training initiative in his next budget that will include quadrupling funding for the grants to tech colleges, Gassman said.
Doyle also wants to double the youth apprenticeship program that has high school students working at businesses, she said.
The state also has offerings like the dislocated worker program, which aids people like the hundreds of workers who lost their jobs when Sunny Industries went out of business.
“We are all focused like a laser beam on helping our students and workers get more skills so that our high-value employers can hire the skilled workers they need to stay in this state and grow Wisconsin’s economy,” Gassman said.
The Madison area has a work force that is well above average in education, but it also has a plethora of companies in need of skilled workers.
“Certainly, the expertise in Madison is an opportunity for us,” Platt said. “But we risk losing talent due to the highly competitive biotech market here.”
Overall, our situation is a positive, Manpower’s Whitburn believes. “Our unique educational strengths here in Madison will pay dividends,” he said. “Pound for pound, our hires will be better.”
