Hiring People - Solving the Mystery?

[Chris Merriam]

I spent a year finding jobs for ex-military. Scott, Virginia is home to the largest naval base around, Norfolk. The Navy guys compared to the other services are a great fit for technical jobs. The cream of the crop are the nuclear techs, they have the equivalent of an engineering degree, but I doubt you'd be able to afford them, but there are plenty of other techs you can look for. As was mentioned earlier, the Army program is called Acap, I can't remember the naval term. If you browse around the Norfolk navy website you will probably find some links to their placement services.

[Kevin Jenness]

When I read these stories bemoaning the lack of good employees I realize how good I have it. I work in a custom shop in Vermont, part of a home design/build outfit. With 5 cabinetmakers, a finisher and a manager, everyone is skilled, responsible, shows up on time,, works hard and works together. We have had a couple of young recruits who didn't work out, mostly for failing to accept how much they didn't know, but at least they were trying.The last two hires have been younger guys in their mid-30's who are really willing and able. Everyone else has been here for at least 8 years, everyone is college educated. I'm not sure if we've been lucky in our applicants and retention rate, but I would say it has something to do with the fact that we're paid well for the area, the work is steady ,we have a reputation for doing good and often interesting work, and we have considerable autonomy, so good people want to work here. If we do a good job of interviewing and checking references, then it's down to attitude. That's the one thing you can't teach. I would rather train a novice with a good attitude than have a skilled worker who didn't fit in. That said, teaching skills is expensive.We have been fortunate to have experienced woodworkers here, and there are guys on the building crews who would love to get in the shop.

I think there is a dearth of young people wanting to go into the trades. The party line is you have to go to college to make money, so the talented kids funnel in that direction, and what's left to operate the infrastructure is not the intellectual elite, nor perhaps the most highly motivated. And the fact is that woodworking as a trade is not especially remunerative. So I think if shops want to find people worth employing, they should offer good wages and benefits, expect to train for skills, treat workers like human beings and expect the same, hire slowly and fire quickly if not working out and cultivate a good reputation by doing good work and working with good people.

I don't in any way mean to suggest that the folks who are having problems getting good employees are not doing all of the above. Maybe we have been lucky, maybe we benefit from a better labor pool here. Certainly there are networks of good craftsmen here in Vermont. I am just trying to offer my perspective as someone who fetched up here after working on my own for 15 years.

[Brian Ashton]

Most of the world lives a subsistence lifestyle. They live pretty well, because they're satisfied with fewer clothes from consignment stores, and second hand places instead of the delusion of saving money by taking coupons to macy's. What they won't have is expensive disposal of money with nothing in return (going to a restaurant, appetizer, fillet, two glasses of wine and dessert...that kind of thing), or two late model cars all the time. Subsistence living is something more like never having any disposable income at all, like subsistence farmers used to live. They were masters of depriving themselves of pleasure that cost money, and looked for satisfaction elsewhere.

I can't say I've done a lot of travel in the 3rd world, been to 6 or 7 that would be considered 3rd world or bordering on... I can't say I've met anyone in those countries living a life style you describe and being content with it. They do without for one reason, the things they want and often need like basic cloths, shoes, medicines, luxuries like milk... are extortionally high priced. Not because they've made a conscious decision to live without.

YMMV

[Drew Sanderson]

You could find "help" within the realms of computer science. I focus my work on software, and at the heart of most developers you find someone who likes to build things. They don't care what they are building, they just want to build stuff. You would not believe the woodworking conversations I have at conferences. These people see woodworking as their sincere avocation with a duty of mastery for themselves. The obvious problem is an economic one. So its not all this crazy talk about the derogatory nature of my generation, its just that our trade is in a virtual environment where people will go to extraordinary lengths to recuit and retain talent. By 2020 there will be 1,000,000 more computer science jobs than computer science students. Facebook has even added a wood shop to their campus because they believe the experience of woodworking will translate positively to the work of their employees.

[Frank Drew]

I agree with much of the sentiment expressed here about the difficulty finding good employees, but, for what it's worth, many if not most of the employers I've spoken with who are really happy with the work ethic of their blue collar employees have hired recent immigrants, and that's in agriculture, the building trades, janitorial services, etc.. And they're paying good wages to those good workers.

Just sayin'....