See, this is the irony: these are the exact things i'm hearing from businesses with low wages and strict policies. In my area, the excuse is "no one can pass a drug test." I could, but then i'm told the same place has a 3day-3strike policy, regardless of reason. Sorry, but I'm not going to let my entire life depend on never being the victim in a car accident, shooting, or whatever. Maybe they're not that strict, but experience tells me they are. But, i've never seen one of these kinds of companies paying more than *MAYBE* 14 an hour (when looking at top rate, not starting).

In my area, we have people going into debt for the rest of their lives to get CNA or LPN training which never goes above 20 an hour (I don't know on RNs, since the only RN i'm in touch with regular works at the local hospital where all the wages are inflated [happens to be my boxing instructor]).

But no, 4% is not what we're looking at.

Seems about right.

Well, what usually ends up being is what i'm saying in the original post: what is qualified? In an age where you can look up your professor's lecture, and counterarguments to it 5 minutes before he gives it, print them out and have it ready, why is anyone out there still unqualified for work? Why can't someone, anymore, just take a qualifications test and pass it, instead of paying out the rear in both money and time (for those of you who think college is free if you're not paying the bill)? Sure, there are things with physical qualifications (like police work), but STEM?

Honestly, in my neck of woods, businesses ARE hiring, but people aren't staying, or they have no idea what holding a blue collar job honestly means.

The corporation I work for hires new hires in at $15 an hour base, gives out a week of vacation paid, with two more to be earned by the end of their first year, a Vanguard 401k, eye, medical and dental plans, along with a free pair of steel toed shoes or boots yearly, and new eyeglasses every other year. On top of that, they offer lots of employee discounts, incentives, methods of training in order to qualify for skilled jobs in house, and people still leave because the work is hard. (That may be true for some areas in assembly, but largely it's not hard, it's menial, it's boring and it's pretty mindless, unless you acquire a skilled job, which obviously, the competition is usually fierce for.)

Within five years, you could hold four weeks of vacation, be making $22 an hour, with the ability to carry over up to two weeks of vacation, have your 401k deduction matched up to 10% by said corporation, etc.

Even with direct hire opportunities, which is a first for this company, as it used to be you'd have to spend 6 months via a temp service to establish work history before they'd even consider making you a permanent employee, turnover is almost 60%.

Maybe in the larger markets, businesses aren't hiring, but locally, we can't keep people. This is turning into a huge problem, as the experienced majority of our workforce is due for, or are actively retiring, with a lot of them going to be gone in their entirety probably within 3-5 years.

As a US resident working in retail, I thank you for starting this interesting topic. Not sure why OP has been downrated though.

I suppose what I'm trying to say is that there's more than just qualifications to getting a job. In fact I know for a fact that almost all qualifications that can be presented to me for my profession can be cheated at (and are regularly). Qualifications get you an interview, then you're expected to prove your skill. I can only assume there are places that don't interview so hard, which is where these other people end up.

In my opinion qualifications are significantly over valued, bordering on being a con in their own right. Since getting my degree, I've done a total of 1 qualification in 15 years professional work (because my company made me), and have not had a problem finding work. These adverts suggesting some three letter qualification will open doors to a 50% pay rise are utterly stupid. If you're good enough to get that qualification, companies will hire you on that basis, not having the certificate.

So in answer to your question - For skilled work, qualified is being demonstrably "good" and showing it in an interview. Certs aren't worth the paper they're printed on.

The discussion is very US-centric in this thread, and I am sure the dilemmas are different in different countries, but globalization is partly making it global (e.g. an US, Finnish and Indian workers ARE in many cases fighting for the same jobs).

Here in Finland the discussion is quite much about whether our social security is "too good" so people rather stay on welfare than go to job interviews, even some lower paying jobs. I keep hearing here also that there is a shortage of workers, as if people are not applying for open jobs and the only way to fight that is to e.g. cut social security so that people would be more willing to work. So the claim basically is that there are loads of open jobs out there that no one is willing to do and no one is applying for them.

Hogwash. I've discussed with many many employers here who have complained about the "shortage of workforce". When I discuss with them a bit more, they are not really complaining that they are not getting applications (usually they are getting buttloads of applications for ANY position), but that they are not finding the "right kind of people" for the positions. Meaning, the right education, competence, work experience, age (= not over 50, definitely not closer to 60), personality etc.

For instance, the common notion here is e.g. that there is a real shortage of cleaners, and anyone who'd apply for a cleaning job would certainly get a position, and the problem just is that no one wants to do so low-paying job.

Yet, when a founder of a new cleaning company was interviewed, he spilled the beans mentioning e.g. that:

- he is getting loads of applications, but only around 5% (IIRC) of the applicants will be accepted as cleaners to the company. I understand many applicants may just seem so unreliable (having serious life management problems etc.) that they wouldn't possibly always appear to workplace, or some applicants don't know any Finnish etc.), but the fact still is he IS getting lots of applications for the cleaner positions.

- the main requirement is that the person must have worked as a professional cleaner before (and he also has to have a "hygiene certificate" which you get for finishing certain kind of hygiene course). So, for instance I wouldn't be accepted for a cleaner position in that company, as I haven't really worked as a cleaner before and I don't have the official hygiene certification either (albeit I am sure I could easily obtain it, I've understood the test to get it is rather simple).

Also, the complaints about our social security being "too good" is meaningless because we've had a rule for ages where you will lose your unemployment benefits if you are offered a job but you don't go to the job interview, or decline the job for no good reason. So if it was true that people are declining to take jobs because they rather live on welfare, these work-avoiders would easily lose the benefits if someone would offer them a job. Their CV and personal details (with education, experience etc.) are available in the employment office, so employers crying of not having enough workforce just need to pick the people from the list.

Has it been analyzed why people are not staying in the jobs, and have any measured been taken to fix those problems that make people to flee the jobs all the time?

Also if I understand right, the problem isn't that you are not getting applications to the positions and/or not finding right kind of people from the applicants, just that few people are willing to stay in the job?

Those people who leave the positions, what do they do? Do they easily find some other jobs, do they move to some other areas in US, or do they rather just remain unemployed than work in those positions?

In a way, that reminds me of a programming consultation firm whose boss was complaining how hard it is to keep the young (25-35 years old) experienced programmers in the company, that they easily look for other programming jobs elsewhere etc. I don't shed a single tear for the boss, to me it seemed he also had very high standards for the programmers he would hire (starting from the "right age"), so the benefits he offers should also be exceptional, if he wants to keep such exceptional people.

Hmmm, sounds like we need to bring back eugenics. /s

Basically, we either get worn out people that have knocked around other plants in town and they're more likely to stay, but they're also highly likely to be limited in use, or we get fresh out of high school/college kids that have never worked a serious job in their lives before, are almost always in trouble in regards to absenteeism, and a percentage screw up their PTO buckets and get fired for missing too many days.

The corporation I'm referring to is notorious for shooting themselves in the foot, and listening to young, fresh out of college engineers who literally have no idea what they're doing, and get themselves into trouble for not listening to people who have had 10,000+ hours working in the plant, across assembly, sub assembly, support, etc.

It used to be that the pathways to get anywhere in the plant in regards to managerial jobs was that you HAD to have experience, especially in the departments you're looking to be promoted in. Now? They take whoever's interested, thinking they could simply be trained to be effective, which is almost never the case. On top of that, we have a Kaizen/Lean team that keeps screwing up the structure of the jobs in the name of improving job ergonomics and safety, but it's really just a front in order to cut rotations out of a department. This has come back to shoot them in the foot, because now, during the soft part of our year, we can't cut assembly rates without serious down time, and maintenance no longer can get to repair issues because of how jacked each department has become over the years.

We're also dealing with a mixture of new tech, with little follow up and shifting people in charge of it, and incredibly ancient tech that's been in place since the 70s and 80s.

Now granted, all of that is frustrating and a morale killer, but most new hires really won't be exposed to that until much later, or unless they become part of the "network" of people with friends in salaried positions. (I'm one of those, as my father was a supervisor, and my older sister is in special projects in maintenance. I get all the actual information pretty close from the horse's mouth.)

A lot of these kids come in with the attitude that they feel like they should get the better jobs, despite having no experience, no seniority, and in a lot of cases, terrible work ethic. It's astounding to me how many people come to work and get upset about having to you know...WORK.

I have no idea if they analyzed the issue at all, but right now, their main response is to continue to blanket my city in hiring announcements, and people keep coming and going.

I think the cisco ones still are, in the IT field. Any entry-level certification is not really much to wave around, but by the time you're carrying a CC*P, that piece of paper alone really does a pretty good job of showing that you know what you're doing - because you can't just walk in with a bunch of memorized answers and get that. And at the E level, well, that cert is worth a lot, both in proof of competency and also literal dollar value to employer. (Though it has a curious effect on mature IEs who generally have either become man-machine hybrids who commune directly with the machine spirits, or else they've lost all functional use except to keep a chair from floating away - and either one of them will get and keep a job because the IE cert itself is so very valuable to the employer)

A lot of the industry certifications aren't really impressive and are mostly just for matching a line in a resume so you don't get it bit-bucketed by the scanner, you're absolutely right. But I do think cisco still has a pretty good certification series.

Even if we are talking about only the IT field, here it seems to depend a lot to which kind of company (and position) you are applying for. For instance, IT/programming consultant companies seem to value them (as well as your degree) much more than many other companies, as their thinking goes "our employees are our business cards". Ie. when the company is offering some consultants to another company for a project or whatever, the more degrees and certifications the consultants have, the better.

Or if the consultant is offering some course, they always state in the beginning of the course their degree, certs, work experience etc., kind of assuring the course participants that yeah I know my stuff. It probably wouldn't sound as good in the beginning of the course if the teacher said "yeah I dropped out of the university after two years and self-learned some stuff at my home, and now I am here teaching you this same stuff". :)

Also here, if you are going to work for the state or communal, the degrees and qualifications they mention in the job ad are non-negotiable. So if they are e.g. seeking a c# programmer and mention one has to have certain kind of university degree, then you will not get to the interview without the degree, even if you have 5 years of solid C# programming work experience.

E.g. when applying to my current job, they seemed to have much less emphasis on certs, and much more eager to get some kind of confirmation the person is eager to learn new systems, and to communicate with the rest of the team.

Apparently the story in my CV, and the confirmation from my earlier boss as a reference, of what I did in my earlier work (where I pretty much had to devise the processes and even tools from the ground up because no one else had, and learn the systems by myself becoming the expert with them) convinced them, and apparently they felt I am social enough (for a Finn) to work fluently in a tight team, and not just retreat to my own computer.

I guess part of the reason is because the system I am administering (with the rest of the team) is kinda specialized, there aren't much of people available who are already familiar with it. Suits me fine, I love learning new systems and stuff, and yeah I have learned I need to keep communicating with the rest of the team all the time in order to get their help in stuff I don't (yet) understand, and also to offer my help to others. E.g. yesterday my colleague pleaded for my help to take some of his open tickets because he will not have enough time to handle them all before the next major release, so I said that if it seems I can handle rest of my tickets soon, I'll take some of his.

I've heard some good things about the cisco courses, because I'm a programmer then i've never directly been involved with them, but the guys working with hardware would usually be talking about getting their CCNA (I don't know if that's still a thing, but it was the entry level one everyone went for). Perhaps if they've got their course up to a standard you can't cheat then it's worthwhile, I just don't know how they'd manage that.

I see a load of letters on someone's CV I just find myself wondering if they actually learned the material or the answers, and if they kept the knowledge in their head for more than a week after passing the exam. That's assuming it was them that actually took the exam, gunmen are still a thing despite improvements in that area. I think this is more prevalent in coding because there's usually 1 exam per subject, so you can quickly rack up certs and not really take in the subject. I think if you've got increasing complexity over a long period then it will force you to retain the knowledge.
I worked in consultancy for my first 6 years, and you're right that they are a useful sales point. In fact that was the 1 qualification I took, because they insisted I start getting these certs like everyone else. They also use it to improve vendor relationships. Consultancies often have reseller agreements with product vendors like Microsoft, or Oracle, and they demand that resellers maintain a certain number of certified staff members.

The biggest and laziest reason they like them though is that it provides an easy HR ranking system. They can set targets of "get these certs" and then you can be measured on that. I left my first company after a bad review, despite delivering some of the hardest projects they had, because I hadn't got my certs. In the same year, the year in industry student took 5 of these exams, got a qualification that's supposed to take 3 - 4 years to work towards. He just subscribed to the answer sheets on the web.

I'm betting it hurt an employer's ego. Well, let me tell you about a local company I applied to, which is now "despirate," offering sign-on bonuses etc just to find people to work: Philips (a dutch company with an office in my area). They had their own private little job fair, told everyone about it. I show up, find out that they needed everyone to have filled out an application online, and that they were just conducting interviews, but this was mentioned nowhere. So, they set up a few computers in a room so that everyone who didn't already have an application in their system would have one (i'm assuming the ones who did, already, either knew someone in the company who told them ahead of time [least likely], or just happened to apply seeing that they had jobs open before finding out about the job fair).

So I drive home, fill out the application on my computer at home, to save time and not take someone else's slot while they were waiting, drive back, and, hey, I got an interview that day (only ever had 4 interviews in my life, no matter how many jobs I applied for). Interview was simple, they saw my resume, learned that I was into computer programming, but without a degree or something, they didn't have a job of that nature for me, and i openly said, "yeah, i know, I'll take just about anything at this point." So the woman asked, "Do you have any experience in soldering? That's our entry-level position." I responded, "not any professional experience, but I tried a few times at home. What's the top hourly rate?" "Around 12.xx [xx was some odd change that I didn't remember off hand] an hour." We talked about any experience I had with a microscope (which was much more, since my experiments with electronics used solderless breadboards, mostly) Some other things were said about something that was going on with the job hiring process and such, but I eventually got an email from them that my application didn't get to the next stage of the process. In other words, because I didn't have alot of experience, or maybe professional experience soldering circuit boards (rural area, so most if not all soldering in the area is pipes), they weren't remotely interested.

So, I decided to take a look at what these jobs they're so despirate to hire people for, right now, are, since they weren't despirate enough to give basic on the job training for soldering, and there are 28!

1. Assembler II, First shift (the job they wouldn't hire me for)
2. Assembler 3, 3rd Shift (same)
3. Assembler II, 3rd Shift
4. Manufacturing Engineer (Seems to be some sort of project coordinator)
5. Manufacturing Engineer
6. Assembler II, 2nd shift
7. Assembler II, 1st Shift
8. Assembler 5, 3rd Shift
9. Assembler II, 1st Shift
10. Assembler II, 2nd Shift
11. Assembler II, 1st Shift
12. Assembler II, 2nd Shift
13. Assembler V, 2nd Shift
14. Assembler II, 2nd Shift
15. Assembler II, 1st Shift
16. Assembler II, 3rd Shift
17. Manufacturing Supervisor, 3rd Shift
18. Manufacturing Supervisor 2nd Shift
19. Assembler II, 1st Shift
20. Assembler II, 2nd shift
21. Assembler II, 2nd Shift
22. Assembler II, 2nd Shift
23. Assembler II, 2nd Shift
24. Assembler 5, Lead Position, 3rd Shift (guessing this is one of those obligatory "supervisor who isn't a supervisor" roles)
25. Assembler II, 2nd Shift
26. Manufacturing Equipment Maintenance Technician, 3rd Shift
27. Assembler Lead, 2nd Shift
28. Assembler II - 3rd shift

Personal experience with this company's hiring process tells me why they're making arguments that there is no skilled labor force, despite the biggest company here cutting jobs and a whole class of graduating highschool seniors. Sure, soldering takes time and practice, but you need to be willing to train people yourself.

EDIT: To be fair, i know where they got the attitude from. About 10-15 years ago, the local public trade school (who has agreements with the highschool) who offers classes "for free," had an "electronics course," which I actually tried signing up for, but they ended up canceling the class (permanently) due to "lack of interest." I would've gotten my experience from that, but the class isn't available anymore, and the company's confused on why they aren't getting the numbers they used to see with experience.

The same discussion is happening here, and I did the math before based on gas prices, etc, when i was working at the kosher chicken factory, and I found out that when couples were working together living paycheck to paycheck paying a babysitter to raise their kids for them, my mother was able to, after the cost of working, make more money than either individual, and your pay goes up for each kid you pop out (there's a cap to keep it from being too lucrative, but think about the implications for a minute): you make more money on welfare than working a job where you might not know your schedule from one day to the next ('cause that's how the place was run), where the company was known for finding ways to fire you for injuries (I could tell the most sickening stories of the place), etc. As a result, i have plenty of respect for the people who work there without criminal records: everyone there knows they'd make more money on welfare.

Meanwhile, the sister of one of the workers was on welfare, and rumor has it that she was the one who established and owned the family restaurant, but it was registered in his name, because it would've influenced her welfare payout. To be fair, regardless of rumor, he did manage the place to a respectable degree as far as we could tell, and this ended up getting him a promotion to supervisor in the company he works for full time (still the chicken factory). But, who knows, maybe he manages the company by phone while doing his day job in the company, and we just don't know about it (otherwise a great guy, though, and the food's great, too). Right, and this is where the US is much, much different.

Sounds like when I was rejected for assistant of the IT person at the nursing home I was working for. There was actually someone more qualified than me, i'll concede, but he was one of the CNAs. They ended up hiring someone outside of the company for the position. I came to the conclusion, there, that they liked us to know our place and stay in the positions we were already working. So much for "working your way up," which is the advice all the boomers always gave me.

So, basically, the company has unrealistic hiring standards for most positons, but that sheepskin suddenly becomes magick qualification for higher positions?

But, to answer your question: probably not. Usually the people behind these messes are HR people, whom have to go out of their way to justify their positions (at the nursing home i worked for, he was almost never there, because he was doing busy work outside of the building [i saw the CEO way more often, and he was known to actually work with bottom level employees like me, just to be nice, and he even wrote me a card by hand when my mother had passed, and he actually talked to me about improving my future, because he believe the work i was doing was beneath my skills, though i never told the HR person that he said as much]). To be fair, everyone's taking orders from above, even the CEO, so I really can't tell where this crap usually comes from, but i've heard supervisors going after the HR reps as well in companies.

There's actually a really cool test for this, but they also found out that if you can't pass the test before you take your programming classes, it's highly unlikely you'd pass it after getting instruction on the test material. I found a cool way to make people who failed the test end up actually passing it, but, hey, without a college degree, no one will listen to me. But, the long short of it is, the programming courses are pretty much bad at teaching the material (even if the material itself is good), but I know how to break the very test that says it's not worth the course, and allow the teachers to start teaching again.

Here's info on the test if you're curious. I first heard about it as a response to someone else complaining that people with degrees can't even draw a triangle without printf/cout. This always seems to be the big one at the end of the day: HR people have a tough job of having to evaluate people and their worth, and given their responsibilities and their expectations, they are expected to err on the side of safety: you don't get fired for passing up talent, but you do get fired if you hire someone who's completely incompetent and costs the company money. Instead of trying to make it easier for HR by making standardized qualifications tests that the HR people can apply, or by having HR people work with department heads who are close enough to the job to evaluate skill on a practical level, we, in turn, filter them out by whether or not they got a damn piece of paper.