26 THE DISTRIBUTOR’S LINK Jim Truesdell James Truesdell is President of Brauer Supply Company, a distributor of specialty fasteners, insulation, air filtration, and air conditioning with headquarters in St. Louis. Mr. Truesdell is adjunct professor at Saint Louis University and Webster University. An attorney and frequently published writer, he is the author of “Total Quality Management: Reports From the Front Lines”. A GOOD JOB MARKET IS GREAT... UNLESS YOU ARE HIRING! It’s a great time to be looking for a job. For the first time in a long time people are finding that it is relatively easy to find work, especially if one has technical skills or is a truck driver. In a society where we have convinced all of our young people they should go to college and be a manager, we are finding a dearth of people who can handle tools and work with mechanical equipment. Intelligent people with bachelor’s degrees in the liberal arts are loath to put on a blue collar shirt and head to a construction site or drive a service truck to the next repair appointment. Even if they will make considerably more money and have greater opportunity with those jobs it is still something they are not mentally prepared to do. After all, their school guidance counselors have been pointing them towards college and careers in “management” and professions all of their young lives. With the recent rollbacks in government regulations and the tax law’s opening up of rapid depreciation opportunities there is optimism in business and a readiness to expand operations and bring in more workers. But finding those workers quickly is difficult, and holding on to them is a further challenge. In February and March the National Federation of Independent Businesses released reports affirming that difficulty in finding and hiring qualified workers continues to the the single most important problem facing small business owners. In response to this some thirtyone per cent of small businesses responding to a survey said they were raising compensation levels to attract or retain employees. Some are using temporary workers to fill openings or are urging retirees to stay on a little longer or work part time to keep a stabilizing, skilled element in the workforce. CONTRIBUTOR ARTICLE It is now much easier for companies to gather applicants and obtain resumes with all of the on-line hiring sites in the marketplace. Where once ads had to be placed in the weekend newspaper and then time passed while people mailed in replies and then interviews were set up, the whole process is collapsed into a shorter time frame. Within minutes of posting a job online resumes come to the hiring manager—and automated screening questions can be applied to do some of the initial sorting. But these new technological tools still cannot make up for a shortage of qualified and willing candidates. After all, the candidates themselves are able to market their skills more rapidly and effectively using the same technology. When a company is looking for a specific set of product skill and familiarity, or is looking for experience in operating certain equipment, or is in search of someone to drive a big rig safely, the number of people who can meet that criteria is often limited. Those are not the skills taught at State U. or the Ivy League. Nowadays it is not unexpected to have sequential people fail to show for job interviews as they have already been hired by someone, or to accept a job and then get a more desirable or higher paying position before their start date. Or perhaps a company hires from what is left of the applicant pool and then subsequently finds that the reason a candidate is still available is because he or she is unable to pass a drug screen physical. When that happens the whole process goes back to the drawing board. As companies find it difficult to hire, they often either seek out workers from their competitors or engage recruiting consultants who start calling up those employed in the industry to see who might be open to a new opportunity. CONTINUED ON PAGE 106
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