Are You Job-Ready? – Part 2
November 15, 2016 Great work requires focus and concentration Are you really ready to hold down a responsible job? You need more than technical ability. The ultimate sign of readiness is productivity coupled with excellence. Can you produce value commensurate with the pay you receive? If not, nobody will want to hire you. In any […]
Are You Job-Ready? – Part 1
Time is of the essence. Your success in a trade career depends on several elements. One is mechanical aptitude, coupled with relevant technical education and/or experience. You must be trained or trainable, and able to do the work. In the next several articles I will address another element, which I’ll call “job readiness.” Many of […]
BREAKING NEWS – Help Wanted Everywhere!
October 20, 2016 The trade shortage is a global problem It’s not just here in the U.S. Employers around the world are finding it hard to recruit enough skilled trade workers – harder than any other field. The latest Talent Shortage Survey by ManpowerGroup that was just released sampled more than 42,000 employers in 43 […]
THE IMPORTANCE OF VOCATIONAL EDUCATION
September 29, 2016 By Rebecca Woodul ITT Tech’s nationwide closure forces us to ask, where is the next generation of skilled tradesmen and women going to come from? Are there enough tools out there able to bring young men and women into the fields starving for talent? Vocational and technical education is not only a lucrative […]
Lessons From The ITT Fiasco
September 27, 2016 Squeeze lemons before buying them If you pay attention to the news, you probably have heard about the closure earlier this month of ITT Technical Institute, a for-profit college chain with more than 130 campuses in 38 states and some 40,000 students now left out in the cold. The closure came after […]
You Need Relevant Skills
September 13, 2016 A big bank funds a program to do that The media keeps reporting that the U.S. unemployment rate keeps dropping. The latest official data shows that it has dropped below 5% of the eligible workforce, a level that historically has come close to defining full employment, since some people are voluntarily unemployed. […]
Seeing Is Believing
Open your doors to interested people Virtually every trade contractor I know tells me that finding qualified help is one of their biggest problems, especially technicians who are either experienced or trainable. They put help-wanted ads in all the right places, attend career day events, offer recruitment bonuses, even put recruitment messages on their service […]
Good Jobs Are Hard To Find
The trades offer plenty of them. Here’s a recent story that grabbed my attention. It describes a scene in Queens, New York, where hundreds of people camped out overnight to receive applications to join the Plumbers Local 1 apprenticeship program. The union made it known that they would hand out a maximum of 1,000 applications, […]
A Lifetime Burden
July 12, 2016 Student debt can stay with you forever It was chilling to read a recent Wall Street Journal article detailing what can only be called a crisis with student debt, most of which is owed by college graduates or, worse, college dropouts. The article (subscription required) said that 43% of some 22 million […]
My Commencement Speech
Congratulations on your choice of a trade career! This month the news media has been filled with stories of dignitaries addressing graduates at commencement ceremonies of various colleges. In these speeches the VIPs typically congratulate the grads and encourage them to go out and do some good for society. It’s unfortunate that we never hear […]