In the Wall Street Journal on 10/24 an article was published indicating that 52% of US companies were reporting major difficulty in filling jobs. 47 % blame the lack of hard job skills or technical skills and 35% state candidates just don’t have the experience.
We in Home Building have seen shrinkage in the number of US employees in our industry by 35%. Most have moved on to other industries, some are working part time jobs and waiting for the industry to rebound and then others have just retired or have given up completely. Sure there are 50 applicants for every job you advertise but most seem never to fill the job specification your developed.So what do we do about it?
Virtually no one in our business is as dedicated to training employees as we were prior to 2006. The general state of our industry is that the luxury of training was eliminated in one of the several cut backs builders experienced over the last 4 years. Today most builders have an expectations that the experience and skill required for the job is present and current or typically they are not interested. I propose that is the real problem that exists today in American businesses and home builders.
Placing emphasis on training everyone in your organization just makes sense. In these lean times, the best way to accomplish this is to request a more senior employee to assist the new comer. Your employees need to understand the vision, mission, values, processes and expectations of their employer. If we wait for the perfect employee to appear for the job, we will always be of the impression that it is difficult to hire.
Let’s conduct our business a little more like we did before all hell broke loose in 2006. Pay attention to training…It will not only cut your cycle time in searching for talent, it will increase the effectiveness of every employee on your roster.
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