Help wanted: Local manufacturers have jobs they can't fill because of skills gap

[sinkspur]

http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2013/09/skills_gap.html

Help wanted: Local manufacturers have jobs they can't fill because of skills gap

 By Peter Krouse, cleveland.com
 
on September 13, 2013 at 7:00 PM, updated September 15, 2013 at 7:38 AM

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Steris Corp. is trying to bring manufacturing jobs back to Northeast Ohio.
A welcome development by any measure. There's one problem: The maker of medical equipment can't find enough qualified people to fill those jobs, despite promises of good pay and a clean and safe working environment.

The unemployment rate in Northeast Ohio has remained stubbornly stuck in the 7 percent range for months. That's thousands of people without jobs. Employers across Northeast Ohio say they have job openings. Many pay $50,000 a year -- or more. And they can't fill them.

Talent gap, skills gap. Whatever you call it, it's real, according to those on the front lines of manufacturing in Northeast Ohio. Hundreds of high-quality, highly skilled factory jobs are going unclaimed, much to the consternation of companies and those charged with providing them with an educated workforce.

Steris discovered this alarming disconnect after adding a new plant to its manufacturing complex in Mentor to churn out $25 million worth of parts that it once bought from suppliers in Canada and Asia.

Steris outfitted a warehouse - where a previous owner made Dirt Devil vacuum cleaners - with a host of advanced-manufacturing machines that bend steel, cut it with lasers and measure it to minuscule tolerances.

The shop floor was then hooked up to a computer network that provides machine operators with 3-D graphics of the parts they are to produce, which in this case are fittings for hospital machines that wash and disinfect soiled instruments.

"This isn't your grandfather's factory any more," said Dave Johnson, Steris' senior vice president of global operations and quality. "The skills today are highly technical."

Steris has only been able to hire 55 of the more than 70 people it needs to run the factory. And finding the additional skilled machine operators to fill the shop floor had been a chore.

Johnson said he became so desperate to find qualified local workers that he advertised on buses and billboards, and sent people out to pound the sidewalks of Mentor with sandwich boards.

"I'm driving around saying, hell, if it works for the mattress guys and the tax guys, why not us," Johnson said.

He's even offering his employees a $1,000 bounty if they can bring someone in who passes muster.

"I mean there definitely is a talent gap," he said. "No question."

There for taking: 'gold collar' jobs

Voss Aerospace, which operates out of an ancient, four-story industrial building in West Cleveland, a couple blocks from the West Side Market, is another manufacturer whose help wanted signs are being met by either disinterest or under-qualified applicants.

The employee-owned manufacturer makes precision-honed couplings and flanges for airplanes and missiles.

Michael Cleaver, operations manager at Voss, said the company recently conducted 50 interviews for welding jobs and "no one came close" to meeting their requirements.

"We settled on a gentleman we felt has the potential," he said, which means the company will need to spend its own money bringing the candidate up to speed.

Unfortunately, for Voss, it's something it often must do, even for lower-skilled jobs, to fill a position, Cleaver said.

Craig McAtee, interim vice president of advanced manufacturing at Cuyahoga Community College, estimates that about 850 to 1,250 skilled manufacturing jobs are available in the seven-county Greater Cleveland area.

Industrial parts maker Swagelok Co. of Solon is looking for upwards of 80 such workers, he said, while at Parker Hanifin Corp. of Mayfield Heights, "I've heard of 50 at any given time."

And Lincoln Electric is always looking for skilled maintenance technicians, McAtee said, as are smaller companies in the region such as North Coast Container Corp. in Cleveland or Zircoa Inc. of Solon.

These jobs aren't the semi-skilled positions that fled the U.S. for China or Mexico over the past couple decades, but what McAtee calls "gold collar" jobs, where workers use computerized machines and welding torches that require deft touches.

And they can pay $50,000 to $60,000 a year.

Snip

[geronl]

A lot of companies will reject hundreds of applicants, even qualified, for every position in order to get a H1B visa hire.

This includes Trump resorts.

[jmyrlefuller]

Michael Cleaver, operations manager at Voss, said the company recently conducted 50 interviews for welding jobs and "no one came close" to meeting their requirements.

"We settled on a gentleman we felt has the potential," he said, which means the company will need to spend its own money bringing the candidate up to speed.

Unfortunately, for Voss, it's something it often must do, even for lower-skilled jobs, to fill a position, Cleaver said.

That's called Job Training. It's what you're supposed to do. You can't expect every Tom, Dick and Harry to know everything about every job, and you can't expect them to drop everything for however many years it takes to meet your inane requirements and still have the job there when they finish.

There's a local factory in the next town over from me that does similar projects. They manage to get their work done with a ragtag crew of junkies, dropouts and working-class stiffs.

[SirLinksALot]

That's called Job Training. It's what you're supposed to do. You can't expect every Tom, Dick and Harry to know everything about every job, and you can't expect them to drop everything for however many years it takes to meet your inane requirements and still have the job there when they finish.

There's a local factory in the next town over from me that does similar projects. They manage to get their work done with a ragtag crew of junkies, dropouts and working-class stiffs.

In the tech world ( i.e. software development), I see this as a problem all the time.

It's not as if you cannot find people who can, given some time to familiarize himself with the business or specific software tools they use, do the job.

If you look at the advertisement for a software development position, they would mention: Must have experience in the following technologies/programming language/tools etc:

Then they'd enumerate them -- A, B. C. D. E, F, G, PLUS, you must have experience in our particular business ( e.g. banking, transportation, advertisement, securities, brokerage <--- you name it ).

Someone applies for the job because he has experience in A, B, C and D, but needs to brush up in E, F or G (or learn it ), plus, the applicant has worked in some other industry other than the specific one that advertised for the job.

I often see the applicant get rejected for the above reasons. Eventually, the position gets taken over by some Indian or Filipino with a H1-B visa.

[Free Vulcan]

I can accept this to a point, but many times it's a matter of employer expectations, which can often be ridiculous. They want employees with more knowledge and experience sometimes than the managers who are hiring them. Anyone with that level of qualifications would practically be a unicorn.

As was mentioned, this is often because they want to get a cheaper H1-B applicant to work for them.