Missing Applied & Soft Skills

This Is Why Finding Talent Is Getting Tougher in 2016

roy.maurer@shrm.org

https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/news/hr-news/pages/recruiting-gets-harder-in-2016.aspx 

By Roy MaurerJun 20, 2016

More than two-thirds of surveyed organizations hiring full-time staff indicate they are having a difficult time recruiting for job openings, according to a research report released today by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM).

That number is up from what it was in 2013, when half of responding organizations reported having recruiting difficulties for full-time positions.

SHRM surveyed more than 3,300 HR professionals in February 2016 from various industries and company sizes.

Respondents in the health and social assistance (81 percent) and manufacturing (75 percent) sectors reported the highest levels of recruiting difficulty.

These results echo similar findings from the SHRM Leading Indicators of National Employment (LINE) recruiting difficulty index, which has shown a rise in the challenge HR professionals report in finding candidates.

​Talent Churn Muddies the Waters

Lower unemployment and more job openings, as shown by data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics over the past year, may indicate that more people are seeking out new job opportunities, but this churn also is making it more difficult for organizations to fill open positions.

“According to HR professionals, it’s getting harder to find people for the jobs they are trying to fill and the top reasons are a low number of applicants, lack of needed work experience among those that do apply, competition from other employers and a lack of technical skills among job applicants,” said Jennifer Schramm, SHRM-SCP, manager of workforce trends at SHRM.

“Another factor that many HR professionals noted was that their local markets were simply not producing enough qualified candidates. This factor alone could be behind many of the reasons HR professionals think it is a more difficult recruiting environment.”

The survey found significant differences between industries. For example, HR professionals in construction, mining, energy, finance, insurance, real estate, health and social assistance, high-tech, and manufacturing were more likely to report that their local labor market was not producing enough work-ready job candidates compared with respondents from other industries. Respondents in the accommodation, food services and retail sectors were more likely than those in other industries to say candidates lacked workplace soft skills such as problem-solving, interpersonal skills, communication, teamwork and leadership.

HR professionals in the education and government fields were more likely than those in other industries to say job candidates did not have the needed credentials or certifications for the roles they were applying for.

Not surprisingly, vacancies for jobs requiring high and in-demand skills are among the most difficult to fill. According to the HR professionals surveyed, the most difficult-to-recruit-for job categories were high-skilled medical professionals, scientists and mathematicians, skilled tradespeople, engineers and architects, IT/computer specialists, executives, and high-skilled technicians.

Key Skills Lacking Among Job Applicants

More than half (59 percent) of HR professionals reported some level of basic skills deficit among job applicants, and 84 percent reported applied skills shortages in job applicants over the last year.

The most common basic skills deficits employers encountered were:

• Writing in English (30 percent).
• Basic computer skills (30 percent).
• Speaking English (18 percent).
• Reading comprehension (17 percent).
• Mathematics (14 percent).

Notably, all industries reported writing in English and basic computer skills as the top two basic skills shortages. The most commonly reported missing applied skills were:

• Critical thinking and problem-solving (45 percent).
• Professionalism and work ethic (43 percent).
• Leadership (35 percent).
• Written communications (29 percent).
• Teamwork and collaboration (28 percent).

A higher percentage of HR professionals in the accommodation, food services, retail, finance, real estate, and health and social assistance sectors reported applicants lacking professionalism and work ethic when compared with other industries.

“Many HR professionals are reporting a lack of technical skills as a key reason behind the challenges they are having finding candidates for open jobs,” Schramm said. “Some of the reasons that positions require new skills, according to the HR professionals surveyed, are changing technology, growth of the organization, changing customer and client expectations, and the development of new products and services.”

While technology tends to be a driver of these changes, the most common types of new skills required for the full-time jobs HR professionals said they needed to fill in the last year were actually workplace or soft skills such as interpersonal skills, teamwork and leadership, Schramm said.

Training and Hiring Internally Most Effective Solution

Skills shortages are putting renewed emphasis on training. Although most organizations (70 percent) are ramping up social media engagement to find passive job candidates, build employer brand and advertise open positions, the approach HR professionals consider most effective is to train existing employees to take on hard-to-fill roles, with the largest organizations leading the way in this area.

Almost half (48 percent) of respondents said training existing employees to take on hard-to-fill positions was an effective recruiting strategy. This was followed by using social media and recruitment agencies (both 47 percent), expanding advertising efforts (44 percent), and improving the compensation packages being offered to job candidates (42 percent).

Although training is seen as valuable, nearly one-third (31 percent) of employers are operating without a training budget.

“HR professionals are very close to the talent market, and they are able to see it change and evolve in a way that few others can,” Schramm said. “So they must make the business case for greater investments in training and development based on this in-depth knowledge. To do this, they will often have to show the financial return on investments in training through improved outcomes in recruiting, retention and job performance.”

Roy Maurer is an online editor/manager for SHRM. Follow him @SHRMRoy

About Roy Maurer

Online Manager/Editor, Talent Acquisition

Roy is covers talent acquisition for SHRM Online. Before joining SHRM in 2008, he was an editor and reporter covering state and city government in Indiana, arts and culture in Los Angeles and theater in Washington, D.C. Before that he was a filmmaker and screenwriter. He has a master's degree in journalism from Indiana University and a bachelor's degree in film production from Columbia College.

Contact him at roy.maurer@shrm.org and follow him on Twitter @SHRMRoy​.

Note: Mr. Maurer permitted our reposting his article, 1-23-16

Workshop for Seniors

Researchers have looked at the National Guard model and then piloted an intervention. We are proud that Oklahoma has a successful National Guard Youth ChallenNGe Program, the Thunderbird Youth Academy, in Pryor.

We can learn from this research found in the Chronicles of Evidenced-based Mentoring, University of Massachusetts at Boston. The pilot intervention described below is highly adaptable for pre-collegiate students anywhere in our state.

By Sarah Schwartz July 8, 2014

Teaching Students to Recruit Academic and Career Mentors: Preliminary Results from a Pilot Intervention

by Sarah Schwartz, Ph.D.

As we have written about before (see post), there is evidence to suggest that Youth Initiated Mentoring, as implemented by the National Guard Youth ChalleNGe Program, may be an effective approach to mentoring vulnerable adolescents. 

Under this model, youth nominate adults from their existing social networks to be their mentors, and then programs provide screening, training, and monitoring of the relationship, in essence, turning the relationship into a formal mentoring relationship.  We know, however, that natural mentoring relationships can be just as effective as formal mentoring relationships, or even more so. 

An ongoing question for me has been whether we might see positive impacts simply by providing youth with the training and support to identify, reach out to, and develop relationship with potential natural mentors in their lives without ever formalizing those relationships.

A pilot intervention that we recently completed at the Center for Evidence-Based Mentoring attempts to do just this. In collaboration with Urban Scholars, a pre-collegiate program for students typically underrepresented in college settings, Stella Kanchewa and I  designed a workshop for seniors in high school that aimed to teach them how to identify and connect with potential academic and career mentors. 

The workshop included lessons exploring the benefits of mentoring relationships and different types of social support and social capital, creating eco-maps (graphical representations of youth’s existing relationships) to identify potential sources of social support, and practicing how to reach out to and connect with adults (both through role-playing as well “real-world” conversations and interviews with adults in their social networks), including potential rejection. 

Since a particular focus of the program was developing academic and career mentoring relationships during the transition to college, we also focused on networking, professionalism, and “codeswitching” when connecting with adults across contexts. 

Although youth did not leave the workshop with a formal mentoring relationship, they were asked to identify an adult from their existing social network to support them during their transition to college and to explicitly discuss how and when they could reach out to that person. The workshop culminated in a “Networking Night” in which the students practiced introducing themselves and connecting with professionals from a range of fields.

Initial analysis of interviews with students suggests that such training can increase the value adolescents place on mentoring relationships and social capital, as well as developing their “help-recruiting” skills and their self-efficacy in reaching out to potential academic and career mentors. 

In addition, there is preliminary evidence that such an intervention may increase their ability to access social support from nonparental adults. In future studies, we will be collecting follow-up data to explore the longer-term influence of the workshop on students’ relationships during their first year of college. 

We are still in the very early stages of exploring this approach, but it may represent an effective strategy to facilitate the development of supportive relationships between young people and adults by allowing youth to mobilize the support of the adults in their lives.

http://chronicle.umbmentoring.org/teaching-students-to-recruit-academic-and-career-mentors-preliminary-results-from-a-pilot-intervention/  Ret. 8-5-1

Note: For the blog, we split the paragraphs to make reading easier. 

Career and Mentor Resources

Be A Mentor in Charleston, South Carolina, has provided a helpful list of resources for mentors.  The topics include "Connecting with Your Mentee," "Lunch Buddies" (Look at this whether you do the lunch buddies model or not.) and "Career Path Mentoring," which includes information on financial aid, financial literacy, budgeting, etc. 

http://www.beamentornow.org/resources/for-mentors/

Be A Mentor is the lunch buddies model oriented toward careers and for older students, e.g., middle school.

About Be A Mentor from its website: 

"Be A Mentor was founded in 2004 as an umbrella organization that worked to recruit and refer individuals who were interested in mentoring to organizations throughout The Lowcountry. In 2010, Be A Mentor launched their own mentoring Lunch Buddy programs that worked to fill the need for in-school mentoring.

In the past three years, the Lunch Buddies program has expanded into nine elementary schools and three middle schools. Through weekly meetings, our mentors work to instill confidence, build social and emotional skills, as well as work to ensure that every child has a caring adult in their lives.

Be A Mentor will continue to expand our programs for the 2013-2014 academic years. In Fall 2013, we will debut our new program, Project SHINE. Project SHINE will focus on career exploration and academic success at the middle school grade levels. Mentors in Project SHINE will be given the opportunity to work one on one with a middle school student and together they will be able to work on setting and reaching goals." 

http://www.beamentornow.org/