Employers, the problem you have created and how you can end it (interviews, payment)

[cocaseco]

Originally Posted by wanderlust76

Since the job isn't entry level you probably want someone with years of experience. This is part of the skills gap myth. It's not that you can't find workers...you just can't find workers that can get off the launch pad right away. A job like yours in the Pittsburgh area would get tons of applicants if you had reasonable qualifications. Employers are not willing to train anymore so the younger generations are having trouble getting any experience or getting their foot in the door.

Often your point is solid. But in this specific case, the barrier to entry is exceptionally low. I don't want to train because the skills are so readily available through continuing ed and government training centers. I don't want to pay you to learn what someone else took a little initiative to do on his/her own dime. Again, your point is often true for many positions, but it is a two way street and employees need to take some steps to make themselves employable in this modern world.

[parried]

Many businesses like you want what I call 'plug and play' employees. The truth is you aren't owed them. Just like the 60 minutes guy said to the machinist company...."if there's something you need for your company, you do what you gotta do [like paying for it]".

[2nd trick op]

Let me approch this from a different perspective; the internship isn't so much about training, as an attempt to identify -- and break -- any strong-willed prospect to the culture of the still-emerging "Orwellian" workplace.

It's been 39 years since my first "real" job imploded. I wasn't happy with my off-duty life in a dull blue-collar community after five years in a stimulating campus environment. My department head was a veteran of World War II, very much in synch with the regimented atmosphere common to the life of an "organization man".

I was one of four people (the other three, interestingly, were all veterans) hired to man a desk where a lot of spontaneous "in the field" situations arose. I was, apparently, pretty good at it, as clearly measured by both the time and money spent on each incident handled, (and which, luckily for me, was easily documented) and the shift supervisor and several other co-workers went to bat for me on that point on several occasions.

The problem arose when the department head issued an order requiring us to wear neckties -- to me, that symbolized all the senseless conformity to which his generation subscribed. I resisted at every opportunity, but the breraking point came when the pompous ass had the nerve to crow over his authority in front of everyone else.

The next day, I simply came to work comfortably and sensibly dressed, and while I was eased out about two months later, to this day I regard that decision as a defining moment in the shaping of my character, and I'll offer no apologies whatsoever.

A combination of events, technologies and societal trends have caused too many of our enterprises and workplaces to be managed by over-sensitized "gutless wonders". A substantial portion of disposable income is in the hands of people who still subscribe to the Lawrence Welk/Ward Cleaver mentality of the Fifities -- some of them haven't worked in the economic mainstream for up to fifteen years or, if they were stay-at-home "trailing spouses", have never done so.

Forcing propspective employees to pander to that "non-mentality" is a substantial part of the process of an internship.

[wargamer6]

OP voted for this. He should deal with the consequences.

[andywire]

Originally Posted by parried

Many businesses like you want what I call 'plug and play' employees.

Sure beats a "whine" and "cry" employee.

Frankly, I don't see the issue. If the employer is offering a job, and a qualified candidate acquires the job, where is the problem? Would you like the government to dictate who they can and cannot hire?

Absurd.

[parried]

Just saw this yesterday. Sums everything up perfectly.

Ask The Headhunter: Unemployment -- made in America by employers | PBS NewsHour

[wargamer6]

Have you tried any of the advice posted on here, parried?

[hopefulone]

Originally Posted by Rambler123

Interesting outlook on life:

1) Because MOST people have a job, the rest don't matter. Good to know... that makes sense. Also, you're kidding yourself if you honestly think most unemployed people would rather not have work than have a job. The only exception MIGHT be if the job literally pays so little that it is not worth it... but I guess that's also the fault of the unemployed somehow. Oh, and there aren't jobs - last estimates place the number of jobs at 1 per 3 out of work Americans who need a job... and that assumes that the "jobs" in question are just more of the same fake listings that clutter up websites.

2) All of us should just "create jobs" if we want to fix the problem - but don't ask big business to do so. Yes, because it makes plenty of sense to shift the burden of job creation onto the average working class American with limited funding vs. asking say... the huge corporations to actually provide jobs. But that's okay - let's just keep giving them tax breaks and turn a blind eye towards their behavior! Oh, and another thing - you do realize that the small businesses that most of us are fine with will eventually be ground under by the big businesses that run amok? If you really love small business, you'd want to keep some rules on big business.

3) Business owners and the rich are two different groups: Really? Do you expect ANYONE to believe that? If you're talking about SMALL business owners, that's different, but as I said before in my posts (that I doubt you read) I don't have a problem with them because they aren't the ones buying up our leaders and shipping our jobs off to other nations in huge numbers. In the realm of those who can influence our nation, the rich ARE the business owners - to say otherwise is just a joke.

4) You were happy when you were poor, so everyone else is a whiner. I'm glad you were happy when you're poor. Good for you. It's also nice that somebody else thought you deserved a job. That somebody else thought you deserved an education. That somebody else was willing to pay for your bills when you were growing up or broke while being happy and poor. Or, even if you started your own business, that somebody else was nice enough to loan you start-up money. It's really quite fortunate that all those people didn't give you a story about how you were just "whining" when you asked for work or how you "deserved nothing" because most people had jobs.

But that's okay - let's just keep demanding people pull themselves up by their bootstraps after having stolen their shoes. Makes sense to me.

Yep.

[timberline742]

Originally Posted by Red3311

If you hate competition, then goto a communist country. People that fail to compete are the same ones that want to give everyone a trophy in kids soccer leagues just for participating.

Ever been to a communist country? They tend to have the most unbridled capitalism. You're confusing political systems and economic systems. Ugh

[2nd trick op]

Originally Posted by timberline742

Ever been to a communist country? They tend to have the most unbridled capitalism. You're confusing political systems and economic systems. Ugh

Since the only "true"? communist nations remaining are Cuba and North Korea (China is close, but intertwined with a globalized monetary/financial network) I can't understand what you're trying to say.

Marxism is an economic system, one which depends upon the power of the state to suppress all opposing points of view, often in a very brutal fashion. When the unworkability of that arrangement becomes apparent, what usually replaces it at first is crony capitalism, and that seems to be pretty much what Obama and the Chicago machine gangsters behind him have in mind.

The fall of institutionalized Marxism has produced a number of success stories, particularly in the Baltic and some Central European nations like Hungary and the Czech Republic. But no former Marxist state has readily embraced laissez-faire capitalism, and the complexity and uncertainty of daily life in an increasingly-industrialized world makes such a development unlikely.