Third Shift Causes Cancer!
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If you haven’t been reading about this, it’s a fairly multi-dimensional study with some pretty amazing fallout for our economy. Wonder what this is all going to mean for printers, publishers and packers. It can’t be good!
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HA! Someone Stumping for Southern! Check THIS Mercurius!
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You have to love it! If you’re thinking we are through with the discussions and rumors regarding Southern and Schawk, the head’s not dead yet! Check out the latest comments here
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Don’t Jump Off the Building Yet - Graphic Arts Will Get Exciting
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I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking ”sure it will…not”.
It’s hard to believe when the news in our market is written for our market. Where the same old pundits say the same old stuff and the thrill of the day is that RR Donnelley filed its 10Q.
We wonder why students aren’t excited? Are you kidding me? This industry is boring!
But folks, while we have been snoring about things like a “thrilling” presentation at GraphExpo something exciting has been happening.
Two words: Joe Cha.
Do you know who he is?
He is President of Quebecor World Premedia.
He was a VP at Yahoo! Inc.
Before that he was a consultant with PWHC and before that co-founder of an ASP that morphed itself into a serious ebusiness solution provider along with another star named Jamie Lerner - the company was called Xuma and the interesting thing about all this is that even back in 2000 Joe Cha and Jamie Lerner were doing things with content management that were revolutionary. They had hundreds of clients across the US. I know because at the time I was a consultant with a company in Concord MA that was serving the same space and we looked at his CommerceX product and their managed services model.
He has an MBA from Harvard and did his undergrad work at Stanford. He has a great pedigree, he knows technology and he’s going to transform premedia for Quebecor World. But more than that I believe he’s going to excite innovators in our industry, he’s going to kick this market in the pants and he’s going to win market share. Yep.
You are going to be reading alot about Quebecor World Premedia in the near future and the reason is because they have a guy running it that has vision, technical understanding and strategy is his middle name.
There is nothing so hard as taking a company with the cultural, technical, and operational history of Quebecor World Premedia in an industry like ours and selling Wall St., Greenwich, the customer community and the employee pool on a vision and strategies that are groundbreaking. But I will tell you this, my friends, Joe Cha will do it.
My prediction is that Joe Cha is going to do some very exciting things at Quebecor World Premedia that are going to transcend premedia and flat out change the way business is done in this market, where the latest news is that 4Over installed a Web.
Quebecor World may have reported disappointing quarterly results recently, but do not count them out my friends. They hired for their future and it was a brilliant pick up.
If you’re in Premedia get your A-game out, it’s going to get exciting!
MrHillEcoSkis
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We Heard
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We talk to people in the industry all day long - we hear things! Things that wouldn’t get published on other news sites, but things that could be of interest to people in the graphic arts. So we’ll publish them here. You can comment on them, too! Just click on We Heard above in the toolbar and you’re in.
If you have little morsels you want published - email me and I’ll put them up for everyone to read. Nothing slanderous or libelous, please. And please keep it clean. Thanks!
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30 Day Report Card
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We’ve been on line for 30 days. We’ve done okay, I think. Here’s a progress report.
We have added a few registrants every day. Since about 1/4 of the registrants have signed up anonymously, compiling decent demographics is not possible, nor will we divulge anyone’s name or any other data about members here. I can tell you that the average level of registrant, when college students are taken out of the equation, is a Vice President or higher with a reputation, significant credentials, and usually amazing work behind them. Some are in the publishing industry, some in the packaging industry, and some in the printing industry.
We have few postings from this group, however, and that worries me because if the brain power of the people who have registered here were to be put together for good purposes, it would completely change the world.
We have tried to put some strategic alliances together to get more of the graphic arts food chain completed. We have colleges and universities on board, we have some industry associations on board, and we are now going to begin talking to associations and groups that focus on the experienced white collar out-of-work crowd. We’re going to advocate for everyone. We want to have the best source of people in the US available for hiring managers in the graphic arts on Hireskills.com. We’re using Hi-Res Kills as an outreach vehicle that entertains, educates, and innovates in the graphic arts. It takes time and it takes money. No one has done it before, but we’re doing it. It’s only a matter of time before some camp follower comes along and tries to do the same thing. In the meantime we’ll continue to work hard to bring you innovation.
We put an exclusive agreement together with Workblast.com. They’re the first to put an online studio on your pc so you can generate your own video resume. I believed when I started talking with Nick Murphy (Workblast’s CEO) and I still believe today, that video introduction to candidates will save graphic arts companies thousands of dollars each year. An interesting aside - Nick went to ASU (played football there, too)- I went to USC. Next Thursday night the two teams play and in all likelihood the loser will be out of BCS bowl contention. Friends and allies business, enemies in football. It’s all good!
We had a comment from a man who runs a premedia company for one of the largest corporations in the US - he has a WWW background and thought our name needed tweaking. Hireskills.com he thought might be a wee bit ho-hum. I agree, but we’ve been building this brand for 7 years and it’s not ready for a facelift. We started this Hi-Res Skills blog/alternative hiring site with a name that was a play on words. Turns out that omitting one little letter in the name gives us a totally different identity - so we changed the name yesterday to Hi-Res Kills. We’ll see how that goes. If you have opinions, let’s hear ‘em. I’m opening my kimono for scores of readers, be honest - this is a blog for crying out loud!
And about crying out loud. If you didn’t see me mention earlier that the collective brain power and experience of the people registered on this site could change the world, I’m doing it again. The industry could use your thoughts and so could I. My goal is for this company to be a significant agent of change in the graphic arts industry. We have a small staff and I probably ought to sleep sometime. Give me your thoughts!
We’re growing at a reasonable rate. We’re bringing in people who have done amazing things in their lives, we’re on course to achieve the goals I’ve set for this organization. It’s not like Colonial House where I only had 6 weeks to make a 17th century colony successful on TV. We have more time to do thoughtful things, plan and execute and consistently grow our constituency, technical offerings, and value to the industry.
We’ve had great discussion on the CPG side. We are going to be adding a little bit more buzz every day. There’s no People Magazine for the graphic arts industry - we may bring a little more interesting “what we just heard” kind of stuff to the site.
It has been an interesting first month. I’ll report back on the 2nd month in Mid-December.
Thanks for being here!
MrHillEcoSkis
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The Ugly Truth
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I was looking at the summaries of the resumes that came in to Hireskills.com yesterday and I was struck by the number of years of experience people registering with us had on that screen. I was looking at a table that contained the last 20 resumes we received. Adding up the years of experience that the resumes showed (keep in mind most people with significant managerial experience won’t put ALL the years they’ve worked for fear of never getting a job) and the total years was 577. Do the math. 577/20 = 28.85 years average experience.
I figured ‘this has got to be an anomaly’ so I pulled the last 100 resumes. Sure enough, there are college students looking for internships and some people who have worked 5 – 10 years and are out of a job, but the average over the 100 last resumes received is 19.56 years. Keep in mind we only deal with printing people. So the last 100 resumes we received for printing people with pressroom, prepress, CSR, plant management, sales and HR experience had an average of 19.56 years of experience. Hmm.
I considered the causes, talked with my co-workers about it – they’re all from the printing industry. The opinions were unanimous and not surprising: ‘Printers looking to lower operating costs dump the experienced people to hire entry level people who can be trained to do the same jobs, for a lot less money’.
So the ugly truth is that companies rewarded great people who came to work for them with ever increasing pay and benefits; people who worked hard for them, gave them great products to sell, and then just when they know everything about their business……they fire them.
Nice.
It says a lot about our industry, about our culture, about our managers. I could think of a thousand reasons why this is wrong. Here are a few:
(1) A person with 19.56 or 28.85 years of experience in printing has transitioned from analog to digital. They ushered in CTP. This is not trivial.
(2) If they were operational, they have fixed every press and piece of equipment known to the industry and their company.
(3) They know how to look at work and tell if it’s great or if it’s not.
(4) Customers love high quality, experienced vendors who get it right the first time.
(5) The odds are against you being able to bring in new people to work in a pressroom environment who are mechanically strong, with a great work ethic, who will stick around through washing blankets and loading paper until they learn more of the craft. If you can find that person you are about 90% luckier than the average bear.
(6) Sooner or later you run out of people to train your new people. Not only did you eat your seed corn, you killed your planters!
Our corporate mission is to help the industry attract and retain the finest people in the industry. As we have entered the market with Hi-Res Skills we have been focusing a lot lately on getting the food chain integrated on this site, so we’re tying in education for the ‘attract’ part of our mission.
We also need to be paying attention to the ‘retain’ portion of our mission. I won’t belabor the point, but if you are a hiring manager reading this, consider what you stand to gain from hiring an experienced person who has fought the wars.
1) A person who has weathered the storms of the industry for the past 19.56 or 28.85 years has lost their share of battles. This is critical – they know what NOT to do. People who are new to the industry from college know what they SHOULD do, but they are without the experience to understand, much less intuit, the costs of what they SHOULD NOT do.
2) A person with 19.56 or 28.85 years of experience has more time to work. Their kids are probably grown and out of the home.
3) A person with 19.56 or 28.85 years of experience knows the players in the market, knows the competitors, knows their equipment, knows their salespeople, probably knows their strengths and weaknesses and can help propose work that will be innovative and end up in a sale.
4) A person with 19.56 or 28.85 years of experience has, in all likelihood, a better understanding of how to work smarter than an entry level person. Your entry level person may work hard, but with few exceptions it takes years to learn how to work smart.
So what does a corporation do with a Pressroom Supervisor who is making $70,000 a year when they can fleet up their assistant for $40K, hire an entry level person for $20K and add $10K to the bottom line?
What does a newly hired GM do with the Pressman who has worked for 25 years for a company and had consistently delivered incredible work and received pay raise after pay raise only to be one of the highest paid people in operations?
I know! Let him go! We can find a dozen people with good enough skill to take his place.
Know what? We know the other ugly truth. No, you can not find a dozen people to do his job. Not with his or her eye for color, composition and fidelity! Not with the same efficiency! Not with the same dedication to the company!
Oh, and that eye? Not easy to find.
So what does the industry do? How can we endure more of the same blather every year where industry managers complain we can’t find good people for the graphic arts.
WAKE UP! You had them, you’re just getting rid of them!
MrHillEcoSkis
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