The Ugly Truth
2007-11-15 | Filed Under Business Management |
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
Post Linx
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Comments
One Response to “The Ugly Truth”
After reading what Automation12345 had to say about M&A and how the industry doesn’t want efficiency gains, I’d love to hear what he/she has to say about this one. I’m guessing it’s just a ‘function of the marketplace’? A ’sad reality’? An ‘unfortunate state of the industry driven by the bad purchasing agents of the customers’?
I was out of work for 8 months once - over-priced and over-qualified. You want to write about something REALLY stupid? Let’s talk about the myth of overqualification in 2007! Good piece here, though. Hope you follow up with more on this topic. “Can’t find good people my XXX”.