> Why, then, do policymakers and business leaders continue to focus on reskilling? Lafer thinks it gives them an easy way out by laying the blame for workers’ dim employment prospects on their failure to acquire the right skills rather than facing up to deeper structural changes in the economy. He says that a better option might be a push for better pay and conditions in other in demand industries that employ lots of people but are poorly rewarded such as construction, healthcare and education.<p>I subscribe to the Keynesian philosophy that the government should at the very least hire displaced workers to dig holes in the ground and fill them back up. Even better - use that effort to build roads, clean our cities, provide services, etc.
They bury the lede: "In reality, employers report difficulty hiring because the wages they offer don’t match the skills they’re after, she says"<p>Also: "In a 2018 paper, he and colleagues showed that only about 60 to 70% of US computing and engineering graduates land jobs in STEM, dropping to between 10 and 50% for those studying life sciences, physical sciences and maths."
The biggest thing from the employer side is that the cost of a single bad hire can be potentially enormous. This is a combination of legal (threat of wrongful termination lawsuits, COBRA) and cultural (nobody likes to feel like a jerk boss, morale problems among the remaining employees). The rule of thumb among managers is don't hire anybody unless you're 90% sure they'll work out for at least a year.<p>That creates a major roadblock for entry-level employees. No matter how much formal training somebody's had, they've still never actually performed the role before. That makes it substantially riskier that they won't fit. Even just a couple years of experience is a credible signal that the person has basic competence in the actual job.<p>What we need is another category of transitional employment, with both much lighter regulatory barriers to turnover as well as more relaxed cultural expectations about job security. In the olden days we'd call this an "apprentice". Today it might be an "intern", but the general expectation is that only applies to very young workers- not those reskilling to make a lateral move.
On a related note changing tech stacks and industries is hugely more difficult than I expected. I started in C++ in a steel company and moving to Java with Financial services was so different it was like starting from scratch. Now I'm trying to move more JS/Python in tech land and again its much harder than I expected just to get basic tooling, workflow done, let alone trying to get someone to hire you.
Some of the people they are talking to here have just done 3 month courses. They are competing against people who have 4+ year degrees and people with more experience. They are going to have to build up their resumes with smaller things whether its a project of their own or small jobs for other people.
There are 19 bones and 20 dogs.<p>No matter how many training and reskilling courses they go on 5% of the dogs will remain unemployed.<p>The fundamental problem is a lack of jobs, because there is no market mechanism by which the private sector will create sufficient jobs to hire everybody who wants work.<p>It's time to restore the Beveridge condition. Jobs should wait, not people.
From my point of view, reskilling will be the main discussion for the next decade. Here is my experience about reskilling: I quit my banking career 3-4 years ago with the thought of career transition. I thought the daily routine that I had could easily be automated. Therefore, I made the decision to leave my job quite easily after having a burnout. First I took a gap year in a foreign country to recover from burnout totally. I came back to my country in the beginning of 2019 start learning to code immediately. I learnt Python. It was, and still is, a popular language, so learning Python should be a logical decision for me. I thought 6 months would be enough to learn fundamentals and transition your career. First I took a bootcamp that lasted 6 months and applied for jobs after I finished it. It didnt go as it planned. I couldnt find a job. Now it has been more than 1 and half years. Still no job. I have started my master degree in IT and am specializing in Data Analysis/Science to be more specific. I consider my undergraduate degree relevant to Data Science, which is Mathematics. Still no positive response from employers. I completed all necessary stuff to put on my resume like end-to-end projects and MOOC specializations(yes it's more than one) Luckily, I am earning my living by tutoring and no financial concerns for near future. My point is reskilling and learning to code are not always guarantee someone a new job as the caption suggests. At least, I love spending time with computers and totally enjoy what I do whether I can find a job or not.
At my workplace (of 10+ years), when we recruit for entry-level positions, we typically get 15-50 applicants. We are not a software company so we do not use deep algorithm testing as part of our evaluation process.<p>Most applicants (probably 80% or more) have a computer science or information systems 4 year BS degree. The other 20% typically have a STEM degree with some programming courses or experience. Probably 20%-30% have some type of graduate degree as well - we sometimes have career changers who have picked up a MS in computer science from some coursework-only MS program at a small school.<p>My experience has been that of that candidate pool, we will have 3-6 candidates with well documented programming projects or job experience. These tend to be the candidates we interview - we use a simple rubric with yes/no for 5-10 categories we evaluate. The categories are broad ("Has this candidate written code in either personal projects or previous employment?") and minimally skill-specific. We do tend to have some bias towards database (SQL) skills and some hands-on experience with Linux, but not specific "hard" requirements for either (don't care if MS SQL Server, Oracle, Postgres, or Debian vs Ubuntu vs CentOS, etc).<p>We have had success with non-traditional candidates - we have team members with backgrounds ranging from BS in History to PhD in Bioinformatics, so we aren't super-credential sensitive.<p>All these details seem to add up to a rather stark observation - there is <i>NO</i> shortage of highly qualified applicants for these types of jobs. Our geographic region has many tech employers so we aren't the only option for job seekers. We probably aren't even in the top 25% of employers for salary in our area.<p>Candidates with only three months of training are just not going to be successful getting to the front of the hiring line in the deeper pools of applicants we get.
I think a seasoned developer needs about 3 months to get familiar with a new framework/toolset within the same environment e.g. moving from React to Angular. What can a person without prior in-depth knowledge learn in a Three-month, full-time software-engineering course?<p>This does not sound to me a programme wherein they genuinely want people to get into software development.<p>But disprove me please, if you have experience about this.
Reskilling is tough in a world where you have to compete with people with many year degrees for an entry level job. If you imagined people reskilling twice in their careers, that's two extra times through college. Say they can skip the general education reqs the second time through and it's just 3 years. That's still 10+ years of undergrad in a 50 year career.<p>I think educational specialization is going to be a massive issue going forward. In the past, one industry had to compete with another for labor. As time goes on, it's increasingly only within-industry competition that matters, because workers have sunk too much time and money into simply getting their feet in the door to switch.<p>If you could spend three months and $20k to switch industries, you're much more likely to move compared to the friction of spending a few years and many tens of thousands (and who knows if that specialty will be flooded a few years later when you finish?).
It seems to me the title would have been better named "Why reskilling will probably not guarantee you a new job". The first two thirds of the article about how and why this doesn't happen, and it sums up with what appears to be the exception.<p>That said, I couldn't agree with the closing more: "You've got to work so hard at it and do all these extra activities and just immerse yourself fully. Without that passion, I can't see them getting anywhere." Trying to gain new skills with the mindset that it's a burden does not pan out. Instead, finding a topic that has lots of natural interest yields the best results, and is way more fun!
This article speaks to me. I had experience on mainframe and wanted to get a job in Java. I learned Java however the interviewer would always say I was missing something. It could be J2ee, Jboss etc. with the Java ecosystem so large, can someone please help me how to learn. Is J2ee still in use or has all development moved to cloud. Where do I even begin to learn modern technologies. TIA.
> An ambiguous action in response to a highly varied problem does not guarantee a uniform outcome for every member of society.<p>Who would have guessed?<p>The inverse claim would be the interesting one. If reskilling regardless of how that was defined guaranteed you a job.
I think 3 months of full-time study is more that enough time to get the fundamentals of software development and land an entry level dev job. This is especially true when paired with a career preparation program.<p>Many bootcamps have 90+% verified placements rates after graduation