Winners and Bureaucrats

After conducting several tours of employers with new technical workers, want to share some suggestions so that more employers do not make the same mistakes I have witnessed. Not sure if you know but I am helping guide some workforce development efforts and working with some carefully screened talent and putting them through an accelerated training program to help area businesses have a better selection of workers. This has been a wonderful experience for all involved and allowed me to do more than talk about the Maintenance Crisis but actually do something to solve it. However, some companies are mistakenly providing perfunctory tours and sharing their corporate policies and procedures, not providing the warmth, and not building an on ramp to help add these very talented workers and thus have inadvertently pushed them away. In hopes that you and your organization do not make the same mistakes, let me share with how one of these companies that no one had heard of before, created such a positive impression that several of students are now considering long commutes or relocating because they want to serve this innovative company. This business brought us into the board room and told us upfront that we were not going to talk so much as to experience their business. They divided us into small groups and assigned us a tour guide that took us all over their facility. Then they had the production manager take each group so that they could hear his vision and so he could answer their questions. This company produces very complex aviation components of actuators, hydraulic motors, pumps and other intricate parts for all kinds of airlines. They not only design, build, assemble but also test their components. And in their assembly room, you could actually feel the mental horsepower as the techs carefully assembled very sophisticated parts. Then we met back in the boardroom, where they shared how that they could apply, be selected, be trained, and start at this employer. The message was not legalese but custom developed for this audience and the candidates felt very welcome not like a number. It was interesting to watch as some of the students researched Google maps to find back roads to help reduce the length of their possible commute as they truly want to work for this company. The other companies we have toured were just rattling off the corporate spill and not speaking to the needs and interest of the students and thus will miss out leveraging their budding skills to their advantage. Hope that you remember this message when you entertain future talent in your operation.