Employer's cannot fill open job positions

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101823572

A declining unemployment rate—now at 6.1 percent—would seem to mean that employers are packing their payrolls with workers. But many businesses say they are having a harder time filling open positions this year than last year, according to a new survey.

The poll, conducted by franchise staffing firm Express Employment Professionals, reports that 83 percent of the 115 company's franchises surveyed said that it was "somewhat difficult" or "very difficult" to fill a job opening this year. That's up from 78 percent who reported the same for the survey in 2013.

When asked for the primary reason jobs remained unfilled, 52 percent of respondents cited a lack of available candidates.

Businesses continue to blame a skills gap between jobs seekers and the

If There’s a Gap, Blame It on the Employer

Peter Cappelli is a professor of management and director of the Center for Human Resources at the Wharton School and the author of "Why Good People Can’t Get Hired: The Myth of the Skills Gap."

UPDATED AUGUST 3, 2012, 4:40 PM

"In the midst of the greatest surplus of talent in modern times, many employers nevertheless say that they cannot find people to hire. For every anecdote about employers who cannot find good candidates, though, there are a dozen stories of highly qualified candidates struggling even to be seen by employers.

Surveys of actual hiring managers have shown for decades that they are not complaining about academic skills among applicants. Few are interested in hiring recent graduates because they do not want to train them. The candidates they want are already employed, doing the job in question someplace else. What is in short supply is work experience specific to the immediate job, and no one wants to give anyone that experience, a Catch-22.

If you can't find the right person for the job, chances are you're a bad manager, and maybe a bit too cheap.
Before any employer jumps to the conclusion that hiring problems are caused by the labor market, take the following test:

1. Have you tried raising wages? If you could get what you want by paying more, the problem is just that you are cheap. The fact that I cannot find the car I want at the price I want to pay does not constitute a car shortage, yet a large number of employers claiming they face a skills shortage admit that the problem is getting candidates to accept their wage rates.

2. Are your hiring requirements unreasonable? See how many of your current employees could get hired using the standards you have set.

3. Are you sure you cannot train anyone? Compare how much it costs to keep a vacancy unfilled to what it would cost to get an otherwise good candidate up to speed. If you have no idea what each of those options costs, you are probably paying more attention to purchasing office supplies than to your work force.

4. If you expect schools to produce different candidates, have you told them that and tried to help them change? Simply expecting an important supplier to meet your needs without working with them is a basic supply chain failure.

If you get through this test and still think there is nothing you can do to address your hiring problems, I’m happy to come out with some work force experts and a newspaper reporter to see if you are right."

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/07/09/does-a-skills-gap-contribute-to-unemployment/if-theres-a-skills-gap-blame-it-on-the-employer

That article is spot on.