Caught In the Skills Gap

You know how sometimes you hear a word or an expression for the first time and then suddenly it is everywhere you look? Well that is how it seems to be with the phrases skill shortage and skills gap lately. They aren't new expressions, we've been hearing them for some time, but just this last week they seem to be coming to greater prominence through a variety of different media and from a variety of different sources.

A Skill Gap is the difference between the skills required to perform a job and the actual skills possessed by the employees; a Skill Shortage refers to a situation where there are not enough people with a particular skill to meet demand. At present it appears that employers in the UK (and in the rest of the world for that matter) are complaining about both. Although a Skill Gap and a Skill Shortage are quite different things, the distinction does seem to be blurring somewhat.

It has been said frequently in recent years that there has been a Skill Shortage in the UK, particularly in what one might term the practical trades, like plumbing; the expression "Polish plumber" has been something of a cliché going back to the middle of the last decade, and it tends to refer not just to plumbing but the movement throughout the EU of cheap, manual labour. In some respects it has been about the cost of labour as much as skills; the free movement of labour has enabled UK employers to recruit workers from other parts of the EU as cheaply, or cheaper, than they could in Britain.

McKinsey management consultants report that European employers are finding it difficult to fill vacancies but at the same time over 5.6 million people under the age of twenty-five are unemployed in the EU. The Federation of Small Businesses says that many school leavers lack literacy and numeracy skills and do not even know how to dress properly for work. Something isn't adding up here. I know that there have been grumblings about falling education standards, but school leavers who are illiterate and innumerate? With "A" level grades improving year on year it is difficult to believe that anything other than a tiny minority of school leavers fall into that category. With the level of youth unemployment being what it is surely employers can find sufficient numbers of school leavers who can read, write and add two and two? Employers often say that new entrants are unprepared for work but since when did schools prepare students for the world of work? They didn't when I was at school and they don't now.

If A level grades are improving, why do employers report that new entrants are so poorly prepared for work?

Where I see the issue, and this is partly responsible for this perceived skills gap, is that both employers and prospective employees (especially the young) have unrealistic expectations. Many companies have off-shored or outsourced their more mundane functions and automation has replaced many of the more routine jobs. Thus a great many of the entry level positions are no longer available to be filled by school leavers. The bottom rung in many organisations who have vacancies in this country is now several levels above what it was ten or twenty years ago, thus many of the positions being advertised may actually be beyond what an employer can realistically expect of a school leaver, unless they tailor the role accordingly, providing guidance and training. Meanwhile many job seekers probably have unrealistic expectations of where within an organisation's hierarchy they can expect to start anyway. Employment minister Esther McVey raised a few hackles recently when she said that young people should be applying for entry level jobs, particularly when she suggested the Costa Coffee chain and especially when Costa recently had 1,700 people apply for eight jobs at their Nottingham store, but she has a point.

Employment Minister Esther McVey suggested that people start with a job with Costa Coffee... 

...over 200 people applied for each of the jobs available.

As "A" level grades constantly improve, it appears that ever increasing numbers of people leave school with the expectation of going straight into their dream job; this strikes me as overly optimistic. Employment is in many ways similar to the property market; the first step is the hardest and just as most people begin with a modest house or flat and then trade up, so even the best qualified school leaver ought to expect to begin employment in a junior capacity and work their way up. Not of course that I am underestimating the task of obtaining any sort of gainful employment; I do not envy today's school leavers the challenge.

 What doesn't help is employers who demand experience, even in their entry level jobs; how can a school leaver gain experience if no one will employ him or her? For many employers, faced with the choice between a fresh faced school leaver with no experience and a middle aged person, newly redundant and with over twenty years experience, the choice is probably easy and these days there are enough people falling in the latter category applying for jobs that traditionally might have been the preserve of the school leaver.

It is all very well for employers to complain that school leavers are ill prepared for work but actually it is pretty much a given that many of them will be; employers have to treat their new recruits as an investment. They should provide them with adequate, relevant training; it is no use expecting someone fresh out of school to walk into a busy office (or factory, or anywhere else for that matter) and hit the ground running, working as well as colleagues who have been there years.

Then there are the job adverts. Even the most mundane of positions now comes complete with a Job Profile and Personal Specification that would put off experienced people, let alone a school leaver. Several years ago I saw an advertisement for a position in the box office at my local cinema; having read it I felt that I would have been insufficiently qualified had I applied. Before I left work I had to write my own Job Profile and having followed the required formula concluded that were my own job to be advertised I would too intimidated to apply for it.

The strange thing is that the Skills Gap and Skills Shortage are not solely UK phenomena; they appear to be worldwide, with reports of Gaps and Shortages in North America, Australasia, India and Europe. Surely not all of these countries have nothing but illiterate and innumerate school leavers without the social skills required to enter the world of work? A pertinent question would be, what are the specific gaps? Googling a variety of phrases around skills gap generates any number of results about the existence of a skills gap but remarkably few about what skills employers have identified as being deficient in job applicants. One I did find referred  to a study by Adecco Staffing US, who said that 45% of senior executives in the United States identified soft skills, such as communication, critical thinking, creativity and collaboration, as areas where the gap existed. The same report suggested that in the area of technical skills, the gap was much less pronounced.

The Federation of Small Businesses may bemoan the standard of school leavers readin', writin' and 'rithmatic, but rather than simply wring their hands in dismay, perhaps they should be working in partnership with The Department of Education, even possibly with individual schools so that students leave school better equipped. Soft skills such as those identified by the Adecco study tend to be acquired through experience; if employers are not prepared to recruit people with the potential to acquire these skills and allow them the opportunity to acquire them by experience then they will perpetuate the very gap they complain about.