Shortage of skilled job candidates still a hot topic. There are 1,000,000 unfilled jobs for skilled workers in America!

This month’s PCB Magazine continued the discussion on the difficulties of attracting, training and maintaining the needed workers for our industry, Various interviewees provided their views of the problems that they face with recruiting and maintaining millennials to succeed the retiring grey-heads. They spoke of cultures changes, lack of training tools from their professional societies or colleges, and a host of other perceived challenges. They spoke of outreach programs. They spoke of new business models. They spoke of rapid technology shifts. They wondered how they could attract young people into a job that required following instructions rather than innovating on the fly or providing some new challenges.

Last month several readers of Weiner’s World suggested bringing back retires to fill the gap or assist in training. After all, isn’t 65 the new 50?

But, I did not see a situation analysis properly defining the problem (including management’s apparent continuing to live in the past). I did not see a clear picture of what is needed today and what will be needed in 5 years. I did not see a prediction of how much of “the process” would be automated. There was no demand forecast by product/technology type. There was no prediction of an employee’s life cycle in a particular company that recognizes that the old idea of having a career that only spanned a few jobs has become just that – old!

There were no innovative solutions offered to offset some of the recognized problems.