10.26.2003

Just call me Cassandra

"Workers are Cocooning... for Now

With all the turbulence in the economy and in the employment market, thousands of workers are burrowing in to wait out the storm. They're seeking the warm comfort of their corporate cocoons, as a protective strategy. Cocoons, the safety and security of current job(s), are the best places to be now. In their cocoons, workers will weather the storm while watching vigilantly for changes in the employment climate.

Needed by their employers, these workers are secure in their positions. But they're not happy. Many of these workers don't like their bosses. They're not happy with their co-workers and they're not excited about the work they're doing. In their cocoons, however, smart workers continue to grow. They are sharpening their skills and when the right opportunity comes along, they'll jump right out of those cocoons. They're just waiting for the right time.

Cocooning is giving employers a false sense of security. Those employers believe their people are loyal and happy. Because people are not moving, but hunkered down for safety, employers don't sense the restlessness. As a result, many employers have been lured into complacency. They're not devoting a lot of attention and caring to these employees, assuming that they're content and not interested in changing jobs.

When the economy begins to grow again, new job opportunities will be created. The need for cocooning - staying within the safety and security of their current positions - will be over. The volatility in the employment market will return, probably stronger than it was before the slowdown in the economy. When dissatisfied employees start leaving, many employers will be astonished! They will not be prepared for their sudden labor shortage and will probably be vulnerable to serious damages in product/service quality, production capacity, delivery schedules, and customer loyalty.

Please note that even today there are still plenty of jobs open, looking for people to fill them. The economy does not have to be in a turnaround growth mode for needy employers to be hunting. If the recruiters can convince employed workers that the positions they're offering are secure, the de-cocooning could come unexpectedly early.

This is from net-temps.com; Roger Herman and Joyce Gioia, Strategic Business Futurists, www.herman.net

<Note from JobFairy.com: I have never seen such good advice! It's true; and employers are about to face the biggest backlash you have ever seen come the Summer of 2003. What this article fails to mention is that so many people have dropped out of IT, what with the recent market downturns. If they can find employment elsewhere, they have. If they can open up their own businesses, they will have already done so. People will not be picking IT as a career field or for post-degree training as frequently as they did before. Then when the market does correct itself, the shortage will be even worse than the last one. Yet there is a huge IT infrastructure out there that didn't stop needing to be maintained, even though there were setbacks in the economy. Employers are quite picky these days; they offer crappy salaries. They better enjoy it while it lasts; it's their last hurrah for a while...>"

I scare myself sometimes. I wrote this note (in bold) almost exactly two years ago to the day. Although the boom hasn't been as big as I'd hoped (remember, this was written in the pre-Enron days, so corporate misbehavior, not the impact of the terrorist activity, is to blame for the slow economic growth), it is happening nonetheless. Now, how it's playing out is that there aren't as many new jobs as I'd predicted. And that's OK; I don't get called for those anyway. Last week's article was about cherry picking - and even with my skill set, I rarely get the new hot jobs. What I get are the tricky-to-fill jobs that are left behind by the super stellar performers that recruiters thought were so neat-o-keen and they maneuvered so hard to put those "ideal passive candidates" in the new hot jobs. That's OK by me, a job's a job. Money all spends the same; prestige buys me nothing. And since it's so hard to fill a job that one of these gods or goddesses grew into over time, the employer is then less inclined to dork around with me on the job. That's a win-win anyway you look at it. The other thing I see happening is that since the job openings levels are staying up, the formerly "content" cocooning workers are quietly looking for other jobs, then bailing. They put up with as much as they could for as long as they could. Companies got all arrogant during the recession - and took it out on a captive audience. That audience doesn't have to put up with it anymore. The openings level should have been tapering off, since it's almost Halloween. It isn't. It's up near the peak levels that it has been recently at the fall hiring frenzy. This means that there is a LOT of job switching going on. The only reason why there isn't more, I think, is because people are waiting until after the new year to cash in on vacation, options that vest at the end of the year, etc. I am going to predict a nice little hiring boom the Spring of 2004.

As to future demand,  from the 10/19/2003 edition:

"Colo.  tech foundation cracking
Despite signs of an industry turnaround, students pursue other subjects
By Jennifer Beauprez
Denver Post Business Writer
Sunday, October 19, 2003
Colorado may be in danger of losing its bragging rights as having one of the most educated tech workforces in the nation. Enrollment in information technology programs at some Colorado community colleges and universities has dropped by as much as 50 percent over the past three years, as many students go after more general educations and stay away from technology. Educational leaders fear the lack of tech education ultimately could lead to a technology brain drain nationwide and yet another worker shortage four or five years from now. "That is really scary," said Midge Cozzens, president of the Colorado Institute of Technology, an organization Gov.  Bill Owens started during the tech boom to work with universities and community colleges to boost high-tech graduates. The decline comes as companies increasingly shift new tech jobs overseas in search of cheap labor and as frustrated, laid-off workers leave the sector in pursuit of jobs in the mortgage industry, employment staffing, retail, manufacturing, banking and the liquor business. "There is no incentive for high school kids to sign up for technology classes because there's no jobs at the end of the effort," said Jim Hertzel, an outspoken critic of offshore software development and chairman of Alumni Consulting Group International, a Greenwood Village technology consulting firm. "I think it's all related to new Colorado jobs going offshore," Hertzel said. Education officials promise that technology is beginning to show signs of recovering, that more companies are hiring and that the future is bright.  Technology is becoming an integral part of the operations of nearly every kind of business, from printing shops to doctor's offices, Cozzens said. "We have to be sure that high school students believe there are jobs," Cozzens said.  "The state's diversification to include technology was critical to growth in Colorado and continues to be critical to growth." Yet students instead are clamoring for classes in English, philosophy and religious studies at Regis University and at the Community College of Denver. "General education is off the charts," said Linda Lujan, dean of business and technology at CCD. Overall enrollment at CCD is up 25 percent this year, Lujan said.  But the number of students taking computer science courses has dropped 40 percent each of the past two years. Today, just 120 of 12,000 students at CCD declared information technology as their majors. Education officials statewide tell similar stories.  At Colorado State University in Fort Collins, enrollment in computer information sciences has dropped 58 percent in the last three years. And as few as six students show up for software and networking classes at Red Rocks Community College in Littleton.  The school canceled 50 computer courses this semester and reduced its faculty staff size to nine teachers from 14. "That department once was the largest on campus," said Wayne Caruolo, associate vice president of technology at Red Rocks. To boost student enrollment, Caruolo put up a billboard earlier this year off Interstate 70 advertising the school's Microsoft IT Academy.  It depicted a fortune teller with a crystal ball with the words: "We can see the future, can you?" Evidently, no one could.  The number of students taking such courses has plummeted 50 percent at Red Rocks since the high-tech boom. "We don't believe IT is going away anytime soon," Caruolo said.  "But the students aren't showing up." There are good reasons why.  Two-thirds of the layoffs in Colorado over the past few years came from telecommunications and technology firms. And in August, 141,300 Coloradans were looking for jobs. "A lot of my friends in the computer program are freaking out, and they're trying to switch their careers," said Rose Munrow, a computer programming major at Red Rocks.  "We talk about it often.  A lot of students say, 'Where do I go?  What should I do?' They're unsure." Munrow, who hopes to transfer to Regis University next spring, said she'll stick with computer science despite the economy, but she will rely on school advisers to guide her studies so she can find work after graduation. Increasingly, the new computer programming jobs created by local companies are in India, China, Vietnam and Singapore, where the work can be done cheaper and faster. "Those information technology jobs aren't coming back," said Hertzel of Alumni Consulting.  "The only tech jobs coming up we see are help-desk and low-level tech jobs." Indeed, help-desk jobs typically pay just $24,000 to $30,000 a year.  That compares with five years ago, when an 18-year-old could get a Cisco networking certification and make $40,000 a year. The good news: New higher-skilled jobs may emerge as computer science blends with other disciplines.  And universities and colleges increasingly are shifting their curricula to accommodate new fields. The University of Denver, for instance, has a new computer science division that offers concentrations on technical communications, Internet law, Internet communications and digital art. And at the University of Colorado at Denver, graduate and doctorate students combine computer science with biology and even radiology. CU's Denver campus has a record 170 master's students enrolled in computer science this semester.  The vast majority of those students are working full-time and went back to school primarily because of the economy. "They want to update their skills, and many are updating their skills in new areas," said Krzysztof Cios, professor and chair of the computer science and engineering department at CU-Denver. One-third of CU-Denver's 16 Ph.D.  students are concentrating on computational biology, he said. "There are huge needs in biological sciences," Cios said.  "That's coming, and students know it, and they are moving in this area." True, experts predict doctors one day will use a computer to see a patient's genetic makeup, predict what diseases he or she is likely to get later in life and administer personalized drugs to prevent them.  Few people have the combined technical skills in computers, math and biology to create that reality, however. Community colleges, too, are working to integrate other fields, such as accounting and anthropology, with computer science. The biggest challenge, however, may be to keep general computer departments afloat and keep them sharp for the next wave of demand. Community colleges faced the same problem during the 1990s, when students fled the engineering field after the oil and gas bust, said Lujan of Community College of Denver. "The worst thing we could do is close our lab, let our computers gather dust and put our faculty to work doing other things," Lujan said.  "We're trying to get potential students to realize that there are jobs and that there will be jobs." "

My take on this is that a free market economy is in place and working just fine. Seriously. You don't necessarily have to have a degree in IT in order to do technical work. And students are seeing that future IT positions are going to require a plethora of other skills, and they're going out and getting them. IT is not going to be an end in and of itself; it's just going to be a grace note on top of another melody. Sure, there will be jobs. But if you don't branch out and have a strong, solid base of other NON-IT skills, you may not get selected for jobs and you'll never know why it is you can't compete. (Again, see last week's article about Cherry Picking.) And for the record, I'd take the word of Jim Hertzel over the other sources. He's a recruiter, and they live and die by these numbers. Since these conditions hit them in the wallet, they're pragmatists. They don't deal in how they'd like things to be - they deal with things how they are.

150 Pieces of Flair

I love this. It just never stops, does it? Check out this article from asktheheadhunter.com about the latest asinine charge from careerbuilder.com. Think it's worth $150? Do you really think it's going to help? Is this that little extra oomph that will send you over the cliff? No, no, and no.

"Well, now I think we all get it. There's something wrong with paying somebody off to get a job interview. And there's something wrong with charging employers to "search" a resume data base where the "results" have been bought and paid for in advance." - Nick Corcodilos

For once, the needs of recruiters, HR people, and job seekers are aligned. They need a site where the top people in their search are really the top people. We need a site where our qualifications can rise to the top, unobstructed by those who are less qualified but can cough up $150. Plus, if enough people cough up that money, then it's not helping even them. It's like an arms race that never stops escalating.