‘How Do I Do That?’ The New Hires of 2023 Are Unprepared for Work

livemint.com:

Roman Devengenzo was consulting for a robotics company in Silicon Valley last fall when he asked a newly minted mechanical engineer to design a small aluminum part that could be fabricated on a lathe—a skill normally mastered in the first or second year of college. “How do I do that?" asked the young man. So Devengenzo, an engineer who has built technology for NASA and Google, and who charges consulting clients a minimum of $300 an hour, spent the next three hours teaching Lathework 101.

“You learn by doing," he said. “These kids in school during the pandemic, all they’ve done is work on computers." The knock-on effect of years of remote learning during the pandemic is gumming up workplaces around the country. It is one reason professional service jobs are going unfilled and goods aren’t making it to market.

It also helps explain why national productivity has fallen for the past five quarters, the longest contraction since at least 1948, according to the U.S. Labor Department. The shortcomings run the gamut from general knowledge, including how to make change at a register, to soft skills such as working with others.

Employers are spending more time and resources searching for candidates and often lowering expectations when they hire. Then they are spending millions to fix new employees’ lack of basic skills. Talent First, a business-led workforce-development organization in Grand Rapids, Mich., is encouraging employers to stop trying to hire based on skill.

Instead, hiring managers should look for a willingness to learn, said President Kevin Stotts. “Employers are saying, ‘We’re just trying to find some people who could fog the mirror,’ " Stotts said. Since 2020, when the pandemic began and remote learning moved