Challenge or opportunity?

What does it mean for America’s competitiveness and productivity that U.S. millenials rank so low in the key areas outlined in the ETS report? What effect will our poor performance have on the U.S. economy in the future? Will automation change the nature of the jobs we seek to fill?

“The jobs the U.S. economy has been creating in the past two years are very different in nature from the ones that were lost in the recession that followed the 2008 financial crisis. The labor market itself is now quite different. Technology is not only automating ever more jobs and increasing the skill gaps for the jobs that remain; it is changing the very nature of work and giving us ever less time to adapt” (Fortune).

In some sense, we’re always adapting as technology advances, rethinking the nature of work and the jobs we require. But given the skills gap noted above, it’s clear that the wireless industry will need to take on the responsibility of ensuring that new and future employees have the skills needed to do their jobs well.

Traditional education offers some incentives

At present, we have a few avenues for preparing future employees via traditional education —vocational schools, community colleges and universities. Vocational schools, once thought of as the dumping ground for the troublemakers of a school system are now looked to for their ability to prepare students to become productive members of the workforce. Henry Ford created a trade school to give high school students the opportunity to learn the technical skills that could lead to careers at the Ford Motor Company (“From alums of Henry Ford Trade School, an investment”). At today’s “career readiness” high schools, the curriculum is shaped by market demand.

More frequently, an employer partners with a community college, college or university to create a program for workforce development. For example, a partnership between the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro) and the Los Angeles Valley College has resulted in the Metro Bridge Program, which offers over 70 hours of training in customer service, lifelong learning, time management and other skills that might lead the way toward employment as a bus driver with Metro.

For students following the more traditional path of college, a number of scholarships offer incentives for pursuing a particular path of study. Engineering societies offer a large number of scholarships. For example, the Society of Women Engineers offers several scholarships to support women pursuing undergraduate or graduate study in a host of engineering programs. The first recipient of the EWA-Joseph B. Vestal Endowed Scholarship graduated this May from Old Dominion University. The Enterprise Wireless Alliance founded the Vestal scholarship, which supports a third-year student pursuing a degree in electrical engineering or information systems management, in 2013.

Employee training could point the way

Once you’ve hired a new employee, ensuring that he or she has the skills you require may mean that your company provides training. Manufacturers and service providers offer training, but often such courses focus on the manufacturer’s product and not on general concepts that would enable a more complete understanding of the subject matter, according to Consortium of Certified Service Centers President Don Pierson. However, he admits, “If it were my shop, I’d do the same thing.”

Pierson’s reservation about the “teach to the product” method stems from his concern that such training does not give the young technician a foundation for a career in the industry. As head of an organization that has created a nationwide program based on standards of excellence, Pierson knows the importance of standardized competencies in educating new technicians.

“In some major shops, older, experienced techs give on-the-job training to the new ones—and that’s really important. But it’s not certain that the trainee will get everything he or she needs,” said Pierson.