Q. What do professional dancers, actors, musicians, and athletes have in common?
A. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, they’re all in the top 6 of the 15 dream jobs that our nation’s youth aspire to have one day.
What jobs didn’t make the list? Roofer, custodian, auto mechanic, welder, truck driver, short order cook, pest control technician, retail cashier, call center representative, senior caregiver, sanitation worker, and hotel housekeeper.
While your life might be less colorful if musicians and athletes didn’t exist, close your eyes and just try to imagine life without someone to change the break pads in your car, patch the giant potholes in the street you commute on each day, bus the dishes from previous diner at the table where you’ve just been seated, or pick up the trash you leave at the curb.
You’d probably feel like you were living back in the dark ages.
Trouble is, the jobs that didn’t make the dream list aren’t sexy. They offer no promise of fame and fortune. Their titles don’t generate ‘likes’ on Facebook pages. And while the emerging workforce is brimming with aspiring singers and rappers, YouTube stars, video game designers, and professional skateboarders, no one fantasizes about a job as a factory worker, a security guard, or an airline baggage handler.
“HELP! I can’t find good people for these jobs!”
Young people fill stadiums hoping to get an audition that could lead to becoming the next America Idol, and Google (Fortune’s #1 rated Best Place to Work for 6 consecutive years) receives more than two million applications each year. But unless you’re offering instant stardom and a multimillion-dollar recording contract, or a a six-figure starting salary and fringe benefits that include free afternoon massages, gourmet food, child care, and laundry services, odds are you aren’t getting nearly enough applicants to fill your openings.
The United States is suffering its worst labor shortage in decades. Millions of jobs are now begging to be filled by anyone willing to learn them and apply themselves fully to the task. Many of these jobs pay well and offer free training and rapid advancement to anyone with a GED who can pee in a cup and count to ten. And yet, while so many misguided youth have set their sites on careers that will never materialize, these important and meaningful jobs go unfilled.
And the resulting labor crisis is bringing scores of business owners and managers to their knees.
How are you meeting your staffing challenges?
Over the past 5 years, I’ve gotten an earful about how employers can’t find good people. Now I’m determined to find the answers. (And there are answers!) I’m scouring the world in search of savvy employers who have cracked the code on hiring, and I’ll be including their stories in my forthcoming book FULLY STAFFED: Finding and Keeping Great People for Jobs They Don’t Consider Sexy.
In just a few short weeks, my research team has already unearthed some incredible recruiting and retention ideas and tactics that will work in your operation, regardless of size, scope, or industry. We’re currently looking to interview owners and managers of small to medium-sized businesses (or franchise locations of larger businesses) in diverse industries across the U.S. to add even more case studies and examples.
If you’re an employer who’s using creative or “guerrilla” strategies and tactics for finding employees to fill the unheralded jobs on the front lines of your organization, please consider sharing your success in a groundbreaking book, slated for release in late 2018.
Allow me to shine the spotlight on you and your business and give you some great PR. And if you submit this form and I use your story, I’ll send you a signed galley copy of the book before anyone else gets to read it so you can stay one step ahead of the competition.
Thank you for spreading the word and helping to crowdsource solutions to this problem.
