Job Training and Skill Sets that Lead to Better Jobs with Higher Pay

While analysts and economists may disagree on the solution to an economic recession, they all agree that job creation and wage rates play a critical role in economic growth. You may be inclined to believe the issue today is a lack of jobs, citing job cuts and layoffs as support. However, the winners of the Nobel prize in economics for 2010 disagree–it may be a lack of proper job training.

Peter Diamond, Dale Mortensen and Christopher Pissarides shared the 2010 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for their work on wage formation through search markets. Professor Diamond is known for his conclusion that higher levels of unemployment insurance can actually lead to job creation, a point hotly debated by politicians. Mortensen and Pissarides are well known for their work in finding a negative relationship between the number of jobs and the level of unemployment.

Applicants Lacking Job Skills Training

These three economists have developed theories which explain how so many people can be unemployed with a large number of job openings on the market. Put together, their work suggests the issue is not lack of jobs, but lack of an efficient market to match employers with the right employee. This is especially the case in terms of skill set. Recruiters and temp agencies believe the issue is not a lack of jobs, but a lack of qualified candidates.

Doug Beabout, CPC, of The Douglas Howard Group believes the skills gap will only grow in the future. “There will be between six and eight million jobs open by 2013, and that’s just representing the jobs that exist right now, with no growth in the economy taken into account,” said Beabout.  He continues, “There will not be people in our population who can do these jobs.”

Skill Sets that Can Make You More Competitive

The Pacific Northwest, Texas, Arizona, Silicon Valley and the Mid-Atlantic regions all cite a lack of employees with the right skill set. Those employees lucky enough to have this coveted skill set are paid higher salaries and receive higher bonuses. It is not surprising that the coveted skill set revolves around technology.

In 2010, the Global Knowledge/TechRepublic 2010 Salary Survey conducted a survey of key decision makers. They listed Windows administration, network administration and security as the primary desired skill-set. Database managers for Oracle, IBM and Sybase are also in high demand and the demand for those in mobile and web application development continues to grow.

From a broader perspective, organizations are looking for project management skills, experience in health care technology and management, software engineers, virtualization or data storage experience and business analysis.

Business analysis includes strategy and organizational behavior, project or work place transition specialists and implementation strategists. Business analysts with business process improvement experience are also highly sought after.

Who Gets the Bonus?

A recent survey by Mercer suggests employers plan on sharing built up cash reserves on their current employees rather than hiring additional employees. The survey, which has been conducted for more than two decades, includes responses from more than 1,100 employers and includes the pay of more than 12 million employees.

On average, employers plan on increasing base pay by 3 percent in 2012, with the top performing employees expecting to see an increase by an average of 4.8 percent. Many employees are doing the work of two or three people after layoffs and these raises give top talent a reason to stay.

Furthermore, and even more disturbing for the average employee, is the gap between top and average talent. Employers are investing more money in on the job training programs for top talent, which enables these lucky few to focus on career growth rather than job protection. The practice is known as segmentation or differentiation.

The only way for the average employee to close the gap is to invest in their own, self-made, job skills training program. The challenge is figuring out which skill-sets have the highest utility; that is, pay the most, for the shortest amount of training.

Brenda Bryant has an MBA with a concentration in finance. She has worked for JP Morgan, SunTrust Bank, and Intel. In 2007 she was invited to Harvard University as a visiting fellow to the assistant to the President. Her favorite pass times are playing with her dogs and reading. Brenda currently resides in Phoenix, AZ where she has lived since 2008.