Jobs and Skills - again

It has recently been suggested that some people may not appreciate what I am on about when I suggest that the bulk of the hype about "Skills Shortages" is mostly BS.

I don't mean to suggest that there are no "perceived" shortages of skills in the workplace - clearly there are.

The small businessperson who wants to find a particular skillset and has expectations about what the person will look like, what their cultural background is, what they will cost and all the other pieces of the equation - may indeed find it difficult to find the *right* person.

This is because there is often a serious mismatch between the expectations of the *employer* and those of the potential *employee*.

Especially in the domain of the traditional "small business person". Now I don't want to be rude to anyone but my personal experience with Australian small business is rather sad.

Mostly the jobs they provide are fairly basic and are often low-level. These jobs are focussed around the retail, services, agriculture and manufacturing industries.

One of the unfortunate characteristics of small business in this country is that there are few modern businesses employing many people and there is a lot of rearview focus by employers. Unfortunately, innovative science and technology businesses are few and far between - courtesy of decades of a "she'll be right mate" - attitude.

Which doesn't bode well for the future - because we will need to maximise science as we mitigate against the effects of *climate change*.

And the rewards are always poor - I have yet to find an employee of an Australian small business who is happy with their reward - and an employer who is happy with their costs. Why would anyone imagine that AU$20 bucks an hour is a reasonable reward for effort?

But to suggest (as some people do) that there is a major skills shortage is just plain wrong. What exists is a mismatch of expectations.

Often a small business employer wants a young, flexible, experienced, cheap and compliant employee. And usually the available candidates are older, less flexible, very experienced, more expensive and not at all compliant.

This is the mismatch - and which usually gets mis-represented as "skills shortages".