[falconmaster]

Originally Posted by Donut

I've seen this problem first hand the last 2 years in my first job out of college. We've had an electrician opening posted for 2 months with only 1 applicant in that time span and are facing a wave of retirements in the next few years that will almost cut our skilled trades staff in half.

There's a catch 22 here in that many of these jobs want someone with experience and are unwilling to hire someone fresh out of school for fear of the unknown, which makes it difficult to get hired out of school. I hope FIRSTers will apply for these types of jobs, and remember to flaunt their FIRST experience as much as they can. It's a good way to show experience without holding many internships or a past job. For me it was the difference maker that got me an offer over other candidates, but outside of an engineering role it might be the only way to even get called in for an interview.

Since I didn't catch the 60 minutes special, did it discuss the issue of location and local skills? I've noticed there are many more manufacturing plants here in Iowa than I ever saw in Arizona but there is a much smaller population to recruit from locally, which makes finding uncommon skilled trades even more of a challenge. While it's relatively common for large companies to look out of state to fill engineering roles it's more difficult for smaller ones to do so, and for skilled trades roles the search is almost exclusively in the local area.

You can watch the segment here http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50134943n