1ºPay better. I place people in jobs for a living. Most positions that we can't find people for right now have the same thing in common---they don't pay well at all. People aren't willing to put up with a job that's not exactly fun to do (like customer service, where you get to deal with angry people every day) for $15/hr when you can go work in an Amazon Warehouse for over $25/hr. We aren't really having a hard time in finding talent otherwise---but there is heavy competition for the better people out there. And again, to that problem, the answer comes in paying more or giving more work flexibility.
2ºWho Will Really Pay for the Proposed Corporate Tax Increases?
The U.S. Treasury Department calculates that roughly half of the corporate income tax is borne by families earning less than $400,000 in annual income. These families will bear the cost of increased corporate taxes.
Even though a corporation physically writes the check to the Internal Revenue Service when it pays its taxes, a corporation is only a legal fiction — a form of doing business. Like any other cost, corporations pass the cost of corporate income taxes on to people. Economists agree that only people — and not legal entities — bear the cost of taxes. The true burden of the corporate income tax is on everyday Americans. Because of the corporate income tax, they are paid less for their work, earn less on the savings in their retirement accounts, or pay higher prices for the goods and services produced by corporations. Economists universally agree that a substantial share of the corporate tax is borne by workers through lower wages.
3ºLetter to the editor of a local newspaper:
Dear Editors,
All the recent news stories and articles about businesses not being able to find workers has prompted me to write this letter.
I am a 61 year old retiree. In my lifetime, I started, ran and later sold four very successful businesses, all of them having a varied number of employees. In my retirement, I became a bit bored and restless so I decided to try finding a part time job. It just so happens I was in one of our local indoor malls and noted a, "Help wanted", sign in the window of a shoe store. I entered the store and found a young lady to inquire about the sign and what job they were hiring for. She wasn't sure so she would need to ask her manager. She went into the back of the store, came back five minutes later and told me the manager would be right with me. After nearly 15 minutes the manager finally appeared and asked if she could help me? My first thought was, "Didn't the young lady tell you I was inquiring about you help wanted sign?" So I tell her I was looking to see what kind of job they had. Instead of telling me, she asked if I had gone to the company web site to fill out an application? I told her no, I hadn't and that before I did that, I wanted to know what kind of job it was to see if it was something I would be interested in. She then told me it was a part time job to stock shoes on the shelves. Okay, fair enough. I went home, found the website and then filled out what amounted to 6 pages that wanted me to detail every place I had worked in the past 15 years, their address, their phone number, my supervisors name, what I did there, how much I made and why I left working there? It then went on to ask when I graduated high school, where and what did I major and minor in (?), then wanted me to list the three most major accomplishments I had while working, to detail what my biggest strengths and weaknesses were, and wanted the names, addresses and phone numbers of three people not related to me that I've known for at least one year that can serve as character references. In all my years of owning and running businesses, I had never asked for so much information from someone applying for a lower end of the skills set job. I asked myself if this was the application to work part time putting out boxes of shoes on the display shelves of a discount shoe store in the mall, or the application for a job at the US Mint? After submitting the application, the next thing the web site wanted was for me to take an, "assessment test". For a job of this nature, I wondered what exactly they needed to "assess", but went ahead with the test. It wasn't long before I became perplexed, as a four time successful business owner, why I was answering questions such as, "I always worry about catching a disease from a door nob", and, "If I caught my coworkers taking an unauthorized break, I would immediately report it to my supervisor", and, "I always do tasks I see need to be done even if it's not my job to do them?" I found myself having a, "You've got to be kidding me", moment.
After submitting my application and test, I waited. Days turned into weeks. Three weeks to be exact. I finally got a call, not from the store manager but some woman four states away in the human resources department asking if I could come in for an interview? Okay sure. When I went in, there was a man there doing the interview. He asked me why I wanted this job, if I was hired what could I bring to the company as an employee and, where I saw myself in five years. Once again I sat, perplexed as to whether or not this was an interview for a 20 hour a week part time shoe stocker? I went home after the interview and again heard nothing for two weeks. Then a call for a second interview. When I went to this interview it was with the district manager. She asked me questions like, "Did I see this position as a jumping off point for future career advancement?" Really? Are we hiring a part time shoe stocker here? Two weeks later, a third interview, this time with the regional manager. She asks me how they can tell if I'm the right person for this job? At that point, I lost it. I told her, "You're looking to hire a part time, 20 hour a week, $8 an hour person to stock shoes on the store shelves, not a systems analyst. Six weeks of applications, tests, interviews, questions that hardly even come close to being in any way pertinent to the job and turning the otherwise simple task of finding someone to stock shoes in a mall shoe store part time into a ridiculous, drawn out, blown out of proportion process that shouldn't have gone past one interview with the store manager", and I walked out.
If you can't find workers to fill your jobs, you don't need a PhD to know why.