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Solutions to STEM Skills Mismatch

Saturday, February 25th, 2012

My December 26, 2011 blog, Expanding the Ranks of STEM Professionals, examined some of the realities and the myths behind the much discussed skills mismatch in the U.S. labor force; a mismatch characterized by a surplus of people looking for jobs, but a shortage of people with the skills for which employees are looking. This is reflected in an economy in which there are more than four unemployed workers for every job opening, but also thousands of unfilled positions (primarily technical) for which employers have been unable to find people with the required skills.

In a nutshell, the disagreement, as I explained in last month’s article, boils down to three interpretations of the shortage problem:

  1. We are not educating or training enough STEM professionals;
  2. We are educating/training enough people, but employers are not paying them enough to attract them from jobs in fields such as management consulting or investment banking. This problem is exacerbated by U.S. government policies that make it difficult or unattractive for U.S.-educated, foreign-born citizens to stay in the U.S. and by increased aggressiveness of emerging country companies (especially Chinese and Indian) to recruit and attract top university graduates with offers of permanent visas, comparable salaries, attractive benefit packages, and the promise of interesting, resume-burnishing overseas work; and
  3. We are educating/training enough people, but many have insufficient functional skills (in their specific discipline) or broad foundational skills (communications, cognitive, etc.) to be hired in STEM jobs.

Although proponents of each of these interpretations disagree on many things, they generally do agree on two issues:

  1. Our K-12 educational system is not doing a good job at teaching STEM fundamentals (and thereby not preparing students for college-level work in these fields) or in creating the type of curiosity and excitement required to motivate our best and brightest to become engineers and scientists;
  2. Employers, who are cutting back on their own training programs, will accept only graduates who can fill a current need or otherwise deliver immediate value.

In Search of “THE STEM Solution”

We certainly don’t and possibly never will, fully agree on all of the specific “cause/s” of the STEM skills mismatch problem. However, most agree that the tech industry is having trouble getting the number and quality of people that it needs. Many agree that the reasons for this are two-fold:

  • The imitations of our K-12 education system; and
  • A dearth of corporate training programs;

I, along with virtually everybody else who examines the education-to-career pipeline, fully acknowledge that K-12 education is at the root of many of our problems. Unfortunately, none of the experts seem to be able to agree on the cause of this problem, much less on its solutions. Even if they could agree, the educational system is highly unlikely to get additional money (or probably, even avoid additional cuts) from state and local governments. Moreover, even if we were to identify the magic bullet, and could afford to develop and shoot it, it would probably take at least half of a generation to begin seeing meaningful results.

Compared with fixing the K-12 educational system, improving corporate training programs should be a piece of cake. After all, big companies already know how to provide training. Some, particularly those with large operations in India and China, already provide extensive education and training programs to compensate for the big gaps in these countries’ educational systems. Although smaller companies may not have such capabilities, even they can retain specialists to develop and administer programs that are tailored to their needs. The “only thing” that it will really take to address these needs is money. This too, however, will be a very tall order in the current era of economic uncertainty and unrelenting belt-tightening.

Moreover, even if we identify solutions to, invest in and address both of these potential issues, what if the underlying problem—companies’ inability to find people suited to fill specific STEM job openings—is not resolved?

Plugging the Leaks in the STEM Pipeline

There is no question. We absolutely must work to fix the K-12 educational system—for the good of our society, as well as for our companies. I would also love to see a recreation of many of the traditional corporate training programs. Ideally, I would particularly like to see U.S. companies go further, as by creating programs of the type that are widely used in India—whereby companies establish their own schools in which all new recruits are brought up to a common, base level of capabilities and then provided basic training in the specific disciplines to which they will be initially assigned. Such programs, could be used both, for new graduates (whichever level of school is appropriate for the anticipated positions) or for current or displaced employees who need to be retrained for new jobs.

In reality, however, such hopes are little more than pipedreams, at least in today’s economic and fiscal environment. Although we can certainly hope for progress in each of these areas, there are a number of generally smaller, more incremental steps that have the potential of at least alleviating part of the core STEM skills mismatch problem. For example:

  • Employers can work with state and local governments to develop and continually update an online jobs guide, using a companies’ best estimates on which and how many positions are likely to be available over the next year, the next three years and the next five years, as well as the types of skills, qualifications and/or certifications individuals will need to prepare for these jobs. The postings should also provide anticipated compensation ranges, the schools and programs that train people for these jobs, and examples of potential career paths.
  • Employers can partner with schools—particularly two-year colleges and universities—to jointly develop curricula, courses and materials for teaching the skills that will be needed for these jobs. Employers should also provide volunteer instructors, tools (computers, software, machines, support, etc. on which students can get hands-on training and practice), and, where appropriate, create meaningful internships, apprenticeship or sandwich year programs.
  • Schools, local government organizations, companies and labor unions can invest in training and building networks of “career navigators” who can help students or transitioning workers assess their interests and skills; match these to colleges, curricula and career pathways; and guide clients through college planning and the college-to-career transition. Some non-profits, such as CAEL, already help companies, local governments and labor unions create such programs. It is also working with other organizations to develop an online training and certification process for these navigators.
  • Governments and unions could make it easier for companies to put people though through company-run or company-sponsored training programs, test-hire them at low or subsidized rates for defined periods and easily dismiss those who do not meet expectations.

Most importantly, all students and employees must take much greater responsibility for planning, preparing for and managing their careers and for continually upgrading their skills. They must seek out and proactively work with career navigators to identify and prepare for careers that match their interests and skills, and that are likely to offer strong long-term employment opportunities. They must select schools and employers that offer the educational and training opportunities that will prepare them for these careers. They must, though coursework, reading and extra-curricular activities, develop the foundational skills, as well as the functional skills they will require. And, in the current era of perpetual uncertainty, they must continually assess the long-term trends in their own and other potential career paths and industries, identify needs and opportunities for changes, and continually update and supplement their skills to ensure they will can provide higher and higher levels of value to current and future employers.

Posted in Job and Career Opportunities, Skills Requirements, STEM Careers | No Responses »
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Evalueserve’s KPO Service Offerings

Sunday, February 28th, 2010

My last blog discussed the outsourcing of knowledge-based services and the growth and breadth of the Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO) industry. This blogs drills into some of the most general of these offerings by focusing on the evolution and growth of a single provider, Evalueserve. I focus on this company not because its services are unique (many KPO providers have similar offerings), but because it is representative of the broad range of horizontal knowledge-based business services that are now available from India.

Evalueserve Offerings

Evaluserve, which was founded in December 2000, now consists of more than 2,100 employees in Delhi-Gurgaon, India; Shanghai, China; Valparaiso-Santiago, Chile; and Cluj, Romania. Since it is a private company, its precise annual revenues are not known, but they are believed to be around $100 million. Its first offerings, launched in 2001, included intellectual property and business research services, targeted at lawyers, consulting companies, and investment banks. It added roughly one additional service per year, consisting of market research services, other banking-related research services, risk and data analytics services, and, in 2007, a range of legal process offerings.

It currently offers eight types of services, which are combined in distinct ways to provide customized solutions for its customers:

  • Market Research – qualitative and quantitative surveys and focus groups to address issues including employee satisfaction, brand perception, customer loyalty, event effectiveness, and new concept testing.
  • Business Research – market sizing, market assessment and segmentation studies, value chain analyses, competitive research and analyses, innovation searches, company profiling, and the identification of new business opportunities and business partners.
  • Investment Research – independent and support services to all types of financial services companies across four primary areas: equity, fixed income, corporate finance, and buy-side. It provides a full range of research services plus a broad range of analytical services, such as to model portfolios and risk, allocate resources, and simulate returns. It also provides reports and develops pitch books and marketing packs.
  • Intellectual Property Research – patentability and invalidation searches, patent landscape and portfolio analyses, patent drafting and filing services, and patent litigation support services.
  • Legal Support Services – a broad range of legal research and litigation, electronic document discovery, immigration support services, ongoing contract management, with the ability to bring engineers, scientists and business analysts, as well as lawyers and paralegals onto teams.
  • Marketing and Sales Support – services covering the sales spectrum, including lead generation, proposal and collateral production; sales analytics; client satisfaction studies; sales process benchmarking and public relations support.
  • Knowledge Technology Development – developing knowledge management tools including portals, taxonomies, business intelligence and data warehouses, and content management and elearning solutions.
  • Data Analytics – data acquisition and modeling as well as the use of analytics techniques including simulations and econometric modeling plus more specialized credit risk, consumer risk and market risk analytics services to banks and insurance companies. In addition, it builds dashboards and offers specialized services atop packaged data analysis software, such as Cognos.

Although the vast majority of Evalueserve analysts are recent graduates with only a few years of experience (see my next blog), the company also recognizes and accommodates client requirements for assistance from much more seasoned industry experts. The company’s Circle of Experts program is a network of more than 20,000 senior independent consultants or retired executives from across the globe, each with deep domain and industry expertise in their specific fields. These experts, who are billed at anywhere from $150 (for an Indian expert) to $900 (for a U.S. one) per hour, can address specific client questions, provide days of consulting, or provide an extra level of analysis to work provided by more junior Evalueserve analysts.

But while this provides an overview of the breadth of current KPO offerings, it is more important to understand the business models by which KPO providers operate, the value they provide to clients and the implications for U.S. knowledge workers is something totally different. This is the focus of my next blog.

Posted in 21st Century Careers, Business Trends, Creating the 21st Century Workforce, Economic and Political Forces, Economic Forces, Global Forces-General, Globalization, Immigration and Offshoring, IT Industry and Companies, IT Industry Trends, IT/Business Consulting/Outsourcing, IT/Software-as-a-Service, Job and Career Opportunities, Technology's Impact on Job Skills, Workforce Trends | No Responses »
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The Growth of Knowledge Process Outsourcing

Monday, February 22nd, 2010

Over the last decade in my quarter-century career as an IT Industry analyst, I focused extensively on the outsourcing of increasingly high-level IT functions to offshore employees. I examined, for example, how offshore tasks have evolved from basic maintenance of old, centralized, Cobol-based applications to the architecting of new-generation, distributed Java and .Net-based apps and a broad range of other high-level IT functions. I examined how application outsourcing evolved into business process outsourcing, in which offshore providers not only managed increasingly sophisticated processes (as from basic call centers though comprehensive financial and supply chain processes), but also developed deep expertise in architecting and transforming entire processes to make them more secure, accurate and efficient.

Although Application Outsourcing (AO) and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) growth has (along with everything else in the business world) stalled over the last couple years, they promise to resume rapid growth as the recession ends and companies strive to institutionalize the efficiency gains achieved during the recession.

Emergence of KPO

However, the greater growth, and even greater workforce implications will come from a new generation of outsourcing—the outsourcing of a broad range of sophisticated knowledge-based processes in fields ranging from financial analysis and marketing management to legal research and the research and development of the newest generation of sophisticated IT, communication and pharmaceutical products. Even hip replacement and open heart surgery is now being outsourced!

This growth of Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO), which was originally launched on the promise of cost cutting, or “labor arbitrage”, is now being driven by something else—the rapid growth in education in emerging countries and the rapid decline in availability of developed country students majoring in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) disciplines. It is simply becoming easier (not to speak of less expensive) to find, grow and mange such skills in emerging countries. (Note, that while the U.S. continues to lead the world in STEM PhDs, foreign-born students now account for more than half of all graduates. And since the U.S., through a combination of government policies and societal pressures, is making it increasingly difficult for foreign graduates to work in the U.S., more and more of these graduates are returning to their home countries—especially India and China—rather than contributing to the U.S. economy.

We have all seen, or at least heard of the rapid growth in offshore knowledge work:

  • Virtually all of the major financial service companies have opened offshore financial analysis centers;
  • All leading electronics and pharmaceutical companies have build large offshore research and development teams;
  • Offshore hospitals, which perform increasingly sophisticated surgeries for 15-20% of the price of domestic hospitals—with free foreign vacations thrown in—are proliferating and U.S. insurance companies are increasingly referring patients to them.

These, however, are just the most visible tip of a revolution that has begun to touch virtually every aspect of knowledge work. And while the fruits of these offshore knowledge sources were traditionally available only to those very large corporations that had the resources, skills and patience to build and manage their own offshore centers, the emergence of third-party KPO providers is rapidly democratizing the offshore knowledge processing industry, making such services available to mid-size, as well as large firms.

The Emergence of KPO Service Providers

All of the leading Indian IT providers now offer some knowledge processing services. (Tata Consulting Services, for example, offers business intelligence and performance management services, Infosys provides legal research and litigation support services and Wipro is a leader in product engineering services). A growing number of Western outsourcing providers also provide KPO services. IBM BPO/KPO offerings include a broad range of horizontal (including supply chain management) and vertical (as for banking, insurance and healthcare) offerings. So too does Accenture, with cross-industry services including financial and human resource management and industry-specific, such as Clinical Trial Management and Pharmacovigilance.

But while most of the leading outsourcers have begun to enter this field, their progress and active marketing of these offerings has—not surprisingly—slowed during the recession. As of now, the industry remains dominated by business KPO specialists. Although there are a few multi-line KPO providers, such as Outsource2India, KPO Experts and Evalueserve, the vast majority are specialists. More than 300 Indian firms already provide horizontal or industry-specific vertical services in fields including legal research and litigation support (Lexadigm), market research (Progonsys), business analytics (C-BIA) to architectural and drafting (Indovance) services.

Although the vast majority of the larger providers focus on providing business services to large or mid-sized companies, the Internet, combined with the emergence of third-party offshore service intermediaries, are now making KPO services available to very small businesses (as for Web design and accounting) and even individuals (such as for English and math tutors to personal assistants).

But, when you talk about business KPO providers, the discussion should begin with Evalueserve, one the first and largest of India’s multi-line KPO providers. My next blog (February 28 blog) will look specifically into the growth of Evalueserve and the range of services it provides. My March 7 blog will examine the implications for U.S. corporations and knowledge workers and what students and employees can do to “outsource-proof” their careers.

Posted in 21st Century Careers, Business Trends, Creating the 21st Century Workforce, Globalization, Immigration and Offshoring, IT Industry and Companies, IT Industry Trends, IT/Business Consulting/Outsourcing, IT/Software-as-a-Service, Job and Career Opportunities, Technology's Impact on Job Skills, Workforce Trends | 3 Responses »
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The Jobs of Today—and Tomorrow

Sunday, February 14th, 2010

I have written extensively about the jobs of tomorrow and the critical role of STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) skills in preparing applicants for these jobs. (See, for example, my recently completed free report, “IT Companies as Catalysts in Creating the 21st Century Workforce.“) As explained in a new CareerCast study, these skills also critical in preparing applicants for the jobs of today—or at least many of the “best jobs”.

“Best Jobs”

What are these “best jobs” and what makes them “the best”? The study, which compiles U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and Census Bureau data, evaluates jobs in terms of five criteria:

  1. Stress;
  2. Working environment;
  3. Physical demands;
  4. Income and growth potential; and
  5. Hiring outlook.

While not necessarily the highest skilled (neurosurgeon, corporate M&A lawyer), highest paying (bond trader, hedge fund manager) or most glamorous (movie star, professional athlete), these jobs are available in reasonably high numbers and are available to people with relatively moderate (typically a four-year degree) degree of education.

Just what are these jobs? The top ten are, in descending order: actuary, software engineer, computer systems analyst, biologist, historian, mathematician, paralegal assistant, statistician, accountant and dental hygienist. All but two (historian and paralegal) require some form of specialized STEM education.

Perhaps none of these jobs are quite your cup of tea. Or, perhaps unlike CareerCast, you do not weigh each of the five criteria equally. You may, for example, be motivated primarily by income and advancement potential, or you may actually prefer a physically demanding job.

No worries. There are dozens of other jobs. But be forewarned: 37 of the CareerCast’s 50 “best jobs” (out of a total 200 ranked jobs) require some form of explicit math, science or technology background. Moreover, as I have discussed in previous blogs, a number of the 13 additional jobs (such as historian, sociologist, anthropologist and archeologist) increasingly require specialized IT and math skills, such as in compiling and analyzing huge quantities of information and data.  

Of course, this doesn’t suggest that ALL jobs that are intellectually, emotionally and financially rewarding require STEM educations. You can, for example, become a philosopher (11), attorney (80), author (74), clergyman (96) or artist (104), although most such professions require extensive training or specialized skills. There are also somewhat lower skill jobs. You can be a damn good paralegal (7), medical records technician (20), purchasing agent (40), jeweler (61) or actor (163) with little or no math or science training and few, if any, computer skills. But if you want to find jobs with no specialized training requirements or long apprentices, you generally have to move much further down the CareerCast list into lower-skill, more physical and/or more repetitive jobs such as waitperson (125), bus driver (137), retail salesperson (142) or mail carrier (191). And if you really want to live on the edge (literally and figuratively), you can always become a lumberjack (199) or roustabout (200).

Skills Requirements

But regardless of which type of career you choose, the work environment of the 21st century will not be like that of the 20th century. Jobs will remain scarce for at least the next five years, more positions will become temporary or freelance, and a growing number of jobs will be devalued or disappear as a result of increasingly pervasive globalization of knowledge work and the automation of functions that used to require human discretion and labor.

Success in this new environment will require much more than strong, specialized domain skills (whether STEM-based or not). Traditional left-brain analytical skills will, in fact, become the ante required for success in tomorrow’s jobs. Knowledge workers who hope to capture and retain the best, highest-value and most secure jobs must also complement these capabilities with increasingly large doses of left-brained conceptual and empathic skills. And, with all due respect to technophobes, virtually all high-value knowledge jobs will also require at least basic quantitative, statistical and IT skills. IT, in fact, will increasingly have to become the second language for almost all 21st century knowledge workers.

Posted in 21st Century Careers, Business Trends, Creating the 21st Century Workforce, Economic and Political Forces, Economic Forces, Job and Career Opportunities, Skills Requirements, STEM Careers, Technology's Impact on Job Skills, Workforce Trends | No Responses »
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Time for a New Job Search Strategy?

Sunday, October 25th, 2009

My Sept 27, 2009 blog, Leveraging University Education into Careers for the New Economy,  provided recommendations for students looking to structure their coursework in a way that would increase their odds for getting a job. But what about knowledge workers who have already graduated and now find themselves among the 9.7% of the workforce that is unemployed, or the 16.7% that is underemployed? What can these people do to maximize their prospects?

Some professionals, such as engineers, nurses, statisticians and, to a lesser extent, math and science teachers (to the extent they are out of work), generally have few problems in getting a new job. These and other specialty-skill job openings (including some high-skill blue collar jobs, such as for precision welders) are, in fact, going begging for qualified candidates. Similarly, some metropolitan markets, such as Washington D.C. and Baltimore (which employ large numbers of government, medical and defense workers), still have tight job markets. Unemployment remains at a relatively low 6.2% and, according to a Wall Street Journal article, there is one job opening for every unemployed person. Even this, however, doesn’t help those that don’t have sought-after skills.

For the most part, jobs are tough and they are going to remain that way. The Labor Department, for example, calculates fewer job openings in July than any time since it started tracking these numbers in 2000. In fact, the current level of 2.4 million job openings are half of the number from the mid-2007 peak.

Some metro areas–especially Detroit—are in particularly tough shape, with unemployment rates of up to 17.7% and as many as 18 unemployed people chasing every opening. And to make matters worse, the combination of factors such as plummeting home values, a dearth of home buyers, diminished savings accounts and limited availability of credit, make it difficult for people to move to locations with better (or at least less worse) job prospects.

As bad as things are now, few economists expect things to get much better any time soon. Speculation and growing evidence suggests a jobless recovery in which companies will rebuilt inventory and address initial demand by increasing the hours of current employees and, where necessary, hiring part-time and temporary workers. Most firms prudently plan to await solid, demonstrable, sustainable increase in demand before hiring new workers.

What should a laid off professional do? Give up and stay at home? Hardly. Even if current prospects are slim, shutting down a search and dedicating time to watching TV instead is self-destructive—both to one’s current attitude and to future employment prospects.

As I see it, everyone in this position should take some combination of five steps:

  1. Continue and expand your networking, both physical and virtual though the use of online social media.
  2. Keep your existing skills current or go back to school to learn new skills in fields that promise to offer better job prospects;
  3. Learn technical skills that complement those of your chosen career (especially relevant IT, math and science skills) that will allow you do deliver higher levels of value;
  4. Document your skills development efforts so that when you do get an interview, you can clearly demonstrate the currency of skills, your adaptability and ambition; and perhaps most importantly,
  5. Diversify or adapt your search strategy by positioning yourself as a temporary or part-time solution to a pressing employer need, rather than as a full-time employee.

This fifth step will be difficult to for many to swallow. It will, however, be particularly appropriate over the next 6 to 12 months as business begins to expand and corporate profits increase, but as companies, uncertain of the future, remain skeptical of committing to new expenses.

True, this approach will probably entail lower pay, little or no job security and no benefits. Worse still, it may make it more difficult for the under-employed to search for a full-time position. On the positive side, however, this strategy will allow you to position yourself as a low-cost, low-risk solution to a company’s staffing needs, rather than be part of the problem of increasing overhead in an uncertain economy. It will also give you an opportunity to prove yourself (for when the company is ready to hire), allow you to bolster your resume and (hopefully) learn new skills.

Moreover, selling yourself as a part-time solution to a pressing problem will also be great training for what many laid off professionals will find to be their best long-term career opportunity—becoming a consultant or starting your own company.

Posted in 21st Century Careers, Business Trends, Creating the 21st Century Workforce, Economic and Political Forces, Economic Forces, Global Forces-General, Innovation/Entrepeneur, Job and Career Opportunities, Skills Requirements, Societal Forces, Technology's Impact on Job Skills, Workforce Trends | No Responses »
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