Equipment World Digital Magazine
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/726012
EquipmentWorld.com | September 2016 11 L ast month, the hashtag #firstseven- jobs was trending on Twitter. The idea was to list, using the social media medium of your choice, the first seven jobs you had in your life – all those lawn mowing and waitressing gigs that first made you flush with pocket change. Since I've interviewed my share of con- tractors, I'm going to take a stab at creating such a list for a mythical contractor: 1. Go-fer 2. Laborer 3. Mechanic's helper 4. Equipment operator 5. Estimator 6. Crew foreman 7. Job superintendent The career path here is apparent, but on such a list there's no indication of what type of training is needed to move forward. How exactly do you get from go-fer to equipment operator or job superintendent? What type of training and experience do you need? Well, it depends. Company A may place a premium on formal education, while com- pany B pays special attention to a worker's communication skills. And the type of work a contractor does will influence this list. For example, Mike Brock with Brock's Grading & Landclearing in Hartsville, South Carolina, says he would love to see someone who has a knowledge of different soil conditions, grades and topography. And it wouldn't hurt for them to understand GPS. Fortunately, educational alternatives that have always been around are gaining new respectability. As NPR's Marketplace show reported last month, "Skills training is having a moment." The show quoted the National Skills Coalition, which promotes training for what it calls "middle skills" jobs – those requiring more than high school but less than a four-year degree. According to the coalition, these middle skill jobs make up 54 percent of the jobs in the U.S. econo- my, but only 44 percent of U.S. workers are trained to the middle skill level. As construction relies more on technol- ogy, the skills disconnect can be more pro- nounced. I was struck by Mike Momrow's comments in the GPS/GNSS 101 story in this issue. As survey manager for Rifenburg Companies in Troy, New York, Momrow makes the declaration that his company "doesn't use GPS, it runs on GPS." And therein lies the skills gap: "We just don't have enough machine control or survey guys who can take the technology and run with it," he told Executive Editor Tom Jackson. "There's not a college in the United States that teaches machine control technol- ogy," he says. "You still have to learn that on the job." OTJ training will always be a major part of how skills are transferred in this industry. There's no classroom that can replicate the see-this/know-this immediacy of how to handle a job-specific task. But that shouldn't be an excuse for the catch-as-catch-can education that too many contractors rely on to make sure their valued crews are gaining the skills they need to advance. If skills training is indeed having a mo- ment, right now might also be a good back- to-school moment. on record | by Marcia Gruver Doyle MGruver@randallreilly.com Skills training for the first seven jobs