carl mciver wrote:

In the Seattle area, the aerospace community has been complaining for
several years about just that, and it isn't until the concrete heads in the
legislature realized they were chasing all the skilled labor and shops out
of state have they realized what a skill shortage there is. A day late and
a dollar short, but better late than never. Unfortunately, when I hired on
at Boeing, with a million others barely able to breathe, they trained me on
company time. Got a whole lot of useless folks in the process. This time,
they're training the new hires on their time, for two weeks. A coworker of
mine got hit in the head by a fast moving rivet die. Seems the gal she was
teaching thought it was okay to put the die in the gun while holding the
trigger down. Absent the retainer spring, of course. As soon as she did it
the second time, just minutes later, they told her to take a hike. That's
why they're doing it differently this time around, as the dead wood gets
weeded out quickly. They aren't kicking people out for not having the
skills, they're removing them for not having a trainable attitude.

I recently got a very cool new job. One of the reasons I got the job
was the last line on my resume: "With the right attitude all skill deficits
can be overcome." That impresses the hell out of folks, especially when
your attitude seems to match the resume. (I once had the honor of bringing
onto my crew an older Greek lady who had no skills but just the exact
attitude I wanted. She worked her ass off and made the folks who had been
around for years look like amateurs once I taught her what she needed to
know.) I had also showed them pictures of some machines I had recently
built, which the interviewers (a structured interview with several folks
there) were almost fighting over. They wanted someone who could "do things"
instead of just talking about stuff. My fingernails being a bit chewed up
and slightly dirty helped a bit, I suspect.


My last job was at Microdyne which built telemetry equipment for the
aerospace industry. I was hired as a test technician on the module
line. I was told I only had six weeks to prove that I could do at least
80% of the average work done by everyone else on the line, and that I
would work with another tech as a trainer for the full six weeks. I
started on a Wednesday morning. By the Friday afternoon of that week my
training was terminated and I was assigned a test stamp. The following
Monday afternoon a "Committee" showed up at my bench to "Order" me to
slow down, that i was already producing more work than anyone else in
the department, and "You will slow down, if you know what was good for
you." I smiled and thanked them, then told them that if they didn't
want to look bad, they had three choices:

1: Learn to work faster.
2: Learn to work smarter.
or
3: Get out of my way because I was hired to do a job, not to win a
popularity contest. Then I offered to teach them to be better techs and
they laughed at me. One asked "How can you teach us anything?" I
shrugged and said, I don't know, but if I can do the job better and
faster after just three days, you might be surprised. ;-)

They informed me that I was rude, arrogant, and opinionated. Within
a couple weeks they started to ask questions. I answered, and got
stupid looks, but they did what I suggested, and they came back with big
smiles to tell ne it solved the problem. They didn't know that most of
my electronics work had been mission critical jobs, ad you didn't have
time to waste, so you studied the manuals and schematics ahead of time
so you knew how it worked.

They finally realized I wasn't bragging about my skills, that I had
worked very hard to develop them, and that I willing shared them with
anyone willing to learn.

I was there a little over four years, and ended up working with
almost every part of the company because of my, "It will be done. Done
Right. Done on time. Done on budget." attitude. On day my boss
commented, "You just won't take NO for an answer." I smiled and said,
"You're right, and I won't take YES, if I don't believe them."

Management kept coming around with new "Quality Statements" we were
supposed to memorize. I shoved the printout back into the HR manager's
hands and told him I wouldn't lower my standards for anyone. He turned
red and asked, "Well, What is your standard?" I grinned and told him
that "I do the best possible job with the tools and materials available,
and strive to do even better." His jaw dropped, and he walked away
muttering under his breath. ;-)

I was a volunteer advisor for the electronics program at the Lake
County Votech, until they decided to shut the course down and replace it
with a computer repair course. The "Instructor" was the school system's
IT director, and he was teaching with bad materials from the XT days.
No one had made the boards he was teaching about for over 10 years, and
he was having to read it from a ratty old library book, because he
didn't know what he was doing. All he knew was how to admin a small
Novel network.


--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida