Local jobs report: Demand for health care, skilled trades, in-house training

We’re checking in about trends in the local job market. From Express Employment Professionals:

Mike Murphy: It’s a family-run company. The company’s been around in Lane County for nearly 40 years now, serving light industrial, skilled trades, office service needs. And then in the last eight years, we also put our toe in the water with health care staffing.

[00:00:21] So we’ve got long-time customer relationships. Some that are 30, 35, 40 years old; relationships with the same leadership teams at companies for 20 years, which is unique. Lots of growing pains along the way as we’ve tried to help them navigate their individual business issues, because they obviously don’t rise and fall all on the same cycle.

[00:00:42] That’s one of the things that’s been really interesting to kind of observe as each one of the companies—the industries—tries to find a way to combat both local challenges from just local competitors. And a lot of our folks are international. One of the most interesting things is to kind of watch that cycle of demand and supply and competition move in and out.

[00:01:05] Within our market, skilled trades has been the one that’s probably seen the most evolution over time. I mean, it wasn’t that long ago that we had a pretty healthy recreational vehicle world here, and that had lots of related skilled trades people—that’s welders and fabricators and all those kinds of skill work that frankly, is not being trained as much, and there are some schools out there, but we are constantly in the search for skilled metalwork people, welders, fabricators, machinists.

[00:01:36] And what we need here is still, we’ve still got to build things in Eugene. We still have a fairly robust set of businesses that have to manufacture stuff. And so those people are hard to find. And again, there’s not a lot of folks that are training that. And those that are, sometimes the education doesn’t quite sync up immediately with what needs to be happening in the workforce for a company. So there’s that constant friction, which led to a renewed need for companies to start training in-house talent.

[00:02:02] Companies now have seen for many number of years here that they’re going to have to reskill people. And again, this is not a new cycle, right? We’ve gone through reskilling of workforces many times. The challenge is: Most companies that need to do that, that’s not their primary strength, right? They’re not, by definition, reskilling companies. They are, again, manufacturers or production people or salespeople or what have you.

[00:02:26] And so, there’s a bit of friction there, right? That may mean that they’re having to ramp up their internal training groups. That may provide some opportunities for folks that have come from the Learning & Development world that are going to be all of a sudden working in very different facilities: Maybe I was Learning & Development at a finance company and today I’m working out at O Fabricator, because of that need to reskill people is going to be a big opportunity. .

[00:02:48] After years of trying to rely on the ecosystem to kind of come around and find them what they need, they’re finding that that’s failing them. They’re not getting what they need. To answer it, rather than leave it to chance, they’re going to take it in their own hands. It’s critical for us.

[00:03:04] The stuff that pays the lights for us is the blue-collar work that is important to keeping economies growing. So we take that seriously, because obviously, our contribution to recruiting and finding and retaining talent, along with all of our competitors who are in that same business, it’s pretty critical for us to make sure that that happens, to make sure that the economy here stays as resilient as possible.

[00:03:25] John Q: He said he’s seen changes since the pandemic, and as a new generation moves into the workforce.

[00:03:31] Mike Murphy: One of the biggest frustrations for any company like ours is that folks tend to feel less loyal to companies. They feel more willing to take on risk, to try side projects. So, you know, that creates attendance issues for some of our companies. The younger folks are certainly much more comfortable creating their own work, and are not feeling maybe like when I grew up, feeling like you had to have that job because you had to pay your bills, and maybe had a picture of yourself that that’s who you were.

[00:04:02] Today, I think people are really good at visualizing themselves being lots of other things. They may not be successful at all those things, but that doesn’t scare them. I think in the old days, that would have scared people off, What if I fail?’ And now I think that that’s not as much of a deterrent, that people are resilient.

[00:04:17] And I think now people do look at here and now, having the freedom to travel, and to make their own schedule. I definitely see that in people and I hear it. I sit in an office next to the area where a lot of the interviews take place and I can hear those interviews. And now it’s like, you know: ‘I want to be able to take out Tuesday Wednesdays because I got this project that I’m working on and I’ll give you half a day’s notice.’

[00:04:39] It creates more uncertainty. It creates more work from just a managerial standpoint. I used to get one person that worked 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, and now I have to have two and a half people who want to work different days and so it creates that process. It also potentially creates unevenness in the work that gets done, because the talent is different.

[00:04:58] The other side of that, though, is sometimes when you have different creative minds in your workforce, you end up with solutions that you didn’t think about. I’ve always been a big believer in having a workforce that’s diverse in the way that they think about things. Problem solving is still the number one issue. I don’t care whether you’re welding something or you’re taking care of patients, the ability to creatively problem-solve is still a really important thing.

[00:05:23] And so I think that getting people to accept that there might be some value in looking slightly outside of what you would think would be the perfect fit for your employee. I don’t think we’re always successful in convincing folks to take a shot on people, and sometimes it doesn’t work, and that’s hard. It definitely makes us have to be more creative. But when you make it work, and the employer sees something that they get that they weren’t expecting and the employee retains some control over their life in whatever way they think it is, that’s pretty satisfying.

[00:05:55] I think the big example here in Lane County was how one of the pretty important jobs was how to take a look at a log and decide how to cut it for the highest amount of yield. And that was a very experienced hands-on person. But over time, that also wasn’t superefficient and it was hard to find those people. They were dying off. And so what that company decided to do is take those people who had that job and train them how to work on computers so that they could take what was in their head and actually create the computer programs that did what they did.

[00:06:25] Now it seems like that’s a no-brainer, but had not happened in that industry forever. And so now this company has reskilled these experienced, more mature employees who would have maybe been cast aside or that wisdom lost. I thought it was pretty innovative for the CEO to be taking a look at something different and I think there are lots of smaller examples like that throughout our community, people who are at least trying to make those leaps.

[00:06:51] The value of visiting with 100 companies a week is you get to see lots of different things and you get to be able to say— Even in my banking career, which was predominantly calling on small business donors, after, a few months, you would say, ‘You know, that sounds very similar to what I saw here. And here’s what I saw,’ and depending on the relationship, sometimes you would connect those people and they would be able to— ‘Cause sometimes, coming from me, I could see the value as someone who’s in that work doing the same kind of thing.

[00:07:17] But, yeah, I think it, it does provide us this values advisor, this consultant-type role. It is, in the end, what does bring people in. It creates the relationships, creates the trust that you’re looking for. I think most everybody would say they’re looking for a better way to do things, looking for answers. And so our value, because of the number of conversations we’re having, the number of times we’ve seen opportunities being filled or not filled, the way that we see companies structure themselves, how they onboard employees—there’s lots of value for us that we can bring to the table. And so we talk and we share those around other companies.

[00:07:49] And so being that resource, you know, selfishly, it’s, a great place to be. But also there’s a sense of accomplishment, because again, at the end of the day, we’re part of this whole economy here that if we do well and we can help our companies do well, then life is better.

[00:08:05] John Q: His recommendation is to keep it simple: Be clear.

[00:08:10] Mike Murphy: I have a lifelong saying that ‘the greatest gift we give to each other is the gift of clarity.’ And the further we get away from that, the more confusion, disappointment, etc. comes from that, so, whether that’s work or life.

[00:08:20] Seems silly, you know, a resume for a lot of people is really just a marketing tool, right? It doesn’t really represent in a way that’s measurable the work that they’ve done. And part of our job is to look at that resume, have a conversation and say: ‘What does this mean?’ You know, because there’s so much word salad that’s out there for so many things and that helps us in aligning what people are looking for.

[00:08:41] And so, if you’re a jobseeker, it really is important about: (1) Being clear about what you want.

[00:08:46] I think that’s important and what you’re willing to do, and not trying to stretch yourself. So I think that being clear about what you’re looking for, being able to articulate your value, the things that you do that you bring that are maybe unique to you. And certainly if you have value and have produced elsewhere, be able to talk about that in a way that when you’re done talking about it, the person just doesn’t blink at you twice and say, ‘What did you just tell me?’ That happens a lot.

[00:09:12] It happens from an employer standpoint, too. I think sometimes employers are not really good at defining, ‘What am I expecting? What is this task? What is this job?’ And so our role as the middle person here is to try to help both sides become much more clear about expectations, much more clear about what’s acceptable, what’s not acceptable. The problems usually occur when people just either compromise, or are not clear about things.

[00:09:33] Keep it simple. Understand what you want, be clear about what you’ve done. Don’t accept something that you really aren’t going to be able to fulfill.

[00:09:42] John Q: Mike Murphy with Express Employment Professionals sees continued demand for skilled trades and health care. And with a new generational shift in the work force, he’s also seeing increasing demand for in-house training.