Do you ever feel compelled to comment? Do you ever hear/read/see something that you just can’t keep quiet about? I’m having one of those moments … thanks in advance for allowing me to share this gentle rant.
So there I was, at home the night before I wrote this blog entry. I’m sitting in a chair, trying to read the local newspaper while fending off the loving intrusions of two dogs and one spit-soaked tennis ball. I turn the page on my copy of the Raleigh News & Observer, and this headline jumps out at me: “Training just wastes time, jobless say.” Right below was the subhead: “Programs make little difference.”
So now, I’m hooked. Initial reaction: Training is never a waste of time. How is it even possible that learning something new could be considered a waste? You might not have immediate applications for that knowledge, but someday you likely will. Besides, even if you don’t design your own clothing, isn’t it nice to know you could if the spirit moved you?
All that said, the article had some good points. Originally published by The New York Times, the article focused mostly on federal job skills training, and alleged that the training offers no cure for unemployment. Even though thousands have taken training, the article said, most learners have ended up with little if any benefits. “Training was fruitless,” one unemployed person said. “I’m not seeing the benefits. Training for what? No one’s hiring.”
Clearly, there’s a good point here. Wide-scale, federally funded training is certainly no placebo that can cure the ills of nearly 7 million Americans who’ve been unemployed for longer than six months, and training without hope of advancement is a little like frosting with no cake underneath: It’s tasty, but it doesn’t really help much.
As I cooled down a bit from seeing that headline – Training just wastes time, it actually said! – I could see the limited points of this article. Training is not a magic wand that instantly creates opportunity; it is a tool that carefully and deliberately constructs the garden in which opportunity grows. It may not be realistic to think you can turn an unemployed steelworker into an IT security expert with just a few classes and a lot of hope. That transformation, in the best of circumstances (which this isn’t), would require hard work, serious study and a decent amount of luck.
So how can training help an unemployed person?
First and foremost, as with any human endeavor, what a person takes from training is reflective of what they bring to training. Naturally, a person already employed brings a different set of goals than an unemployed person would, and that means a different type of motivation. But think about what you’ve seen on “Law & Order”: As an element of crimes, motive is always paired with means and opportunity.
The means, like the motive, is the easy hurdle to clear. If you’re motivated, the means exists for training, through these types of federal training programs, or from local resources, or from friends, neighbors and community members. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.
That leaves opportunity, and that’s one isn’t so easy. Things are still tough and those in the job market will need to go through a certain period of waiting and transition. We do have to cross our fingers and hope for a brighter future, but that’s not all we have to do: We have to be ready to strike when the iron heats up.
Readiness? That’s precisely where training comes in. Training may seem to be a waste for the desperately unemployed person who sees bills mounting and holes getting deeper … that’s a situation where instant gratification isn’t nearly fast enough. But today’s unread resume is tomorrow’s candidate, and when that opportunity comes along, it’s going to go to the person who IS ready, not the person who can be ready soon.
Besides all that, think from a hiring manager’s perspective. Skills being equal, would you hire the candidate who spent time between jobs reinventing himself/herself with job training, or the person who moans that training is a waste of time? I’ll say it again: Time spent bettering oneself is an investment, not a waste. Some investments just pay off faster than others.
Here’s that headline again: Training just wastes time, jobless say.
