Are America’s youth “ready” to work?
Not prepared, but ready!
By Arnold Sherr

The following list of skills which, according to Dawn Rosenberg McKay, are necessary if our youth are to survive in the workplace.

Dawn Rosenberg McKay is a career planning professional with eighteen years of experience. She is the author of several books on this subject.

Experience: Dawn has been the Career Planning Guide on About.com since 1997. She ran a job and education information center at a large public library for over five years, working with clients who were going through career transitions, such as career change and job loss. Dawn also assisted new high school and college graduates during the transition from school to starting a career. She has led workshops on resume writing, job interviewing, networking and job searching on the Internet. Dawn is also the author of The Everything Practice Interview Book and The Everything Get-a-Job Book, both published by Adams Media, as well as several civil service test preparation books that were published by Peterson's and Pearson Education.

Education: Dawn completed the Career Development Facilitator Certificate Program at Hofstra University in 1999. She also earned a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from Hofstra and a Master's Degree from the City University of New York - Queen's College.

Dawn wrote the following as published on About.com: What Skills Will Your Child Need to Succeed?

We all want our children to be successful in life. We hope to one day see them in satisfying careers with the promise of growth. The thought of seeing our children in dead-end jobs saddens us. We wonder, though, if there's anything we can do to help ensure that they are successful.

In 1990, then Secretary of Labor Lynn Martin wondered the same thing and formed the Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS). Martin asked the Commission, comprised of representatives from schools, government, unions, and corporate America, to examine the demands of the workplace and to determine whether American youth are capable of meeting those demands. After a year of talking to employers, supervisors, workers, and union officials, the Commission identified a set of competencies and foundation skills, known as SCANS, skills that everyone entering the workforce must have.

SCANS Skills
Following are the eight areas the Commission identified as being essential for both students who are going directly to work after high school and those who are going on to college.

SCANS skills are made up of five competencies and three foundation skills. Competencies and foundation skills are intertwined -- They are used together and should be learned together.

The Five Competencies

Resources
· allocates time
· allocates money
· allocates material and facility resources
· allocates human resources

Interpersonal
· participates as a member of a team
· teaches others
· serves clients/customers
· exercises leadership
· negotiates
· works with cultural diversity

Information
· acquires and evaluates information
· organizes and maintains information
· interprets and communicates information
· uses computers to process information.

Systems
· understands systems
· monitors and corrects performance
· improves and designs systems

Technology
· selects technology
· applies technology to task
· maintains and troubleshoots technology

The Three Foundation Skills

1. Basic Skills:
   · reading
   · writing
   · mathematics (arithmetical computation and mathematical reasoning)
   · listening
   · speaking
   
2. Thinking Skills:
   · creative thinking
   · making decisions
   · solving problems
   · seeing things in the mind's eye
   · knowing how to learn
   · reasoning
   
3. Personal Qualities:
   · individual responsibility
   · self-esteem
   · sociability
   · self-management
   · integrity
   

Ms. McKay, I could not be more in-line with what you’ve written. However, I submit that endearing at least a preponderance of the above KSA’s (Knowledge, Skills & Attributes) does not a successful employee make!

Over my lifetime I have, as an integral part of my professional responsibilities recruited, interview, hired, and trained numerous individuals for a vast selection of career paths. Many were adept at most that is of your list; many were not so pre-equipped. But more important than bearing an arsenal of the above, I was more impressed with an applicant’s intellectual prowess, comprehensive probabilities, and all forms of communication vehicles. Much of the above may be learned while on the job. With the exception of a select few that possess certain innate qualities, many of which are less likely learned by the time an individual is of age to enter the workforce, most may only be able to function tasks as they may realistically lack innovative, flexible, and uniquely creative challenge solving skills and as well, leadership potential; knowing and doing are for many, very far apart.

Comparative results proved after from having hired those persons I believed were coachable with important innate attributes like positive mental proclivities, assumptive nature, energetic, creative in both thinking and executions, outgoing and personable, and a demeanor which attracts and encourages enthusiasm and conversely, sedates hostilities.

I am complicit that those who would be equipped so well as to be all that you list would most likely be the 20% of the Pareto rule. Realistically, your depiction is but a dream, certainly not a probable reality for a couple of reasons:
1. Of your list you suggest parents teach this prodigious quantity
2. I challenge anyone to find even a small group of parents so well equipped as to be able to adequately achieve what you suggest of them

As a manager, an employer, and as a human being I feel it is my responsibility to, after hiring according to the profile I have designed for my staffs, to gradually introduce these KSA’s, as many as is possible in the order of their relevance, as part of ongoing development and training program. It is too bad present day corporate culture has forgotten these basic human generosities.

Moreover, even with all you and I have related, our youth are much less motivated than when I was a much younger and ambitious career prospect. I’ve spoken with many employers and they all seem to agree today’s youth want jobs, but do not want to work once they are employed.

So, if parents are to ingrain within their kids anything, it should be a “work ethic.”
I am regretful that verbal parental teachings are majorly insufficient to a winning result. What is proved effective are those parents who by example practice excellent work ethic not only at work, but at home and with and of everything they undertake, even the fun things and family activities. It takes a well honed and engrained “performance ethic” to contribute equally and impressively within the larger “work ethic.” Most times when children are witness to hardworking parents, they absorb subliminally from that which they are exposed. However, this is but one quality; when practiced at work it falls under the category of “work ethic.” Morality spans all and has no boundaries; you have it or you don’t.

Employers who seek morality among applicants may find better attrition, a larger promotion pool, and excelled productivity. Employees who practice an excellent “work ethic” generally grow and prosper without limitations.