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Lauren Attaway

 Individuals looking to start their careers hit a wall as soon as they begin searching for jobs: They need experience to get a job, but they need a job to get experience. They want the opportunity to prove themselves and their capabilities, but few employers will risk hiring someone who lacks the skills necessary to complete their job requirements. If you have narrowed down your career of choice, you want to know what skills you lack and how you can obtain them. Unfortunately, this information is not readily available in most cases. Businesses looking to hire young talent ought to change this fact by pointing prospective hires in the direction of relevant education and training. Case in Point I began my career only a short time ago and initially hit this wall. While I had a degree, I temporarily had to work retail. Only when a family member pointed me toward alternative certification programs for teachers did opportunities open up for me. After researching my options, I came across a list of state-approved programs to obtain my certification. I applied for an alternative certification program that I could complete online, signed up for all the appropriate exams, and completed coursework to pursue this career path. I now have my standard certification and a wonderful job teaching at a local private school. Others who do not have friends knowledgeable about possible career choices will not be so lucky. Therein lies the problem: There is a lack of information about the steps to take to pursue any given career. Finding the appropriate steps toward any given career path is often difficult and frustrating for job seekers. Employers ought to think about making this process more transparent, as they risk limiting their talent pool and therefore their ultimate productivity. How Businesses Can Help There are easy way for hiring managers and companies to help job seekers that would be mutually advantageous. For example, someone looking to hire a programmer could simply link a page about how to become a programmer. This resource already exists and takes little effort, but in the long run this would encourage potential candidates to pursue practical hard skills needed to pursue a new career. To take that a step further, a company could provide a link to its website or to a list of programs that would help candidates access the training necessary to be successful at that company. If you want skilled employees, making this information available is well worth your time and attention. I chose programming as an example for a specific reason: the field of programming has so much information available online. Anyone with an Internet connection can acquire knowledge in that field. Sites like W3schools and CodeAcademy all provide completely free resources that enable job seekers to develop new competencies. This means that more people can become computer programmers. As a result, companies seeking computer programmers have a broader range of qualified applicants to choose from. Why can’t something like that exist for other fields of study like engineering, marketing, or other business fields? Resources available for many career paths are few and far between, to say the very least. I remember looking at the “end careers” section at the bottom of my communications degree plan and thinking that there is something huge missing between graduating with a communications degree and becoming a news reporter or editor, and the job listings never pointed me toward any training that could help qualify me for those positions. Why is this sort of information not readily available and advertised to job seekers? I’m not the only person to experience this gap. As a young professional, I still have many friends who are stuck searching through jobs that they don’t know if they’re qualified to perform. It is in the best interest of businesses to fill in these gaps so that would-be applicants can find the careers that most closely fit their strengths. While it might be difficult to justify adding those resources to a job listing in the short term, it would have a long term positive impact on companies that adopt these practices. You would give your company and early career seekers the opportunity to be informed and successful. Success for an employee equals success for a company.

Lauren Attaway

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