Sharon Hilgeman, Staffing Compensation Manager, General Dynamics NASSCO-Norfolk
It’s no secret that the ship repair industry continues to be challenged in finding good, qualified trade-skilled workers - who can access government work locations throughout the port. Factors contributing toward this issue are port saturation, rise in age of trade-skilled workers and competition with industrial and manufacturing job markets. To make matters more difficult, our culture leans heavily on sending our teenagers to college in hopes of receiving a four-year degree. Our culture begins this grooming during the early formative years, and continues to adulthood in supplying support and information, mostly on formal education.
The shipyard industry is sometimes strong at educating family members and neighbors on how to apply, but maybe not so strong on giving them specifics on how to begin a career. We are not strong in creating avenues or preparing and educating mechanically talented individuals and other pools of talent who are unaware of the opportunities we have in ship repair and ship building. For those individuals, knowing and understanding where they can grow the knowledge, skills and ability to develop a trade that can be a lifelong career is difficult in a college bound cultural world.
In their 2015 Talent Shortage Survey, The Manpower Group reported that skilled trade workers are the #1 most difficult positions to fill in the world. The group also reported that hiring managers across the nation reported a lack of applicants, and the applicants they did receive lacked experience and workplace competencies. The reality of this situation is that it is difficult for the ship repair industry to support clients who depend on these talents for an end product.
Those of us in the Industry should ask ourselves the following questions:
- Are we striving to be more agile in educating on our ship yard trade opportunities?
- Are we educating the correct individuals and resourcing for labor in untapped pools?
- Do we understand the image we portray to applicants?
- Are we making ourselves attractive in a very competitive job market where some areas in the nation have less than four percent unemployment?
- Are we holding ourselves accountable, or are we just continuing to recycle talent through the industry?
Industry leadership should work to rise above the legacy attitude of “how we have always done it” and move toward “how can we do it better?” In a nation competing for top talent, it will take all of us to change and cultivate the talented trade-skilled individuals we need.
About the Author
Sharon Hilgeman, Staffing Compensation Manager for General Dynamics Nassco-Norfolk, has approximately 20 years’ experience in the ship repair industry in Finance and HR-related fields.
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