Nicholas Wyman

Tips for Recent Graduates Struggling to Enter the Job Market

By Tara Lynn Wagner
Thursday, July 30
TIME WARNER CABLE NEWS

So you graduated from college but haven’t landed that dream job, or any job for that matter. Starting to panic? Don’t.

“A lot of people really say, ‘Well, I’ve had this map of where I’m going to go,’ and if things don’t fall into place straight away, they start to feel this pressure,” says Nicholas Wyman, author of Job U.

Wyman is also the CEO of the Institute for Workplace Skills and Innovation. He says rather than wait for a specific opening, young graduates should look out for any opportunity to get their foot in the door -even an entry level position, since being in the building could be half the battle.

“You get to network with people within the organization and you really get to take on these, what I describe as, real world workplace skills,” Wyman says. “So you’re actually getting to work with groups of people, you’re getting to see how the dynamics and personalities, and also learn about the culture of the organization, and decide if it’s an organization where you can see yourself mapping out a career.”

“It doesn’t matter if you’re in real estate, in law, in finance,” Wyman says. “Employers are looking for people who can communicate and who can work well in group situations. So these interpersonal skills are the skills that I’d personally be brushing up on.”

Read More and Watch Online here:

http://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/money-matters/2015/07/29/tips-for-recent-graduates-struggling-to-enter-the-job-market.html

Kids in Parents’ Pockets Eroding Retirement Savings

by Nicholas Wyman, published on Linked In.

Heard of the slang Kippers?
As much as you love your children, you probably don’t want them living with you…indefinitely. But many parents are faced with that possibility, or already living it. One in four young adults between 25 and 34 are living with their parents or older family members, a number that has risen steadily over the past decade. One major factor contributing to the trend is the growing problem of student loan debt.
With national student loan debt at over $1 trillion and climbing, it’s a problem with serious economic consequences. Two-thirds of Americans who attend college borrow money, whether they graduate or not, and those who do graduate owe an average of $30,000 by the time they pick up their diploma. One recent Wall Street Journal article points out that the problem may be even worse than official numbers indicate, citing data from the St. Louis Federal Reserve that nearly 32 percent of borrowers are a least a month behind on their payments.
Not surprisingly, the burden of student loan debt affects borrowers’ ability to buy homes, save for retirement, and start their own families. And it’s undoubtedly a factor in the “boomerang kids” phenomenon—young adults moving back in with their parents because they can’t afford to strike out on their own.
A February report from the New York Federal Reserve shows a direct relationship between rising student debt and boomerang kids. By state, a $10,000 rise in average student debt correlates to about a 3 percent increase in the number of young adults living with their parents. According to the same report, there are now 12 states in which more than half of young adults are living at home.
This trend can affect parents’ finances as well. According to a survey from the National Endowment for Financial Education, 26 percent of parents with adult children at home have taken on related debt. 13 percent have delayed a major event such as buying a home, while 7 percent have delayed retirement.
Should parents expect to give up the financial security as well as the privacy and freedom of their retirement years? Or go into debt for the sake of their children’s education? The answer is clearly no. It is not necessary to borrow vast sums for a college degree in order to have a rewarding career that pays well.
There are a growing number of pathways that lead to interesting, lucrative careers without the burden of student loan debt. In the United States alone, there are five million jobs that need to be filled, but employers can’t find enough people with the general and job-specific skills they need to fill them. And many of these careers don’t require a college degree.
Today, some of the best jobs can be learned through vocational programs, on-the-job training and apprenticeships. I’m talking about careers in health care, IT, advanced manufacturing and hospitality, as well as highly creative careers for the artistically inclined, such as web design or textile design. Whatever your son or daughters interests and gifts may be, there is an affordable (and rewarding) pathway to his or her dream career.

Original article:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/kids-parents-pockets-eroding-retirement-savings-nicholas-wyman?published=u&trk=hp-feed-article-title-share

Forbes Article – What Is The One Thing That Can Strengthen America’s Economic Armor?

In May 2015, automaker Volvo finalized a deal that will move most of its North American production to South Carolina, where its new plant should be operational in 2018, employing 2,000 people and rolling out some 100,000 new vehicles each year.

In coming to the U.S., Volvo is following the lead of Volkswagen, Mercedes, BMW, Toyota and other foreign automakers that have built 30 plants here. Many have settled in South Carolina, which is now home to 250 automakers, tire companies and auto suppliers who employ a total of 58,000 American workers. These firms evidence a broader trend that may be the single brightest beacon of hope for America’s economic future: that of foreign manufacturers coming to U.S. shores to make everything from power plant generators, to power tools, to hardware, to chemicals.

In this, Germany is leading the charge. Indeed, today more than 3,500 German companies—small, medium and large—are now operating here and employing more than 600,000 Americans. And, in an interesting and happy reversal of recent patterns of off-shoring, China is likely to follow. China has earmarked $1 trillion for overseas investing, and a big share of that will find its way to U.S. shores. If that happens, the era of American jobs lost to China will not only end but shift into reverse.

At the same time, many prominent U.S. firms—Apple, General Electric and Brooks Brothers among them—have been “re-shoring” production from Asia. This nascent trend is predicted to grow because of fast rising wages in China (15-20% annually), quality and transport cost issues, and America’s dramatic advantage in energy costs.

These developments point to a renaissance for U.S. manufacturing, and most of the ingredients for that are in place today—superior technology, high customer demand, supply chains, low cost energy, infrastructure and capital. Yet only one thing is in short supply: skilled workers. There simply aren’t enough welders, electricians, robotic technicians, hydraulic specialists, carpenters, machinists and so forth on the street or in the educational pipeline. In fact, economists agree that the U.S. manufacturing industry is currently suffering a “skills gap” of around 500,000. That’s 500,000 jobs just waiting to be filled, if only companies could find adequately skilled candidates. And the gap will only widen as baby boomers drift off to retirement and our economy expands; indeed, the Manufacturing Institute expects the skills gap in manufacturing to reach 2 million by 2025 unless something changes, and fast.

Photo: Skilled workers assemble engines at Volvo in Sweden. First North American plant to open in South Carolina in 2018. Photographer: Casper Hedberg/Bloomberg — Photo:
Skilled workers assemble engines at Volvo in Sweden. First North American plant to open in South Carolina in 2018. Photographer: Casper Hedberg/Bloomberg

Fortunately, change is in the wind. After years of marginalizing and under-funding vocational-technical education, some states and communities are finally doing an about-face. The federal government says all the right things about supporting technical education and creating more apprenticeship opportunities to help make high school grads more job-ready and technically effective. But it’s individual states and communities where we are seeing words turned into action. South Carolina, Kansas, North Dakota, Ohio and Wisconsin have been among the best in matching the needs of employers with educational programs offered by their high schools, and community and technical colleges.

Consider the case of an economic development director I met in Pickens County, South Carolina when researching my recent book, Job U. He and his competitors had, for years, been using the same basket of goodies to lure manufacturers to their area, generally without success. “Every one of us was offering tax breaks, infrastructure deals, a low cost of living,” he told me. “But what these companies wanted most was something that none of us could deliver: a deep pool of skilled workers.”

And so his agency partnered with the school district, a local two-year technical college, and leaders from local companies, and developed a plan to deliver what industry needed most. They built a new career-technical high school around a revamped curriculum and state-of-the-art equipment. They worked with the state to create skill-building apprenticeship programs. And they worked tirelessly to help shatter the stigma against vocational work, and open the eyes of students and parents to the limitless— and lucrative—career opportunities in manufacturing. And it worked. Today, the best brand-name manufacturing companies send recruiters to Pickens County to look over the latest crop of tech-savvy students—like Major League football teams sending their scouts to check out the upcoming talent. And it’s a pattern that has repeated itself throughout the Carolinas, and other communities looking to secure a bright economic future.

Fortunately, success stories like this one are becoming more common, not just in the Carolinas but throughout the nation at large. At last, states and communities across America are discovering what northern Europeans have known for more than a century: that collaboration between schools, government and employers is the secret to developing a highly skilled, world-beating work force—the kind of work force we’ll need in order to realize America’s manufacturing renaissance.

The one impediment to this achievement is many parents who would rather walk barefoot on hot coals than have their offspring pursue a career that involves making or fixing things. “Oh, the horror! Those are low-paid, dead-end jobs in dark and dangerous factories or dirty works-shops, right?” Answer: not in the slightest.

With the age of globalization and technological change upon us, investing in 21st century skills building programs is the key ingredient to a strong, prosperous economy.

Published on Forbes here:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/nicholaswyman/2015/07/14/what-is-the-one-thing-that-can-strengthen-americas-economic-armor/

Talking Jobs and Career Preparation with Jim Bohannon

The Jim Bohannon Show | June 23rd, 2015 |

There are many pathways to a successful and rewarding, well-paying career, and college is just one of them. Author of ‘Job U – How to Find Wealth and Success by Developing the Skills Companies Actually Need’, Nicholas Wyman talks about the ‘college for everyone’ myth, how to successfully target the position you are interested in, and the things you can do to ensure you are giving yourself the best head start.

Listen here:

Original Posting

http://www.jimbotalk.net/programhighlights?date=20150623

US Jobs Unfilled As Millions Remain Unemployed

from ‘Voice of America’ June 26, 2015 | By Jim Randle.

The U.S. job market has millions of unfilled jobs, particularly those requiring technical skills. At the same time, the Labor Department says 8.7 million Americans are unemployed and another 6.7 million can find only part-time work.

Employers say many of those jobs are vacant because they cannot find people with the necessary skills to do the work. A study by Careerbuilder, a firm that helps match employers and applicants, says more than half of employers report having trouble filling certain jobs, and six out of ten have had to hire under-qualified people.

But one researcher says employers are not offering enough money to attract the best qualified workers.

Experts call this paradox the “skills gap” and a number of efforts are underway to better understand and solve it.

Rethinking training

Author Nicholas Wyman calls it “a labor market mis-match … people without jobs and jobs without people.”

His book is called Job U. Because unemployment for new college graduates is high, and traditional four-year colleges are very expensive, Wyman says a combination of technical classes and on the job training — an apprenticeship — would be a better choice for many people.

“An apprenticeship is where you learn from a specialist, you are provided mentoring, you learn in an on the job environment, the old cliche is that you are actually paid to earn and learn,” he said.

He says apprenticeships are misunderstood in the United States, where “success” is often defined as attending a four-year college. But he says that is changing as apprenticeships spread beyond traditional areas like construction and manufacturing and get a boost from government funding.

And Wyman, who was once an apprentice, says opportunity is growing in some previously troubled areas like manufacturing.

Wage problem?

But new research from Iowa State University is raising some questions about the definition, size, and nature of a skills gap. Iowa State’s Liesl Eathington and colleagues examined employment, education and population data and found the evidence of a skills gap is weak.

She says many policymakers and employers say there is opportunity in “middle skills” areas, like welding or machining. But Eathington adds that the most recent recession hit some of those job areas hard, and that students should be cautious because “our economy really isn’t adding that many jobs that require the middle skills or middle educated territory.”

Employers could get a more well-qualified applicants if they offered higher wages, says Eathington, who points out that graduates of two-year training programs still generally make less money than graduates of four-year colleges.

The U.S. unemployment rate stood at 5.5 percent in May, and will be updated next Thursday for June.

Source location:
http://www.voanews.com/content/millions-us-jobs-unfilled-millions-remain-unemployed/2838814.html

image:
Job seekers listen to prospective employers during a job hiring event for marketing, sales and retail positions in San Francisco, California, June 4, 2015.