Introduction: Employability Skills in the Twenty-First Century Workforce
The broad literature on workforce “skills gaps” describes how employers want to hire young workers who have the right employability skills or “soft skills.” Most employers are willing to “train up” high school students or recent graduates who possess the
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Introduction: Employability Skills in the Twenty-First Century Workforce
Abstract The broad literature on workforce “skills gaps” describes how employers want to hire young workers who have the right employability skills or “soft skills.” Most employers are willing to “train up” high school students or recent graduates who possess the necessary personal and interpersonal skills. Existing employability skills frameworks identify (1) personal responsibility, (2) work ethic, (3) teamwork and helping behaviors, (4) leadership and conflict management, and (5) social skills as industry-desired personal qualities and interpersonal skills. High school career and technical education (CTE) courses can help fill those gaps. Such skills are often transmitted within families so it is key to understand how these skills can be learned in K-12 education in order to prepare cohorts of young people to enter the workforce.
“Employability Skills That People Have Forgotten” Lisa is a vice president of a small woman-owned defense contractor. She entered manufacturing right out of high school working on an assembly line up north for a video game manufacturer. She later joined the military and got training in electronics and returned to the same company as a technician. She eventually decided it was too cold up north and moved to Florida. “Without a job. Just packed up my things and said, ‘That looks warm. I think I’ll go there.’” She worked for several Tampa Bay area manufacturers before deciding to go to the University of South © The Author(s) 2020 W. Tyson, Teaching and Learning Employability Skills in Career and Technical Education, Palgrave Studies in Urban Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58744-4_1
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Florida (USF) in Tampa and get a bachelor’s degree in business. She went back and worked for different area defense contractors and commercial manuscripts and decided “maybe my bachelor’s degree wasn’t quite enough” so she went back to USF to get her MBA. After her MBA, she got a master’s degree in management and worked her way up to vice president of operations in different companies. When asked what skills her company is looking for, Lisa said they wanted workers with a background in electronics who were proficient in computer-aided design (CAD) and computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) software like AutoCAD and Pro/ENGINEER. They wanted people with manual skills like soldering and intuitive ability like print reading along with “base level things that a lot of people have forgotten” like math skills, “reading ruler skills,” basic algebra, and computer skills. But she was most concerned about “employability skills that people have forgotten, good communication skills, good writing skills that we don’t get taught in school.” The interviewer followed up on that point and asked Lisa how employees could be better prepared for technician jobs. Lisa sighed, took a long, exasperated pause, and responded: Um, and that seems to be the thing that we keep missing over and over again. We hired people and we have people
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