Soft Skills: Bridging the Gap Between School and Workplace
Educators and job-finding professionals shared their views on how employers can improve the quality of employees available and how educators can help students improve their workplace skills. From left, Bobbie Irvin, director of the Don Young Alaska Job Corps Center; Faith Woolsey, director of Mat-Su Job Center; Tyler Gilligan with the Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District; and Paula Bradison, founder of PeopleAK.
Photo Credit: Greater Wasilla Chamber of Commerce
First jobs are a rite of passage, a milestone on what, for many young people, ends up being a road dotted with markers demonstrating increasing skills and pay. But what happens when that first job is a bust because the employee wasn’t adequately prepared? How can that possibility be prevented?
At a recent forum of employers and educators, many said the lack of preparation comes down to new employees not having “soft skills.”
The Missing Component
The Greater Wasilla Chamber of Commerce held its fall conference October 21, with the focus on building bridges between job skill providers and potential employers. The conference culminated in a panel with representatives from two training organizations—Bobbie Irvin from the Don Young Alaska Job Corps Center and Tyler Gilligan with the Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District—and two representatives who frequently deal with job seekers: Faith Woolsey from the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development’s Mat-Su Job Center and Paula Bradison from PeopleAK, an employment consulting company.
When asked what locally taught career programs are missing, Woolsey has a clear answer. “What I’ve been hearing around the room, and what was talked about among my team before I came up here today, is soft skills. It’s huge,” she says. “If you don’t know what soft skills are, that’s like being able to represent yourself well in an interview, coming dressed and prepared for that, knowing how to talk and ask questions and engage with the people around you.”
Irvin says he sees the same gap in the young adults who come to the Job Corps Center.
“We call this the COVID-era generation. People come to us for job training and, trust me, they have no soft skills,” he says. “These kids navigated school remotely, and it’s a challenge for us. They don’t seem to understand boundaries or how to communicate with one another.”
Bradison says she sees it too, among people between the ages of 18 and 22.
“Eighteen to twenty-two was when I learned those types of soft skills in the workforce by on-the-job-training. We skipped an entire episode, I would say, of the workforce, where they didn’t have the advantage of that kind of on-the-job training that taught you things that maybe we think are intuitive.”
But Bradison says everyone can help young people learn those skills. “As a community, embrace it and teach the kid across the counter, make them engage with you in a good way,” she says.
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Amy Bushatz, founder and editor of Mat-Su Sentinel, moderates a panel discussing how to bridge the gap between students and employers. From left, Bobbie Irvin, director of the Don Young Alaska Job Corps Center; Faith Woolsey, director of Mat-Su Job Center; Tyler Gilligan with the Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District; and Paula Bradison, founder of PeopleAK.
Photo Credit: Greater Wasilla Chamber of Commerce
In an Alaska Workforce Success Story moment earlier in the conference, the owner of Big Dipper Homemade Ice Cream, Robert Brown, told the attendees his company gets nearly as many positive Google reviews for his employees’ sunny attitudes as it does for its frozen treats. His employee count reached forty-five this year, with three stores, up from fifteen employees when it opened five years ago.
The average age of his employees is 17. Even though some jobs are seasonal and employees are in a transitional period of life (in high school one year, college the next), about one-third of his workforce has worked at Big Dipper for more than two years—some more than three years.
Brown identifies five keys to keeping long-term employees in what many would consider an introductory job: careful hiring, diligent orientation and training, consistent communication, growth potential, and connection.
Brown says hiring a new employee might take a month or more. The process involves finding a good fit for the company, not filling a slot on the schedule.
“We make time to learn who a candidate is and select them to join our team and get behind our mission. We do not hire them to fill a role. We want to know that people are excited about what we’re trying to do, which is to make the community around us a better place,” he says.
When Big Dipper hires someone, the new employee has a two-hour orientation with the three highest-paid people at the company, discussing expectations and setting the bar high. Then comes training with store leads, managers, and other employees. Once the team is in place, Brown says company leaders focus on communication, sending out weekly training topics and company updates important for the crew. The leadership team conducts regular employee reviews. If there are issues, the default is to coach and reinforce good behavior.
Making growth visible—giving employees a clear view of how they can progress through the company—is important, he adds. Most employees want to increase their level of responsibility as much or more than they want to earn more money, he says.
The final key is connection. The team enjoys getting to know each other, Brown says. Ice cream shops can be busy, but Big Dipper budgets time and money to shut down a few times a year for staff parties, such as an upcoming Halloween celebration.
“Most people will stay at a company a long time if they have a best friend working there,” he says. “We want to get them connected.”
Those are the ingredients that keep his team intact and ready to spread joy, Brown says. And it doesn’t just work for the employees. “What matters to young employees: scheduling flexibility, being a known personality, being part of a team they enjoy, having clear expectations, giving them meaningful responsibility,” Brown says. “Customers notice the difference. When we opened, it was theory, now it’s fact.”
The Takeaway
Panelists told the conference that everyone can do better to help employees meet the expectations of today’s workforce.
From the school district perspective, “Employers need to be providing to us what they need. Because if the curriculum’s not right, if we’re not producing a student with the skills necessary to enter into the workforce right away, you know, that’s the whole system’s problem. So the more feedback we can get, the better we’re going to be able to produce programs of high quality,” Gilligan says.
Woolsey says she sometimes hears from employers that ideal job applicants don’t exist. She suggested employers might need to do more to cultivate ideal employees than list a position online or operate a booth at a job fair. Cultivation could include visiting classrooms to talk to students, inviting students into a workplace, or offering apprenticeships or job training opportunities to help potential employees understand more about a profession.
Irvin says Job Corps frequently partners with local businesses to have students go through apprenticeships. If the students aren’t ready for the workplace, rather than saying it didn’t work, it’s important that Job Corps staff understand why. “We want our students to have real-world industry experience. It’s OK to fire them and send them back to me; we just need the feedback. Some students are amazing and do a great job; some do good work but lack social or soft skills. It’s OK to know that students aren’t ready for the workforce yet.”
As a small business owner herself, Bradison says she appreciates how much work getting out and working within a community can be, especially when stepping away from the business means lost time and income. Sometimes the default can be complaining that schools or job programs are failing to produce graduates with a good work ethic. Sharing some of that responsibility will help create good employees that employers say are missing from the workforce.
“Once you hire [an employee], invest in them,” Bradison advises. “Paint a future for them, tie it to your mission, and then—I can’t impress upon you enough—create a really individualized employee development plan, which includes training, which includes continued development.”
Bobbie Irvin, director of the Don Young Alaska Job Corps Center in Palmer, discusses how the center works with employers to help young adults obtain on-the-job training at the Greater Wasilla Chamber of Commerce Fall Conference October 21.
Photo Credit: Greater Wasilla Chamber of Commerce