Industry Speaks: How to Kick-start the Job Market

Excerpt from WWD.com – August 13, 2012

Elaine Hughes, president of E.A. Hughes & Co.: “The key issue is that government has to invest in training and development of mature employees, meaning those that have to change skill sets from those related to a standard brick-and-mortar model to an e-commerce direct-to-consumer model. That training would help a lot executives transition. You can’t keep running after people working for Apple or Google. Why not retrain your own and let them evolve into the environment? Government could certainly support programs at schools such as Parsons or FIT.

“IT [information technology] is like bathwater. You fill up the tub with information and then it goes down the drain. It needs to get filled up again, because it’s changing. If you are laid off and your expertise is in technology, you have to be consistently retrained in new technology or else no one wants to hire you again. There are plenty of people out there with great IT skills but don’t get new training because they were laid off.”

Industry Speaks: How to Kick-start the Job Market (paid WWD.com subscription required)