How Are You Filling the Unsexy Jobs in Your Organization? by Eric Chester

Q. What do professional dancers, actors, musicians, and athletes have in common? 

A. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, they’re all in the top 6 of the 15 dream jobs that our nation’s youth aspire to have one day. 

What jobs didn’t make the list? Roofer, custodian, auto mechanic, welder, truck driver, short order cook, pest control technician, retail cashier, call center representative, senior caregiver, sanitation worker, and hotel housekeeper. 

While your life might be less colorful if musicians and athletes didn’t exist, close your eyes and just try to imagine life without someone to change the brake pads in your car, patch the giant potholes in the street you commute on each day, bus the dishes from previous diner at the table where you’ve just been seated, or pick up the trash you leave at the curb. 

You’d probably feel like you were living back in the dark ages. 

Trouble is, the jobs that didn’t make the dream list aren’t sexy. They offer no promise of fame and fortune. Their titles don’t generate “likes” on Facebook pages. And while the emerging workforce is brimming with aspiring singers and rappers, YouTube stars, video game designers, and professional skateboarders, no one fantasizes about a job as a factory worker, a security guard, or an airline baggage handler. 

“HELP! I can’t find good people for these jobs!” 

Young people fill stadiums hoping to get an audition that could lead to becoming the next America Idol, and Google (Fortune’s #1 rated Best Place to Work for 6 consecutive years) receives more than two million applications each year. But unless you’re offering instant stardom and a multimillion-dollar recording contract, or a six-figure starting salary and fringe benefits that include free afternoon massages, gourmet food, child care, and laundry services, odds are you aren’t getting nearly enough applicants to fill your openings. 

The United States is suffering its worst labor shortage in decades. Millions of jobs are now begging to be filled by anyone willing to learn them and apply themselves fully to the task. Many of these jobs pay well and offer free training and rapid advancement to anyone with a GED who can pee in a cup and count to ten. And yet, while so many misguided youth have set their sights on careers that will never materialize, these important and meaningful jobs go unfilled. 

And the resulting labor crisis is bringing scores of business owners and managers to their knees. 

How are you meeting your staffing challenges? 

Over the past 5 years, I’ve gotten an earful about how employers can’t find good people, and I was determined to find the answers. (And there are answers!) I’ve been scouring the world in search of savvy employers who have cracked the code on hiring, and I’ve found them—the ones using creative or “guerilla” strategies and tactics to locate, interview, hire, develop, and retain employees for the unheralded jobs on the frontlines of their organization. I include their stories in my forthcoming book, Fully Staffed: The Definitive Guide to Finding & Keeping Great Employees in the Worst Labor Market Ever. 

Fully Staffed contains incredible recruiting and retention ideas and tactics that will work in your operation, regardless of size, scope, or industry. From perfecting your workplace culture; to hiring an all-star cast of perfect-fit employees who combine passion with performance; to preparing for potential job openings by amassing an archive of stand-out applicants; to implementing thoughtful, unique, and digitally minded job advertising techniques; to leveraging the power of community, educational, and governmental networks and programs; to harnessing the value in under-tapped labor pools like veterans, retirees, ex-offenders, and people with disabilities; to optimizing your onboarding and retention processes—you will learn the strategies you need to finally get off the hire/train/turnover treadmill and get a FULLY STAFFED organization. 

Since 1998, Eric Chester has been the leading voice in attracting, managing, motivating, and retaining the emerging workforce. As an in-the-trenches workplace researcher and thought leader, Chester has cracked the code on the tactics and strategies companies that are recognized as “best places to work” in their respective industries are using to win the talent wars, and has been an invited keynote speaker for more than 3,000 audiences on 3 continents. Preorder Eric’s forthcoming book, Fully Staffed: The Definitive Guide to Finding & Keeping Great Employees in the Worst Labor Market Ever, now.