1. Skip to content

Employer Quotes

The quotes below are from employers in this industry: Information Technology (IT)

They are talking about this topic: Needs & Challenges in Continuing Education

 

Narrow Your Results by:


    Region


The quotes below are about this issue:
Because it is becoming more expensive to send incumbent workers to vendor training, several respondents expressed interest in additional partnering with MnSCU for incumbent worker training. Employers are interested in specialty training that is tailored to their needs; this includes shorter trainings when possible.

Employer Quote Region
"We're sending them directly to the vendor or to a company called Calix, which is now the vendor for most of the telecommunication products in the state of Minnesota. But they would—and they've said this clearly—they would like to have some type of vocational training available in the state of Minnesota that they could work with. So, we'll supply you with the equipment, and you put on the training course. We haven't got there yet." Central
"Yes, we're using the vendors more and more for training." Central
"Employer: Maybe part of my issue is that I'm not necessarily looking to all of the colleges and universities to meet some of the experience needs that I have. Maybe I should be. Maybe some of those classes being a little more tailored to our needs might be helpful. Because sometimes we send people off-site for education, and we are willing to do that, but it's getting tougher from a company expense perspective to send them to Denver or some other place. It'd be good to have more local educational opportunities to reinvest in some of those skills that we don't have—those skills that are newer skills.

Question: But your company doesn't—or didn't—expect the local institutions to tailor to your specific needs...but now you're saying maybe they should be more adept at doing that?

Employer: Maybe. If they could create a more subset course based on individual needs...I don't think I expect that.

Question: At least not fully, but it sounds like you may be expecting it to a certain extent?

Employer: Well, I don't expect it today, so I don't look to them. But maybe I should."		 Metro
"I really do think there are opportunities there because what we see is that our customers go through training—typically quite large businesses—and there seems to be a gap between...as those companies get smaller and smaller, they can afford less and less of this kind of training. And that's why I would look for closer partnerships between colleges and vendors." Metro
"I think there's an opportunity for colleges and educational institutions to fill that gap of this really expensive high-end training that's very vendor-specific, but less expensive and maybe over a longer period of time." Metro
"We're way out in the middle of nowhere. But we have wonderful colleges not too far away. What I've seen is the need of reaching both the younger and the older workers faster at home. They don't have the time to take away from their jobs. A very small company can't let them go. Each person there is so needed." Metro
"The companies that I represent are very small and very rural. What they need for incumbent workers is to have some sort of a certificate plan that is very focused on the technologies. If they're an incumbent worker I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt that they'll tell you the truth. If they weren't able to get along with people and didn't have any of those communication skills we would have gotten rid of them. So, they need this technology in small bites that will eventually grow into some sort of degree plans. I'm not sure how those mechanics work. But not just a hit-and-miss situation. That is something that they could use. I just want to go back and reiterate again, we're talking about completely different sets of the expectations that employers might have." Metro
"I think there are specialty skills where the universities could provide training to the employers. That would be a partnership that I'd like to explore. We hire out most of our training to independent companies because we really can't get it any other way. But if there's a way to create a tighter partnership between the colleges and universities and the employers—not only provided in the classroom setting but also provided in the workplace setting while the employees are at work—that would be quite beneficial to us." Metro
"Employer: We would be sending people over [MnSCU's] direction from our company all the time if we had more [lost in translation]. But, you know, maybe a high-level education class over one period of time—where they don't have to go for a full six months—but sort of a hit-and-run class in that area. There's really no good way to engage all of this.

Question: Would you expect them to have a certificate at the end of the hit-and-run, or just the fact that they took the class?

Employer: I think the fact that they took the class.

Question: That they've added a skill?

Employer: Yeah. So, for every dollar that we give our people for continuing education, that they fully utilize that. It's time-sensitive right now."		 Metro
"One of the pieces that was really tough to teach was the political side of the project management. There's an art and there's a science. They can get the science part of it; they can breakdown the structure if they want. But they can't quite figure out the company politics." Metro
"For the incumbent worker—we're kind of scattered around the state in small offices—so they need access to advanced network training, broadband mobility, whatever the case might be. It's very difficult for them to get that training. We can't just let them go for two years if they go to some technical college. We can't let them go for one semester. But they need access. Maybe they had some training at one college and now they want a certificate or something from another college. I've said this before, we want MNSCU organizations to work better together." Metro