Business & Tech

Jobs Panel Stresses Importance of Multi-Disciplinary Skills

The economy isn't mended just yet, but it's also not all bad news out there for job seekers, panelists say.

According to industry professionals, the desirable job candidate must be multi-disciplinary, a good team worker and always ready and willing to learn, skills that do not automatically come with a degree.

On Oct. 21, Middlesex County College hosted the semi-annual meeting of the The New Jersey Collegiate Business Administration at its Edison college campus.

Within that meeting was a panel discussion with the featured topic "Job Skills and Job Growth within the State of New Jersey."

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Featured panelists included Robert Grimmie, Director of the Center for Occupational Employment with the NJ Dept. of Workforce Development, Jeff Stoller, Director of Communications and Outreach for the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development, and Sally J. Nadler, College Relations Manager for PSEG.

The panel was moderated by Melanie Willoughby, senior vice president of the New Jersey Business and Industry Association.

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Despite much gloom and doom about the economy, the news isn't all bad, Grimmie said.

According to Grimmie, close to 24,000 private sector jobs have been added in New Jersey in the past year, with the industries showing the most growth being professional, scientific and technical services.

However, the question remains as to whether or not the current system of educating workers is properly suiting the needs of the 21st century work force, he said.

Nadler said the skills that job seekers straight out of college are lacking include a sense of work ethic, knowing how to dress for a job, or knowing not to text during a meeting - behavioral, rather than academic.

"Sometimes the student may not even get to that point because they don't even have the professionalism to get their foot through the door," she said.

Grimmie said that a short-term solution from the state is a job search website called Jobs4Jersey.com.

The site serves both job seekers and employers looking for applicants.

Grimmie said it is unique in the sense that the site runs a program called "OnRamp" that assists applicants in finding better job matches.

Rather than running a keyword search on an applicant's preferred work field, the program examines the entire resume to determine the range of their skills and uses their entire experience to find potential job matches.

Additionally, the site provides training and internship opportunities, and can assist a full range of job seekers, he said.

"These are not the cure-alls, but for an immediate response, we feel very good," he said.

Stoller said that skills of high worth are "invisible," or those social and behavioral skills that are not on a resume.

"They want you to prove that you know how to learn," he said.

Stoller said that the healthcare industry and education have weathered the economic recession fairly well, and industries that have benefited from economic stimulus money include research, health information technology, public policy and government contractors and construction and green jobs.

Nadler said that the opportunities for green energy jobs lie predominantly with private or small companies, not giants like PSEG and its energy company, PSE&G.

PSEG does offer an internship program for undergraduate and graduate students, to give them a head start on learning pertinent employment skills before pursuing a full time job, she said.

Stoller stressed the importance of internships and breaking the mindset of "What can this company do for me?"

"It's about what you could potentially do for employers," he said.

Nadler said the computer skills that are desirable from applicants are knowledge of Microsoft Outlook, Power Point, and especially Excel, for conducting analysis and creating pivot tables.


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