| Older workers are less likely to run out in a year or two for the next better offer. Older workers know what they're doing. You can't have a whole company of new workers, who might not have the history or knowledge to know what they're doing and not one to supervise and train them.
I've been an IT recruiter for 29 years and I've seen it all before. In the early 1990's companies were firing all the mid managers and more senior workers to save money. A little later they went back to try to hire them back and half had left the field. There were so many cases of bad management and costly mistakes because companies tried to cut costs and tried to make believe they didn't need lower level managers supervising the less experienced workers and could do without the most experienced (and more expensive employees).. Not good at all.
I am happy, for my son's sake that he will have a job, but junior employees, no matter how "confident" they are cannot take the place of experienced people without a learning curve, just so the CEO's can earn more money. Running "lean and mean" doesn't always work well. It's also true that outsourcing overseas also doesn't always work as well as stated (although cheaper) because the time differences and distances and different standards don't make things better...just cheaper, so.....the CEO can make more money.
I do believe that it behooves companies to continue to hire entry levels.
When I first started recruiting in IT there were very large training programs at companies and they actively recruited recent college grads. During the 1990 recession they abandoned these programs and didn't hire entry levels, because regular employees were working enough for 3 anyway and there was no money, nor time to train. After the recession when there was an upsweep in hiring they all wanted intermediates....and there were so few. Of course, if you don't hire entry levels...there won't be intermediates in the years after! They may well have learned the lesson of keeping the influx going.
The point here is companies need to keep hiring Entry levels, BUT they should NOT lay-off the more senior people just to do that! Labor is a resource as important as financing for a company that wants to run well. |