Human Resources
State of St. Louis STEM Workforce
Oct 21, 2014
Being in the world of recruiting and staffing, our team needs to know what talent is available today and what will be needed in the future. It’s our job to try to predict clients’ needs and have a pipeline of candidates. What kind of jobs are our clients going to have in 1, 3, even 5 years, and how do we start building a talent pipeline? We get asked about the available talent pool on a regular basis and increasingly those questions are regarding STEM talent, so I was immediately interested when I heard that St. Louis Community College was doing research on the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workforce in St. Louis. In September, I was able to attend their summit on the State of St. Louis STEM Workforce. The summit provided me with a plethora of statistics that confirmed what we were already seeing in the job market:
- There are more STEM jobs available than there are qualified candidates
- Companies are looking outside of St. Louis for talent because of skills gaps (38% was the statistic given at the summit)
- Applicant shortcomings are mainly soft skills like communication and critical thinking
- We need to emphasize STEM career opportunities earlier to our youth
These were not new concepts to us. Knowing the challenges our clients face, we teamed up with Michael Palmer, Founder of Code Red Education, to help bring computer language curriculum to first – twelfth grades. The curriculum can be a standalone course or be integrated into reading, math, English, and science to teach and reaffirm critical thinking, problem solving, and a variety of the other desired soft skills.
You can download the full State of St. Louis Workforce Report from St. Louis Community College by using this link: http://www.stlcc.edu/Workforce-Solutions/St-Louis-Workforce/
For help building your talent pipeline, click here.
