Tag: Wharton’s Center for Human Resources

Why Walmart Is Enlisting Veterans

Posted on January 16, 2013

walmart newWalmart’s announcement yesterday that it would offer jobs to veterans may well be a good business move as well as a way to bolster its recently tarnished image. A strike last October by Walmart workers in California extended to the day after Thanksgiving at locations across the U.S. The protests were chiefly over wages and working conditions.

Walmart said it would offer a job to any honorably discharged veteran in his or her first 12 months off duty. It expects to hire up to 100,000 veterans in the next five years. “Hiring a veteran can be one of the best business decisions you make,” said Bill Simon, the company’s U.S. president and CEO, in yesterday’s announcement. He noted that veterans have a record of performance under pressure, and are quick learners and team players. He also sees them as “leaders with discipline, training and a passion for service.” Walmart today needs the “seriousness and sense of purpose that the military instills,” he added.

Peter Cappelli, director of Wharton’s Center for Human Resources, feels veterans bring “personal discipline.” Matthew Bidwell, Wharton management professor, rates Walmart’s move as a “great initiative” from a company with reputation issues. Below are excerpts of comments from Cappelli and Bidwell on Walmart’s announcement:

K@WToday: Are there good business reasons for a company to hire veterans, or does it serve mostly as a public relations gesture?

Cappelli: It does both. The jobs Walmart has are not ones that require a lot of skill. What they require is personal discipline, and veterans are more likely to have that.

Bidwell: I think it is a PR gesture and something that may well support the business. Veterans may often have developed important skills in the military, and they represent an important pool of labor. Walmart’s size combined with its high turnover rate mean that it always needs to hire large numbers of employees. Going to veterans as an important source makes sense. Of course, they would have been hiring a lot of veterans anyway. What is interesting is that it is offering to hire any veteran who wants a job. That’s what is eye catching here. 

K@WToday: Do veterans bring some special qualities? Are they particularly suitable for functions like HR or quality control? 

Cappelli: I don’t think Walmart is thinking about [tying] all its jobs to this promise. I’m sure it refers to front-line workers in stores. [“Most of these jobs will be in Walmart stores and clubs, and some will be in distribution centers and the Home Office,” says the Walmart statement.] 

Bidwell: Obviously the military trains very well for some roles. It’s worth remembering how broad the military is, though, in terms of all the jobs that it encompasses. That makes it quite hard to generalize. 

K@WToday: Is there a downside, however small, to hiring veterans? 

Cappelli: None that I see. Veterans are like other people, just pre-screened and given experiences that create personal discipline. There are veterans who have problems associated with combat, but there are non-vets with problems as well. 

Bidwell: None. One other point: This is a great initiative by Walmart, but/and it comes from a firm that generally has a poor reputation on employment issues. On the one hand, this could help to improve its image. On the other hand, it would be even better if a firm that was known for treating its employees better was showing this interest in veterans. 

K@WToday: Will veterans need special training to work in the corporate sector? 

Cappelli: There isn’t a lot of training in these jobs, for veterans or non-veterans. 

Bidwell: Corporate life and the different nature of authority and obedience can take some getting used to. Most people, however, don’t have too much trouble with that.

 

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Is the Unplanned Career Best?

Posted on July 19, 2012

College students, and parents concerned about their kids’ careers, often try to divine which jobs or skills will be in demand when it’s time to enter the workforce. With today’s quickly shifting economies and technologies, it can be tough to hit that moving target.

Some resort to choosing broad categories. In the U.S., for instance, there has been a steady media drumbeat about the deficit in science education. For those who are science oriented, that might seem to make planning research careers in, say, chemistry, genetics or neuroscience a safe bet. But it’s not. Despite today’s high-tech, health care-oriented world, many PhDs in these areas are unemployed or floundering in lower level jobs, according to this article in the Washington Post. The jobs just are not there.

Here’s another straw in the wind: Only 38% of those with a new PhD in chemistry had jobs last year, according to a survey by the American Chemical Society, the Post notes.

This is unsettling, not only for well-educated scientists who can’t find appropriate positions – or are being laid off – but also for those trying to plan for future jobs requiring a long lead time to accumulate skills that are not easily transferrable. As the article notes, we all tend to think that more education is always a good thing, especially in a growing, technical field like health care. Yet it’s not true, given the quickly changing supply/demand curve for positions requiring such technical expertise. For example, while the number of PhDs churned out between 2003 and 2007 in the medical and life sciences nearly doubled, the job pool did not keep up and lately has shrunk in the U.S., the Post notes.

One woman, who studied to be a brain scientist, gave up looking for a permanent job in her field and accepted a lessor position three years after receiving a doctorate in neuroscience, the Post reports. “I’ve listened to this stuff on the news about how we need more scientists and engineers,” she said. “I’m thinking, ‘What are you talking about?’ We’re here.”

So, how can you know these things in advance? You can’t.

“The jobs haven’t been there for quite some time,” says Peter Cappelli, head of Wharton’s Center for Human Resources. “Despite the rhetoric about the need for more scientists, the reports that look carefully into the labor market for scientists have found that supply has long outstripped demand. That is why there are so many post-doc programs for PhD scientists, because there aren’t enough good real and permanent jobs for those who graduate.”

What’s more, “the other problem with most technical careers now is that they don’t last long,” Cappelli adds. “There isn’t much retraining available, and skills become obsolete quickly. When they do, the old workers are pushed out.”

In the Post article, another woman in her early 50s who had spent 20 years designing new drugs for large pharmaceutical companies and who was laid off not long ago, said she was planning to “get out of science.” But she also had advice for her daughter, who “loves chemistry and math. I tell her, ‘Don’t go into science.’ I’ve made that very clear to her.” In her industry, “it’s been a bloodbath…. Very good chemists with PhDs from Stanford can’t find jobs.”

So, is there any advice Cappelli can offer students, especially those in science, on how they can plan a career path? “Frankly, no,” he says. “It’s better to be adaptable than to try to plan your way to success.”

 

 

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