Survey to Target Valley’s Lack of High-Tech Job Skills

Responding to complaints from employers that they cannot find workers with the skills to fill an increasingly technical job market, the Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday approved a $300,000 survey of San Fernando Valley businesses to address what leaders see as a critical problem.

Lawmakers and business leaders say the skills gap is a regionwide concern that has made it difficult for Southern California to attract and keep high-paying jobs.

“The frustration with employers is they have to interview thousands of people just to hire a few workers,” said Councilman Mike Hernandez, who promoted the survey.

The survey, the first of its kind, will be conducted by the Economic Alliance of the San Fernando Valley over the next nine months. It will include interviews with 1,200 businesses, dozens of educators and others to determine the disparity between the skills of graduating students and the demands of local employers.

Once completed, the Economic Alliance will use the survey results to recommend classes and training programs for area high schools and colleges to provide needed skills.

“We want to make sure we have one of the best job pools in the country,” said Robert Scott, vice president of the Economic Alliance, a group formed to improve the business climate in the Valley. “It is something that can be very critical.”

The demands for high-tech skills are coming primarily from entertainment and multimedia firms, which in recent years have started to replace the aerospace industry as the region’s top employers.

Educators and business leaders agree that most of the focus of Southern California’s job market is the entertainment industry, which accounts for 200,000 jobs in the Los Angeles area and 15% of the Valley’s jobs.

Some business leaders blame the lack of entertainment-related graphics and animation skills on cutbacks in school arts programs during budget crunches.

In fact, entertainment and multimedia firms in the Los Angeles area have become so desperate for workers skilled in computer animation and graphic design that they have launched expensive recruiting drives in Europe and Asia, according to business leaders.

Bill Allen, president and chief executive officer of the Economic Alliance, said he has worked in the entertainment industry for 20 years and regularly hears entertainment executives complain that they cannot find skilled workers.

“In recent years, it’s getting more and more difficult, particularly as jobs become more technical,” he said.

Scott agreed, saying: “One of the most common complaints is that applicants can’t even fill out a job application.”

Scott said employers also complain that job applicants don’t have the skills or ambition to move quickly past entry-level jobs to middle-management positions or higher.

Educators acknowledge that high schools and colleges are not providing the necessary training to meet the new technical demands of the job market, but they say they are making strides to change that.

For example, Cal State Northridge is launching an “entertainment industry initiative” this year to teach students the skills in greatest demand, such as animation, computer graphics and business management.

The new effort will include a $200,000 budget and provide guest lecturers and speakers from some of Southern California’s top entertainment firms.

“We are trying to prepare them in our own backyard,” said Carolyn Ellner, dean of the College of Education at Cal State Northridge.

Los Angeles school board member Jeff Horton said high school educators are also trying to prepare students for the job market at three academies where students can take specialized training in the fields of entertainment, transportation and law enforcement.

In addition, he said, the proposed Belmont Learning Center near downtown Los Angeles would house eight new academies for students interested in similar fields.

“We want to prepare students for those jobs so they can move as far as they can,” he said.

But Horton acknowledged that the majority of students graduating from the Los Angeles Unified School District cannot get into the special academies and must rely on the fundamental skills taught in regular classrooms citywide.

He added, however, that the school district is requiring all graduating seniors to create a personal portfolio with information about their grades and job skills. Such a portfolio, he said, helps students hone their ability to fill out job applications.

Schools throughout the state--such as UC Berkeley and UC Irvine--are also retooling their business school curriculum to emphasize more technical skills. The hope is that graduates will be able to delve into Internet marketing and create multimedia presentations as easily as they can type up a standard report.

The survey will be conducted in the Valley partly to provide information needed for the pro posed opening of a job bank in Pacoima within the next year, according city officials.