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Knowing how to work is first step in finding a job

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TODD BAILEY/NEWS-SUN

“Dirty Jobs” creator and host Mike Rowe, right, talks to Hobbs High School students last week while being interviewed by a representative of HHS SkillsUSA. Rowe visited with students before speaking to the community as part of the Jack Maddox Distinguished Lecture Series.

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Last week I was given the opportunity for a sit-down interview with “Dirty Jobs” creator and host Mike Rowe.

He was in Hobbs as part of the Jack Maddox Distinguished Lecture Series and we talked about a variety of subjects. We joked about his mom becoming more popular than him, and we talked about his dedication to his mikerowe-WORKS Foundation, which is set up to find people in need a job and having them commit to a program where they can attain the skills necessary to get a good job.

Of course, we also discussed his role in “Dirty Jobs” and how relevant it became when the U.S. economy crashed in 2008

“‘Dirty Jobs’ had been on the air for five years and it was the No. 1 show on The Discovery Channel,” Rowe said. “It was in 200 countries and was a big deal. I was prospering. Then suddenly all these industries that I had been working in, profiling, they were all telling me the same thing. The single biggest challenge for them was finding trained people with a genuine work ethic. I heard it everywhere. I had been hearing it for years, but I didn’t think much about it until the endless daily reporting on the number of jobs that were gone and the number of people who were unemployed. The disconnect for me was, people were talking about opportunity as though the reason people are unemployed is because there are no jobs, but everywhere I go, I see help wanted signs.”

That’s where he got his idea for his foundation. Rowe realized an “alternative narrative” around the skills gap taking place in the U.S. So what exactly is a skills gap? It’s just what Rowe said, a gap between what employers want or need from their employees and what those applicants are actually trained to do. Rowe recognized the numerous real dirty jobs that need to be filled in order to make this country run. He calls this need, “unloved and unsung opportunities” and took it upon himself to be an advocate.

“Not because I am a do-gooder, but because it seemed like a nice way to give back to the industries on Dirty Jobs and because it also gave me a different way to promote the show,” Rowe said. “It wasn’t just about, ‘yeah tune in and see the toilet blow up or the rat jump in my lap or the misadventure in animal husbandry or anything else. It gave me a chance to go out and say, ‘Look this is a very simple show,’ but it is doing something important. It’s showing people how stuff works and what work looks like in New Mexico, versus Idaho, versus Tallahassee, versus Seattle, and so forth.”

In Hobbs the skills gap can be seen. Help wanted signs for CDL drivers and other oil and gas related jobs are seen throughout our community and in this newspaper. So where can our local employers find good, knowledgable employees? Here’s a crazy idea, how about high school?

Hobbs Municipal Schools Superintendent TJ Parks has met with handful oil and gas companies about the idea of creating a vocational high school. The idea is simple. Not every high school graduate is right for college. Some prefer to walk off that stage with their diploma and on to a work site. But they don’t have the skills. Creating a school where kids can learn trade skills appropriate for our economy and community could be a win-win for everyone.

So what’s the foundation to creating a successful vocational school? Parks and Rowe believe the collaboration of the schools, local business and the rest of the community is necessary. However, Rowe took it a step further. It’s also about the students having the right mindset to attempt and complete the schooling process. An issue Rowe has with his foundation is trying to get the unemployed to commit to foundation’s program and the necessary tasks. Here’s the opportunity for someone without a job to learn a craft and get one. There are around three million of these jobs available, yet he’s had people turn him down.

“I don’t think that person sprang from the ground with that attitude,” he said. “I think they were trained. I think their behavior was rewarded, probably inadvertently, by well-intended people who wanted to help, but in fact just reinforced a whole bunch of stereotypes. The big one is, the idea that you can’t prosper in the trades is so firmly rooted, that it is easy to de-bunk. I can just show you with example, after example, after example. It’s the strategy that is easy to implement, but the results take time, because people are firmly convinced for a number of reasons that those jobs don’t lead anywhere. That’s the issue.”

That’s why working at a local fast-food restaurant as a kid is important, Rowe said. It can teach that kid the basic skills in doing a job right.

“You don’t have to work at a fast food restaurant for 10 years,” he said. “In fact, unless you are on a management track and you want to own it for yourself, those jobs aren’t designed to dig in and never go. They are designed to teach soft skills: tuck your shirt in, turn your phone off. This is your chance to distinguish yourself. Show up early, stay late. It’s still true in most fast food franchises, you can start cooking fries and in two years, you could be running the place. That’s true more so in the skill trades than any place else that I have ever seen.”

The idea of “working your way up the ladder” in business starts at the bottom. The most important part of that ladder, Rowe states, are the bottom rungs.

“Those bottom rungs are opportunities just as surely as the mid-level and upper-level,” he said. “They’re not aspirational, that’s where the dirt often is. So part of what’s happen, and to not make it political, but if you look at every single opportunity that’s out there and measure it against all of the other opportunities, in terms of the perks, the money, all these other things, then you completely miss the point. Some jobs are suppose to be jobs. They’re not suppose to be careers. You don’t have to be a roughneck or roustabout for 30 years.”

But there has to be a start. That’s what Parks and district administrators are working on. There are guys who

I went to school with, who went to work in the oilfields as a roughneck that are now business administrators. They have business cards with long titles under their names. Sure it may have booms and busts, but the oil and gas industry is always going to be here. And if you’re a kid who has the right mindset and skills, the opportunity is there to work a job that can lead to a career.

We get more people like that, then the skills gap — at least in Lea County — would diminish.

Todd Bailey is the editor of the Hobbs News-Sun.