PLSO The Oregon Surveyor November/December 2021

Professional Land Surveyors of Oregon | www.plso.org 27 Odds & Ends Begin your path to higher standing with employers and a more satisfying career, as well as higher income. Level I Entry and Level II for Office and Field Tracks available during the PLSO Conference at the Salem Conference Center Friday, January 21, 2022 at 8 am Questions? Contact Tim Kent at takent@comcast.net or 360-921-9233 Poachers By Carl C. de Baca, PLS S o there are some people, NCEES folks being the predominant group, who will say there is no problem with the number of surveyors in the U.S. There are no declining numbers—move along, nothing to see here. And in a way, they are right. Statistically, there are as many licenses now as there were ten years ago, or twenty. What are you wor- ried about? There are plenty of licenses out there. Ah, but licenses aren’t people. I suspect that those who share the view that there is no shortage and that the statistics bear them out are not in the position of trying to recruit new employees. Run an ad for an LS, an LSI, or an experienced cad tech- nician and see what you get. What you get is an opportunity to poach from your fellow professionals because personnel is in short supply across all categories. There is no one out there on the waiver wire. And sadly, the lure of filthy lucre is the primary way to pry them out of their cubicle down the street. We can debate the causes of this pre- dicament all day, but the conclusion is always the same: we were bad boys and girls through the nineties and noughties. We focused on the bottom line when we should have been laying the foundation for the next generation. We were shoot- ing ourselves in the feet back when we were too busy to pay attention to little things like training technicians or reach- ing out to the youth in our schools. We got busy and skipped a whole generation. According to statistics provided by NCEES, the average age of an FS examinee is a little more than 34 years old. The aver- age age of a PS examinee is just over 39. Shouldn’t those numbers be more like 24 and 26? I was licensed as a PLS at 26. Of course, that was 1987 when we were still in surplus years. But it is not that way no more, folks. So the next time you take a friend’s em- ployee out to lunch to see if they might be interested in jumping ship (and if they have any co-workers they can bring along), you have no one to blame but yourself when your friend is angry at you. Over the last ten years, you should have been train- ing that extra tech you didn’t really need, paying a visit to the local high school on career day, teaching the Surveying Merit Badge at a Boy Scout event, and finding time to introduce young people to what is a really cool profession. Let’s hope the Young Surveyors Network can succeed where we didn’t even bother to go. x Editor’s Note: Reprinted with permission fromNevada Traverse, Issue 48, No. 2. www.nvlandsurveyors.org. Register through NSPS at cstnsps.com/apply-online/