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Trailblazers Pass the Torch

When print executives retire, will there be enough young leaders to keep the fires going?

By Rebecca Trela

Printing grabbed Wyeth Windham right from the beginning—literally. “I was walking down the aisle at a college career fair, and one of the recruiters from PrintingForLess.com physically grabbed me and pulled me in,” he laughs, remembering his surprise. “I knew I wanted to join a small company and that I was interested in the business world, but I didn’t know a lot about printing.”

Like many of his early-twenties contemporaries, Windham thought of printing as a dirty, laborious manufacturing process that had no future. “I envisioned this old, dark room with greasy guys, somewhere between steelworker and auto mechanic, doing the same thing they did 100 years ago.”

So when Dan Rice, director of development, offered him an interview at PFL, headquartered in Livingston, Mont. (population: 7,000), Windham was skeptical. “I grew up in Bozeman, Montana, which isn’t a big town itself. But Livingston isn’t even a place you would stop on the way to somewhere else.” Windham didn’t have any job prospects at the time, so he agreed to “head over the hill” to take a look.

Windham followed a long, rural road and stopped outside of an old converted creamery miles from civilization. “I thought, ‘Great. This story is getting worse by the minute,’” he remembers. “I walked around the building a few times—I almost didn’t walk in.” Inside, he says, the building was dark, with low ceilings propped up by 4 by 4 beams. The dairy’s original sloped floor, he said, caused a traffic jam of carts and equipment through the center of the room. “Honestly, the whole thing started to turn me off.”

By the end of the tour, though, Windham knew he wanted to work for the company. “My first impressions of printing were totally false,” he says. The exceptional staff of PFL drew him in and introduced him to the things the print industry could be, and is, doing to succeed. Today, 27-year-old Windham is the director of manufacturing and the youngest member of the executive management team. (PFL has since moved to a new facility.) His job today is more about managing an efficient workflow of people and machines than his initial impression of putting paper in the printer.

In his enthusiasm for print, however, Windham has little company. Today’s industry leaders, most of whom got their start at Standard Register, UARCO or RR Donnelley, are hard-pressed in a search for the leaders of tomorrow. Traditional printing programs face declining enrollment, and offset is no longer considered part of the core curriculum at RIT—or for many printing hires. Many union schools that educated pressman have closed. College graduates with business or marketing degrees, prime candidates for sales jobs, often think of printing as dirty, distant or dead.

“The interesting thing I’ve seen emerging for years in the print industry is that no one is training our replacements,” says Greg Board, president of DocuMedia Group, Sierra Madre, Calif. Twenty years from now, the print industry will need leaders.

Sourcing the Best
“The printing world, in addition to its other turmoil, has a concern getting the best and the brightest into the industry,” says Jeanne Mowlds, the retired director of the Electronic Document Systems Foundation, which also grants industry scholarships. After participating in an education summit at Graph Expo 2007 addressing these issues, Mowlds believes associations, nonprofits, suppliers, printers, brokers and universities need to work together for a comprehensive recruiting strategy.
“Most of our scholarship students are knowledgeable about the field of printing because of a strong teacher, a relative, a good experience in school or some other direct contact with the printing industry,” Mowlds says. Although printed material blankets the world, most young people interact in a digital format and may not be aware of careers in print and its related graphic communications channels.

As a business major in college, Lisa Plocica was unhappy with her undergraduate program but still unsure of what she wanted. At the time, her impression of the printing world was, “It’s old men in blue suits and red ties. Definitely not for me.” But when a friend of hers heard the complaints about the business department, she persuaded Plocica to accompany her to a class in the graphic communication program. The serendipitous trip landed Plocica, now 30, in a sales rep position at Quad Graphics in California, where she also recruits for the company from universities such as Cal Poly. Most of her prospects fell into the printing world in a series of “happy accidents,” too.

“Recruiting for the printing industry has become more difficult with this generation,” she admits. “Most college students have experience with printing, from potato stamp crafting in kindergarten to editing the senior yearbook, but they don’t consider it as a career.” Plocica suggested that associations and companies form relationships with schools at every level, supplying information to tie lesson plans to real-life examples and information from the printing world.

The print industry is much more high-tech and computerized than young people perceive it to be, says Arnie Kahn, president of print recruiting/HR firm PrintLink, Rochester, N.Y. “The industry must wake up! We desperately need to sell the pizzazz and the high tech and the interesting parts. We have waited so long, it’s going to take a while to get the message across.”

Changing, Not Dead
When John Mehl graduated from the Rochester Institute of Technology a year and a half ago, he knew printers were suffering and distributors were seeing more opportunities. “The industry isn’t going down or going away—it’s shifting. Service and information is keeping us alive,” says Mehl, who now works as a sales rep at Vanguard Direct in New York City.

Mehl grew up in Erie, Pa. working summers for his father’s printing company, Dispatch. “There’s a lot of pressure from retiring print company owners for their sons or daughters to take over the business,” he says. “My dad wasn’t like that—you really have to love and understand printing to go into it.” Mehl cites his brother, David, who also worked at Dispatch for a summer. “Now he’s a consultant who’s studying to be an investment banker. I wouldn’t trade jobs for the world!”

According to a 2007 Bureau of Labor Statistics study on industry employment outlook, “Demand for printed material should continue to grow, spurred by rising levels of personal income, increasing college enrollments, higher levels of educational attainment and expanding markets.”

But as Windham admits, the industry has done a pretty bad job at PR. “We have to stop painting this picture of a forgotten industry that’s dying. That’s not true. Young people want change, want to be involved in creating and designing that change.” PFL has begun hosting tours of its facility for elementary and middle-school students, introducing them to the company’s apprenticeship program. “We need to start talking about the modern industry that printing is, and get away from the old mentality that this is a business about one man and a machine and some ink.”

Some industry economic analyses show that printer consolidation and lights-out facilities have eliminated thousands of factory jobs over the past several years. However, federal surveys illustrate that even more jobs are being created in marketing, data management, IT and sales positions in the printing sector, almost all of them for college graduates. For the press jobs that remain, salaries are rising for those who have experience in traditional printing and digital training.

Median hourly earnings for prepress technicians and workers in commercial printing, the sector, were $15.91 per hour—less for job printers and those in the periodicals industry. That’s an artificially low figure, Kahn protests. “See if you can find a good prepress person for $15 or $18 an hour in a large metro area. It can’t be done,” he says, although was reluctant to estimate further.

On the other hand, job prospects are rising sharply for customer service reps, wholesale sales representatives, and desktop publishers, which the labor bureau describes as designers with print equipment or quick printers with some layout capabilities. Growth for print buyers is trickling off slowly, although the median annual earnings for this group were $72,450 in the report released last year. More significantly, advertising, promotions and marketing employees earn between $63,610 and $70,000 annually, and opportunities for this group are expected to grow much faster than other jobs. Graphic designers are expected to have the most stable employment through 2014, although this market faces the keenest competition.

The industry needs to recruit young people with the promise of opportunity and challenge, says Dan Rice, who hired Windham at PFL. “I hear a lot of people say, ‘Oh, if I had my perfect sales number, I could take the time to look around for people, or to send my staff to some classes, or this or that.” That’s a chicken-or-egg argument, he says, and a false choice. Teaching people—developing mentorships and investigating new trends—leads to better sales and a better work environment, not the other way around. “The time is now.”

Face of the Future
After helming the print program at Ryerson University in Toronto for a decade, Mary Black spent a year recruiting for the school before starting her own recruiting firm. “I went to more than 103 classrooms in schools all over to talk to high school students about the printing industry. When I walked into a room, I would ask them how many had thought of a career in the printing industry. Not one hand would go up.”

Despite the lack of interest initially, Black says, by the end of her talk nearly a third of the class would consider pursuing a career in the industry. When Black began with the Ryerson program, the school graduated about 30 or 40 students per year, each of whom received five or six job offers for about Cdn$40,000 to Cdn$60,000 per year. Today, the school graduates about 100 students. “The problem isn’t placing the students or the market or the technology. The problem is making young people aware that our industry exists.”

Of the thousands of students she interviewed personally, Black says that many of them are more comfortable with change and the glut of information that floods the world today. “They are just amazing,” she says. “They are more adaptive to change than we were in earlier generations, and they want to be a part of that change.” An industry of “limitless possibilities” can be very enticing, she says.

“Most people we recruit from college programs, whether printing or not, are the kind who are willing to learn and have a lot of energy for the process,” says Regina Young, who formerly recruited for Madden Communications Inc., Chicago, where she still works. “Graphic communications can be taught; we want people who have a good work ethic.” The biggest problem, she says, is that today’s graduates are used to being in constant digital contact with the world around them through cell phones, email and instant messaging programs. “It’s hard for them to remember that this is work, not home.”

Jennifer Dadlow, 23, a production coordinator, met the Madden staff at a career fair at Ball State University, where she majored in graphic communications. “I knew I wanted to work in printing, but I didn’t realize how many options there were at first,” she says. As president of a college student organization, she took the group on a tour of a printing plant, which gave insight into what goes on behind the scenes. Dadlow soon realized her mechanical aptitude would be a great fit in a production room.

“Working on the high school yearbook can give you design experience, but you aren’t exposed to anything but the design part,” she says, suggesting exposure is one reason why so many undergraduates are vying for spots in graphic design programs. “I think it would be a good idea for printers or print sellers to reach out to students and show them what’s going on.”

Young people want an engaging and dynamic work environment, where their opinions and contributions are relevant. Studies indicate that those born in 1979 or later (who turn 30 next year) are motivated by mentorship opportunities, self-starting opportunities and more vacation time rather than salary. Those born between 1934 and 1959, on the other hand, are more motivated by opportunities for promotion, public recognition, and higher salaries.

“When young people try to explain what they want, sometimes it comes out as ‘better vacation’ or ‘better salary,’ but the truth is, no one will stay in a job where they’re not engaged or challenged, Windham says. “I’ve had offers for way more, but I love what I’m doing. Nobody in my generation wants to be treated like a cog.”
Salaries are lower in the printing industry than in other industries, especially for top management positions, but not pervasively, Kahn says. Computer science and tech employees suffer the biggest disparity—the printing industry hasn’t learned to appreciate them salary-wise. “Now, though, more companies are seeing the complications of their businesses and are bringing in workflow software to make the operations more seamless. They’re going to be hiring more and more of those IT people.”

As a George Mason University student and web programmer, Daniel Ramsbrook, 24, has worked with research professors on a large-scale OCR evaluation and document processing project for the past three years. After winning an EDSF scholarship, he was invited to attend the AIM/OnDemand conference last year and was amazed how closely the information technology and print worlds combine.

“The conference was a real eye-opener,” he says. “Even for my generation, it’s easy to see how the printed document will always have its place as an article of deep emotional appeal and the long-term storage of critical documents.” Although Ramsbrook intends to proceed as a systems security employee, not a printer, he won’t rule out the possibility that there are opportunities for him at a printing business.

What Can We Look Forward To?
If printing schools aren’t training new recruits, and large printers are cutting back on their print education, then other industry players need to step up to the responsibility. “It doesn’t drop from the heavens, that’s for sure,” Kahn says. “If companies don’t teach young people, more of them will leave for biotech or aerospace or other industries.”

Most have suggested that a combination of associations, vocational tech programs, and on-the-job training will fill the gap. Others posit the responsibility with big suppliers, including Kodak and Xerox, because they would be a printer-agnostic source of education. But will they do it? Those companies sponsor scholarships for printing research and various technology and science positions, but those students are usually recruited for work at the supplier firms. Of course, even big companies aren’t immune to the threat of downsizing and acquisition, which curtails spending.

Some printers and large distributors are trying to address the problem on their on. According to a survey done last year by PIA/GATF, nearly half of all printers surveyed plan to increase training programs in response to retiring workers.

Board suggested a classic apprenticeship setup, modeled after the real estate industry. DocuMedia is structured with administrative services for distributors who act as entrepreneurs. At his company, in the apprenticeship model, a new recruit would spend a year or two following a veteran like a “gopher,” doing odd tasks and learning the ropes before making a joint sale, then branching off alone. “The fundamental cost to the program would be salary—assume in the low $30,000 range to start, plus benefits—an outlay of about $50,000.” Board has also considered recruiting from the local universities’ communications, business or marketing programs.
“I often think about the flower industry,” recruiter Black says, as a model for working together toward a common goal. “There are a lot of little shops that sell flowers and somehow they got together to make the slogan ‘Say it with flowers,’ which has done a tremendous amount to promote the floral industry.” The well-known slogan was coined by an ad executive in 1918 to promote the newly formed florists’ nonprofit, Florists’ Telegraph Delivery. Today the organization is a for-profit direct selling business, FTD. But the same branding lesson can apply to the print industry, Black suggests. Instead of relying on suppliers for money or leadership, printers and distributors should pool their resources and ideas for a common strategy.

The best print programs, and print innovators, use industry change as a chance to integrate old ideas with new, traditional methods with digital ones.
“Ten years ago there were two separate sets of graduates coming out of school,” Young says. “There were the people who dealt with agency work and designed graphics. They didn’t know much about printing or how to design for the press. Then there were people who ran the presses, but they didn’t have any marketing or design finesse.” The most significant characteristic of appealing graduates are those who have had commingled classes or programs, where there is information sharing. Those people, Young says, truly understand the printed document and the printed document industry. With a wider skill set, they’re more flexible to hire and will more easily cope with company changes.

Deep down, Windham says, a lot of print leaders are skeptical of his enthusiasm for the future. “I don’t really think they believe it can happen,” he says. “Change starts with those leaders, though. This is an incredible industry with a ton of money to go around. We just need to navigate the changing culture as an industry together.”

Rebecca Trela is assistant editor of Print Solutions magazine. Email comments to rtrela@psda.org.