The modern development of business has created new demands for office help. It is not long since the greatest need of the average business office was for bookkeepers and stenographers. While such workers are still in great demand, the work of the office has been divided and subdivided to such an extent that new types of workers are required for many clerical positions.
Promotion
The up-to-date business man regards every office assistant as a possible future executive. In the employment of such help he is constantly on the alert to discover aptitude for executive work, so that he ultimately may have at hand promotion material from which to recruit for the high positions in his business. While it is still desirable to train men for definite tasks and to place them in office positions where their services are required, this is not the chief end of business education. Men will not only be fitted for immediate usefulness, but they will be prepared for rapid promotion to the higher places in business organization. In other words, business education has an immediate market value and gives to its possessor a chance to win his way to the more desirable positions at the top of the business ladder.
Business and Vocational Readjustment
Commercial enterprises, except those connected with the prosecution of the war, have been at a standstill for the past two years. Now that restrictions naturally resulting from the war and those that were imposed by law, have been removed, the period of readjustment will begin. Whatever may be the immediate situation as regards the supply of labor and the demand for it during this comparatively short readjustment period, it is certain that the demand for trained men will develop with the restoration of normal conditions. Men who are forward looking will realize that vocational training secured during this transition period will pay big dividends in later years, and will guarantee an economic status above that of the man who hurries back into the first opening he finds, and begins work regardless of his diminished competitive ability. This business readjustment period should be also the vocational readjustment period for all men who have suffered physical injuries in the service of their country.
Educational Requirements
In considering what vocation to prepare for, men should keep in mind their future needs. They should not be content with a training that will merely fit them for permanent employment in the common office routine positions. On the contrary, they should aspire to a training that will enable them to grow into the higher executive positions in connection with large business or to launch out for themselves in a business enterprise.
There has never been a time when education has counted for more than it does now. Therefore, educational qualifications and requirements should be seriously considered in connection with the selection of a vocation. This does not mean that only those who have had the advantages of high school or college training should be encouraged to prepare for business, but it does mean that those who lack this educational background should be willing to devote a longer time to training than may be required of those who have been more fortunate in the matter of educational advantages.
Previous Experience
It is highly desirable that every man cash in on his previous experience as far as possible. For example, a man who has been identified with the telephone business and who, by reason of a disability caused by war service, finds it impossible to continue in his former occupation, may be trained for a different position in the telephone business where his disability will not be a handicap. The general knowledge of the business, gained through years of contact with it, will be helpful in his new work. Then, too, his old employer will be likely to find a place for him in his organization where he can render excellent service, though it be of a sort entirely different from that which he was rendering prior to the war.