Sénamé Agbossou The Factory at the Wrong Address Imagine a car manufacturer blaming steel mills because the steel "isn't car-ready." "Why aren't you sending us doors and engines?" they demand. "All you give us is raw metal. Don't you understand what we need?" The steel mill executives would stare in disbelief. "We make steel. You make cars. That's... how manufacturing works." Absurd, right? Yet this is exactly what we do with talent. We expect universities to deliver fully-formed employees: people who can navigate our specific systems, use our proprietary tools, meet our unique standards. When they send us smart, educated people who need development, we throw up our hands and declare a "skills crisis." We've been looking for the employability factory at the university address. But it's been inside our companies all along. The Paradox Hiding in Plain Sight Right now, in Silicon Valley, a tech company is rejecting 200 resumes because "no one has the right skills." Three blocks away, a computer science graduate with a 3.8 Grade Point Average (Excellent) can't get an interview. In Berlin, manufacturers are warning of economic collapse due to "talent shortages." Meanwhile, youth unemployment across Europe sits at 14%. In Lagos, Nairobi, and São Paulo, the story repeats: companies can't find talent. Graduates can't find work. Everyone blames everyone else. We call this a "skills gap." But what if we've been measuring the wrong gap all along? The Lie We Tell Ourselves Here's the comfortable story we've agreed to tell: Universities aren't preparing students for the real world. If only academia would catch up with industry needs, our talent problems would disappear. This story is seductive because it requires nothing from us. It's someone else's problem to solve. But we've been looking at employability completely backwards. We thought employability was something that should arrive at our company gates, fully formed. A box to tick at hiring: "employable" or "not employable." The truth? Employability isn't at the gate; it’s inside the building. Walk through any company struggling with performance, efficiency, or growth. Trace the problem to its root. You'll find employability gaps everywhere: That project delay? The team lead never learned how to break down complex tasks for juniors. Those quality issues? No one taught the operators how to connect their work to customer outcomes. That high turnover? Employees can't see a path to grow because there's no system for building capabilities. Those missed deadlines? The company never installed reliability as a systematic habit. Every major performance issue, when you dig deep enough, has an employability component. Not because we hired wrong, but because we never completed the manufacturing process. Most of us became valuable through a messy, unplanned apprenticeship. We learned from that one patient mentor. From production crashing at 3 AM. From clients yelling about deadlines. We had luck. We naturally absorbed knowledge and skills just by being around and experiencing things.. We were thrown into difficult situations that tested us and helped us learn quickly. And now we demand that universities…