Having worked as a low level manager at places that are "metrics driven", what I have seen is that teams are given average metrics for the team to hit that are legitimately roughly between the output of a senior and junior engineer. What happens next is that when anyone below this average, i.e. all the juniors, it would show up on a graph and I would be tasked with "fixing" their stats to be above average. Rinse and repeat this cycle a few times and suddenly were not hiring any juniors or the job postings say "Junior" but describe a senior.

This is for software engineering which is a in demand field, I can't imagine how bad it would be for a field where there was a glut of people trying to apply

Yes. Employers regularly turn down applicants for lack of minor courses. Knowing how to weld means nothing to HR box tickers. An afternoon at joes upstairs welding school: tick.

I saw a kid not get a job because she hadnt ever used a fax machine.

I have a feeling that welding in particular is relatively resistant to meaningless certifications.

But it is a trade that was once taught by employers. They would teach the type/style/quality of welding they needed for the job.

What do you think they do with people that walk in the door with meaningless certifications?

They let them walk in the door in the first place?

I don’t think that a single week of training will prepare someone for a new job. I was thinking that it would be useful to check interest before spending lots of time in a longer program.

That being said it’s weird how many companies don’t pay for training, even simple stuff like LinkedIn Education and Coursera. So it would be nice to have more of these, especially curated, by a more independent source like a library or community college so it wasn’t tied to jobs.

There are also some great week or less trainings that can help improve performance. It’s surprising how many people can’t use Microsoft Office. I recently got to help people use Word and OneDrive and it was neat seeing how much work sucked before they figured out how to save files and edit files. This is someone that is simple to digital natives but a little bit of training can help extend careers.