I’ve heard this siren call for my entire life.
Meanwhile, many large companies (especially) reject some very, very, VERY well-qualified job applicants .. often without so much as an interview... and sometimes without even saying No.
(The situation is only made much worse, of course, by the Great Obama Depression, but the kinds of hoops job applicants often have to try to jump through ... can be ridiculous. The companies lose out not getting some excellent and very capable workers....Meanwhile, some of these companies’
foreign competitors do not seem to suffer from nearly the same degree of this self-inflicted damage...?)
It’s not about hiring “the best”.
It’s about hiring “good enough” for the least amount of money.
I don’t know how old you are, but I was a hiring manager in a Fortune 50 company from the late 80s thru the 2000s, and I never had a lack of qualified applicants, and never let an open req. go unfilled. But what I did see - and see much more nowadays - are candidates who don’t seem to care all that much if they get the job, have unrealistic expectations with regard to everything from salary and benefits to the horror of having to live in a four-season climate, miles from the hip-cool urban centers favored by the elite youts. Why? Because they’ve got the option of just going back home, living in mom’s basement, where there’s cable TV, free wi-fi, and all the comforts, plus the freedom to do whatever they want to do.
I’m sure we are both right to some extent, as it’s not a monolithic problem. But don’t write off his last paragraph.