I think the issue is on-the-job training doesn’t work for the increasingly-skilled jobs out there. I’m a web developer in robust B2B websites in .NET and SQL. You cannot be on-the-job trained for this. Same with lawyers, doctors, physicists, materials engineers, electronic engineers, package engineers.... the list goes on and on and on.
There used to be longer training programs within companies when turnover was less. Always, there’s the opportunity for employers to hire smart people in lesser positions and pay for their schooling along the way, too.
I think what makes sense in this environment is for employers to offer substantial bonuses a few years after their training, so employees only get the additional compensation by sticking around.
Instead, this long period of underemployment has led employers to be pickier and pickier, looking to find just exactly whom they want and whom they think has already just the current skills they need.
There’s been a fair amount of research of late that is thought to apply from consumer purchasing to markets for marriage, whereby having too many good-enough choices leads to a lack of decision and choice altogether. That is, given enough good choices, someone becomes more likely to make no decision and by devault choose ‘none of the above’.
I think that applies in some ways to the current labor market.
With no offense directed towards Human Resources personnel, the problem isn’t so much with not finding qualified people as it is with not knowing how to.
HR lost its way. They no longer use their common sense. They don’t read resumes anymore. They use some package that runs a sequel search on a candidate based on criterion, and select those that meet it. They are told to pick 5 out of the 1000, they schedule 5 phone interviews and from there pick 3 to come in and meet with 10 managers. If they are lucky, they get 1. It is no longer by feel or intuition.
If that one doesn’t work out, they start the process all over again.
I go to Chamber meetings and hear the managers bitch and moan about not finding the right candidate. At one meeting the IT Director was wondering why he couldn’t find an IT Manager with Project Management experience. I was out of work for three months at the time and I told him in front of a roomful of people, that I applied 5 times for 5 different positions in the complany. He asked me what I did. “I am an IT Manager with a PMP.” This is what he said, word for word.
“Please go online and fill out an application.” Told him I have and this is what he said, word for word. “I guess you don’t meet the qualifications for the position.”
And that’s the problem. When I was an IT manager looking for someone to fill a position, I told the HR person, give me the resumes that meet the criteria and also give me the resumes that miss by one or two items. I would close the door on a Friday afternoon and read them. 9 times out of 10, I selected the resumes of applicants who didn’t meet the criteria.
HR doesn’t understand that anyone can take a job description, match the keywords in their resume and get an interview. Doesn’t mean they know the job. And that is where the”unqualified” part comes to play.