Posted on 04/18/2013 6:44:35 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
American employers have a variety of job vacancies, piles of cash and countless well-qualified candidates. But despite a slowly improving economy, many companies remain reluctant to actually hire, stringing job applicants along for weeks or months before they make a decision.
If they ever do.
The number of job openings has increased to levels not seen since the height of the financial crisis, but vacancies are staying unfilled much longer than they used to — an average of 23 business days today compared to a low of 15 in mid-2009, according to a new measure of Labor Department data by the economists Steven J. Davis, Jason Faberman and John Haltiwanger.
Some have attributed the more extended process to a mismatch between the requirements of the four million jobs available and the skills held by many of the 12 million unemployed. That’s probably true in a few high-skilled fields, like nursing or biotech, but for a large majority of positions where candidates are plentiful, the bigger problem seems to be a sort of hiring paralysis.
“There’s a fear that the economy is going to go down again, so the message you get from C.F.O.’s is to be careful about hiring someone,” said John Sullivan, a management professor at San Francisco State University who runs a human resources consulting business. “There’s this great fear of making a mistake, of wasting money in a tight economy.”
As a result, employers are bringing in large numbers of candidates for interview after interview after interview. Data from Glassdoor.com, a site that collects information on hiring at different companies, shows that the average duration of the interview process at major companies like Starbucks, General Mills and Southwest Airlines has roughly doubled since 2010.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Correct as far as it goes. In engineering these days, the rule rather than the exception is because they want to hire one guy instead of three. If you're that hiring manager's version of a 22-year-old girl's future husband, the job pays $100K+; if not, look elsewhere because there's nothing at $60K even offered.
The old draft board could become the ‘job board’!
Everything is ready to go!
Not certain about the old bend over and cough routine? Tie it in to zerocare.
Good one. This is how a lot of engineering companies do a lot of “field work” into patents. “How would you do something like this?” is invariably either something that they have already decided is patentable, or something that’s been stumping them.
Geez...their prime example of how indecisive employers are in offering jobs claims he spent $520 in parking fees, two parking tickets and “numerous expenses at StarBucks and the lie. Can anybody say entitlement? Nevermind if this person was adept at tax preparation, he’d find that some of these expenses can be deducted. Likely he’s not experienced with that sort of thing.
Give me a frigging break! To be honest, there is an awful lot of angst by employers in the economy (they must not believe the ObamaPropaganda), mismatch between available applicants and job descriptions. But to be completely thorough in a treatise on the ‘problem’ as stated by this NYT shill, one would have to at least consider some impact by the coming ObamaCare (AFA) regulations and costs - one of the many new employer government regulation and tax impacts.
Of course it’s an employer’s market! What car buyer wouldn’t LOVE to come up on a dealer that hadn’t sold a car in six months, huh? Get the best for the least.
Mr. Sullivan obviously has some champion in the company that keeps urging the powers that be to ‘check him out again’.....my guess is that it’s someone like him.
Poor writing in this piece, poor background research, and a piss poor story. Nothing here but ‘blame it on anybody but the victim’ liberal puff.
Slowly improving? GDP has been hovering around 1% for quite awhile now.
This story is ironic because most companies are less than desirable and the people are no better themselves. The fact they are being picky is just plain silly. I think candidates could say, “Don’t be picky, I wasn’t.”
I have never been in a situation where I had 6 interviews for the same opening. That’s just ridiculous. What a waste of time!
““There are 3 million jobs available in America that are not filled because too many of our people don’t have the skills for those jobs.””
I question the skills of the people already working who are dead-set against hiring anyone who might make them look bad.
Haha!! Have to laugh or we will cry, right?
Since government spending is a component of GDP, and the current deficit is +/- $1 Trillion annually ongoing, it looks like the “growth” being crowed about is strictly a matter of government overspending. Take away the continuing obama deficits in excess of those run by Bush43, and what is the growth rate of the private economy?
Believe me I know its tough out there, but unless the position was an executive level with mutiple hundreds of k to 7 figure salaries, 3 is the max interviews I’m doing. Generally its 2, but that’s fairly standard.. a non techinical and then a technical. I will give a 3rd if I am intrigued by the position enough... They ask for a 4th and it isn’t a situation as stated above, I have no desire to work for company. By that point you have evaluated me, and are just wasting time.
If you haven’t been able to evaluate me with 3 interviews your organization is so fundamentally flawed and unorganized I don’t want to work for you.
Not exactly true.
1. You have to weed through the hundreds of applicants who are only applying to keep benefits going.
2. Training is expensive.
3. Finding and choosing the best out of thousands of applicants.
4. Business needs change fast, especially with economic uncertainty and up level executives are constantly changing requirements.
5. Recruiting and interviewing costs a lot and we would prefer to have it be done with quickly.
six interviews for skilled positions is not unusual, especially with high profile companies. It is the weeding process.
If your hiring experience is anything like mine, you're lucky if 10% of applicants have a few skills that match the job. The remaining 90% are just throwing something at the wall to see if it sticks.
Slowly improving economy?
Saw a project manager position within the org recently, $80k starting. 2500+ applicants. Still open after at least four months being posted.
This. A Six Sigma laborscrew coming and going...
“It’s all the fault of those greedy selfish employers” propaganda bump....
Yeah. Unless you’re an affirmative action hire. Then perfection is not what they’re looking for.
This is my pet theory on why Romney wasn't allowed in. Because the oligarchs feared his immediate growth policies would have triggered hyperinflation.
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"And you know how them dorkligarchs hate hyperinflation! Makes them corn dogs more expensive!" |
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