Why Good People Can’t Get Jobs

The Hired Guns on June 5, 2012

There are still lots of unemployed or underemployed workers out there, but many companies say they just can’t find the right employees to fill openings. What’s behind this seeming paradox?

To get some answers, The Wall Street Journal talked with Peter Cappelli, a professor of management and human resources at Wharton, who just wrote the book Why Good People Can’t Get Jobs. He argues that some companies are obsessed with getting people with the perfect experience and stats, so they end up with no one: “for every story about an employer who can’t find qualified applicants, there’s a counterbalancing tale about an employer with ridiculous hiring requirements.”

Cappelli also lays the blame on overly rigid screening software, which is rejecting people who might actually be qualified: “applicants rarely talk to anyone, even by email, during the hiring process,” so there’s no way to clear up confusion over experience, job titles, job-history gaps, or anything else.

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David Perry

My heart sinks whenever I have to apply through a job-profile site or my resume goes to a general e-mail address.
Sam Reed

I so agree with this article. Companies are being ridiculous in their search. For example, the job description will state that they are looking for a candidate with 1 year experience and then proceed to list 20 other qualifications as well. How can you work for 1 year and do all that they want. There should be an incentive for companies to hire those who have been seeking a job for an extended period of time. Most companies also post positions and then hire some internally. Why waste our time and money going back and forth for interviews. Gone are the days when someone took the time to review your resume/qualifications in person and also give you the opportunity to prove your self with a position even though you may either be over qualified or not meet every single one of their prerequisites.
http://www.facebook.com/jason.paskowitz Jason Paskowitz

Absolutely true. Thank G-d I haven’t had to go through that nonsense in the last few years. There are a number of problems:
1) Companies that have a laundry list of requirements that effectively rule out the vast majority of good candidates. The most egregious are employers (or Headhunters) that won’t look at an otherwise qualified candidate because they only worked with version 9.x of a given software package and they want someone with experience on 10.x.
2) Companies that don’t really know what they want. These include the ones that drag you back to their office five times and still don’t hire anyone.
3) Companies that don’t plan on hiring anyone. They’re just “seeing what’s out there.”
4) Companies that want an employee that does the work of 3 people. I.E. Instead of just hiring a marketing analyst for their e-commerce site, they want someone who can manage the order fulfillment, product merchandising, and HTML coding.
5) HR or hiring managers who get stuck on why a candidate has been unemployed for a period of time, especially in this job climate. It’s as if they haven’t picked up a newspaper in the last five years.

And so on…
http://twitter.com/HolbsNYC Josh Holbreich

I think it’s also time to dispense with the kabuki theater of the 2 salary questions, which become chicken matches to see who can go the longest without saying a number.

1. ”What are your salary expectations?” I expect you will offer less than I want, that I will ask for more, you will see what you can do, and we will meet in the middle. By the same token, don’t exclude me from consideration because I’ve over-reached in the salary range drop-down box on your application.

2. ”What are your salary requirements?” I require a salary. Let me decide if I can live with what you can offer, and see if we can do better following a 6 month review. Especially in the context of project-based employment. I may be willing to accept a lower rate to work on a project if it will lead to more work down the line. In the past I have had 3 month projects turn into 3 year staff positions.

http://www.facebook.com/allison.hemming Allison Hemming

Josh, you are spot on here. Agreeing to be flexible on rate/comp comes down to — and I the key expert/thought leader here (meaning the company is paying you to do what you already know how to do really well, but there will be little room for skill set expansion. In this case: charge more. Or the flip side: are you taking on an assignment where you are going into learning mode and that will push the envelope on your skills bank (and get you more gigs down the line). In this case, negotiating a lower rate may be worth it.

Xadguy

Another reason good people can’t get jobs is that recruiters are obsessed with courting “passive candidates”—people who already have jobs. Like women who only go after married men, “He must be safe, he’s got a wife.”
http://www.facebook.com/allison.hemming Allison Hemming

Thanks to everyone for adding their comments to this post. It’s such a difficult time for many job seekers. With regard to the use of Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS’s) at companies, unfortunately they are here to stay.

But here’s a few ideas on how to outsmart them: 1. Never use a PDF to submit your resume into an ATS. Use plain text or a Word Doc. ATS’s done handle PDFs well (as someone who sees resumes on the other side of them). The data can come through garbled and the ATS may put your information into the wrong fields — making it darn near impossible to “get found” through a simple search. 2. Googlize yourself. Use keywords in the body of your resume that you think a recruiter will use to find you when they do a resume search in their ATS. Usually companies are very specific about their needs in the job description. Take note: you may be required to customize your resume to fit the need of the job. But careful to target and put your efforts against the jobs you can actually land. Then spend time customizing your resume on them — the payoffs can be huge. There have been countless times when a hiring manager has said to me upon reading a resume, “Wow, it’s clear that may job should be next on this candidates’ resume.” That response is what you’re shooting for when you make your resume update.3. Know the window. When a candidate applies to a job within 3 seconds of a job being posted, in house recruiters will generally take a pass. Too fast is generally bad. Instead, they will monitor their applicants to specific jobs really closely in the first 1-3 days after posting — hoping to bag 8-10 quality candidates in that window. Remember, the goal here is to hire quickly. Once they get their first qualified candidates in, they won’t go back to the applicant tracking system to elevate new ones unless the earlier candidates don’t prevail. Net-net: if you come in after this initial window the chances that you will get seen (and interviewed) are very slim. It’s not about the in house recruiters being jerks it’s about them being time starved. 4. Use your contacts. About 5 minutes after you submit your resume into the applicant tracking system, check LinkedIn to see if you have a contact at that company that can be your advocate. Have them send a quick note to HR to go and pull your resume “the needle” from the haystack of other resumes piling into the system. It’s your best shot if an ATS is thrust upon you. Let’s keep the discussion rolling, if you have ideas for making it through an ATS, please share!

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