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"Among the more than 1,000 U.S. employers surveyed, respondents say they are having difficulty filling open positions because candidates lack technical competencies/hard skills (48 percent); candidates lack workplace competencies/soft skills (33 percent); and because of a lack of/no available candidates (32 percent). "
I can't believe, too, how they consider themselves so valuable, the hiring managers, that is, when they often cannot even understand simple answers to the questions they ask about specific parts of the job to which you are applying.
All of these companies surveyed should fire their HR people, because if this is their view, they're on a different planet and will never find anyone "good enough" - because they clearly cannot understand how to match a skill set to a job.
I don't understand hiring managers that study human resources at school just to land a job where they buy software from a company to auto-screen applicants for them so all they have to do is find cheap benefits packages, utilize the ole' suggestion-box-that-leads-to-a-furnace and ask some questions to applicants they might like that come through.
I liked my old boss. Small retail chain but highly sought after retail job. Hand-written applications. Internal references didn't help unless you were already stellar. Very realistic expectations. Chose people right for the job and the company and not people with tons of glimmering trophies and thick books of achievements.
Stop requiring your "Entry Level" jobs to have 5 years experience and you might get somewhere. Bring the wages back up for "In Demand" skills too and you will get people going to get trained. Hell, bring back some in house training instead of wishing on a star.
The sad part is, generally the ones who are doing the hiring are the most incompetent of them all. The only difference is, they have the job!!! As I always say, this world has become too dependent on computers and software to try to weed people out. You could have someone who has been with a company for 30 years and has done a great job. Then all sudden decided to move to some place else for one year, then come back to that area and applying for the same position at the company. Chances are, the assessment tests and the online applications would screen that person out.
Also HR needs to understand that entry-level does not equal to a minimal of 2-4 years of experience. I am sorry but that is not entry level!! How can someone have the experience if they just graduated from college. Besides companies has to take the good with the bad, sure no company likes to train anyone but suppose if said person has five years experience and they were initially trained wrong. What then??? Oh yes they either train them or fire them. Give the underdog a chance for once and let them prove themselves. Not set the bar so high that someone who is severely in debt due to Student loans can never reach it because of the constant shut out. What's the whole point of going to school!! For all that entry level jobs should just required that their parents needs to be executives at a well-known company with a degree in that field.
Last edited by Merchant_ZZZ; 05-31-2013 at 11:08 PM..
"Among the more than 1,000 U.S. employers surveyed, respondents say they are having difficulty filling open positions because candidates lack technical competencies/hard skills (48 percent); candidates lack workplace competencies/soft skills (33 percent); and because of a lack of/no available candidates (32 percent). "
All I can say is...hogwash
I call bullsh*t.
On a lighter note, I finally was able to secure a temp position after five years of unemployment. I fought so hard to get a foot in a door and it paid off. It's not the best location for a job but I will stay until I get something better.
"Talent shortage" translates into "Why can't we find people with 3 to 5 years experience developing the exact product we make here with our specific software package who will work for peanuts?" It's a joke - if companies were actually willing to train new employees and stopped weeding people out based upon absurdities such as which specific software they use, how long they've been out of work, etc. they wouldn't have any trouble finding people. Most of the time when I read articles about "talent shortages" I just wonder how long it'll be until those companies hire visa workers since they "can't find any qualified Americans." Right.
Heck, even today, I still get ads for engineering positions where the first requirement is having X number of years of experience with the specific CAD tool the company uses... because nobody can learn a new CAD tool... crud like that flat-out excludes huge numbers of workers from being "qualified."
Employers and some skilled jobs themselves have become very skills specific and centric. Employers won't hire unless the candidate has the exact or very close skills match, especially in technology oriented jobs.
Some candidates won't put in the time/efforts to learn/update their new skills or what is required to get hired.
There becomes a gap between skills desired and skills possessed/available.
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