Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
"The first thing that makes me wonder about the supposed “skill gap” is that, when pressed for more evidence, roughly 10% of employers admit that the problem is really that the candidates they want won’t accept the positions at the wage level being offered. That’s not a skill shortage, it’s simply being unwilling to pay the going price......
(Snip)
Instead, by far the most important shortfall they see in candidates is a lack of experience doing similar jobs. Employers are not looking to hire entry-level applicants right out of school. They want experienced candidates who can contribute immediately with no training or start-up time. That’s certainly understandable, but the only people who can do that are those who have done virtually the same job before, and that often requires a skill set that, in a rapidly changing world, may die out soon after it is perfected....
(Snip)
Another way to describe the above situation is that employers don’t want to provide any training for new hires — or even any time for candidates to get up to speed. A 2011 Accenture survey found that only 21% of U.S. employees had received any employer-provided formal training in the past five years. Does it make sense to keep vacancies unfilled for months to avoid having to give new hires with less-than-perfect skills time to get up to speed?
Employers further complicated the hiring process by piling on more and more job requirements, expecting that in a down market a perfect candidate will turn up if they just keep looking. One job seeker I interviewed in my own research described her experience trying to land “one post that has gone unfilled for nearly a year, asking the candidate to not only be the human resources expert but the marketing, publishing, project manager, accounting and finance expert. When I asked the employer if it was difficult to fill the position, the response was ‘yes but we want the right fit.’”
And people - lots and lots of H1b visas are being issued because of this nonsense.
In the story, some HR manager applied to his own company, and he found out that he "wasn't qualified" to work there!?
There's also a story in there of a guy who was fully qualified for some other job, but didn't get it because his previous job TITLE was "wrong" and not what they were looking for?!
Yeah, yeah - we get it - companies want to be "more competitive" and all that nonsense, but there is no way the economy will recover as long as people are being rejected for jobs over the stupidest and smallest things.
And, as the original poster said, it is safe to say that this whining about a "lack of qualified applicants" is just a cover to bring in more Visa workers and/or ship more jobs overseas.
For decades, this nation was able to bring in new workers, train them quickly, and get them to a productive level. Nowdays, we're supposed to believe it is impossible for a person to perform any tasks that are even slightly different from the ones they have done in the past, as well as being impossible for them to learn new tools or software similar to what they've used before. Get real!
While it's very profitable in the short term to pass all the costs of training off to society (by simply refusing to hire and train people), that isn't going to work long-term if this nation intends to retain an advanced work force or a high standard of living.
I was a highly qualified Mech Eng / Tech Writer for a job at Cummins Alison and Cozzini but they didn't hire me because my minimum wage of $48,000 a year was too much for them. I am more efficient because I generate documentation without asking an engineer yet they just went with cheap candidates. Lately I applied for multiple Solidworks CAD jobs with Sterling Engineering and they said they couldn't use me because I don't have "recent" Solidworks CAD experience, - yet I know the current version Solidworks 2012 software. - They were just discriminating against me for being long term unemployed.
They're picky because of the huge amount of people unemployed, and not just picky but cheap as some have already mentioned. Many want to pay you peanuts instead of a living wage.
Just out of curiousity, what's your solution for that?
We should reduce employer payroll taxes and regs for incremental full time equivalent employees (2,080 hrs = 1 FTE) added, and I'd love to see capital gains taxes revised, with IPOs and other new equity instruments specifically restricted to capital investment should be tax free.
That is why increasing PRIVATE sector demand should be our utmost priority.
If you read the article, it has nothing to do with private sector demand for employees but private sector obsession with unreasonable expectations and computerized systems that are failing us. If there wasn't any private sector demand, there wouldn't be calls for more H1b visas.
It has a lot to do with basic psychology, in a tight market for something people jump on the first opportunity to get it, when there is large supply, they procrastinate. Increased choice leads to increased indecision. It's true of butter, cereal, the housing market and even dating.
If you read the article, it has nothing to do with private sector demand for employees but private sector obsession with unreasonable expectations and computerized systems that are failing us. If there wasn't any private sector demand, there wouldn't be calls for more H1b visas.
It has a lot to do with basic psychology, in a tight market for something people jump on the first opportunity to get it, when there is large supply, they procrastinate. Increased choice leads to increased indecision. It's true of butter, cereal, the housing market and even dating.
Agreed. When 25,000 people can apply to a software engineering job and none of them are "qualified" it's clearly a joke - the company either isn't hiring or they just are looking for excuses to hire more visa workers. At best, they are simply clueless but still too cheap to make the requirements more reasonable since that would require the HR people to actually look over the resumes vs. hitting "reject all" and going back to sleep for the day.
Bobtn is right, in theory - with higher private sector demand would come a need for more employees... but efforts would need to be put in place to make sure those are American workers, not overseas or visa workers. It is also hard to increase private demand to create jobs when the lack of jobs (and resulting lack of spending money) is what has reduced private sector demand so badly.
I was a highly qualified Mech Eng / Tech Writer for a job at Cummins Alison and Cozzini but they didn't hire me because my minimum wage of $48,000 a year was too much for them. I am more efficient because I generate documentation without asking an engineer yet they just went with cheap candidates. Lately I applied for multiple Solidworks CAD jobs with Sterling Engineering and they said they couldn't use me because I don't have "recent" Solidworks CAD experience, - yet I know the current version Solidworks 2012 software. - They were just discriminating against me for being long term unemployed.
Yeah, companies are being picky and CHEAP!
Jesse, yes they are clearly discrimination OR they just want somebody cheaper like you said. To them you are overqualified..I would be looking somewhere else.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
