Posted on 09/07/2021 5:15:38 AM PDT by Twotone
Automated resume-scanning software that is inflexibly configured and overlooks potentially suitable workers is a major factor contributing to a “broken” hiring system in the United States, according to a new report from Harvard Business School (HBR).
The HBR report (pdf), released Sept. 4, provides insight into America’s labor market dynamics, including the widely reported mismatch between the more than 10 million job openings—a record high—and the more than 8.4 million unemployed actively looking for work.
Business owners have been complaining about not being able to find enough workers and having to raise pay to attract new hires. At the same time, swaths of willing and available workers remain “not visible” to recruiters, who have become increasingly reliant on automated software that is inflexibly configured and filters out large numbers of viable candidates, according to the report.
“Companies are increasingly desperate for workers. As they continue to struggle to find people with the skills they need, their competitiveness and growth prospects are put at risk,” the report’s authors wrote.
“At the same time, an enormous and growing group of people are unemployed or underemployed, eager to get a job or increase their working hours. However, they remain effectively ‘hidden’ from most businesses that would benefit from hiring them by the very processes those companies use to find talent.”
(Excerpt) Read more at theepochtimes.com ...
They were also a woman of color.With 40 years of stellar experience and progressive responsibility in logistics and aircraft maintenance field, and 14 years as an adjunct professor in the subject area, I was passed over for a WOC with 5 years of work experience and less than a year in the field.
I bit the bullet, took on a 95 mile commute, and easily got a job that was three levels above the slot that I "wasn't qualified for."
She called me about two months later crying and said that they chose the wrong person.
blank font=black font.
My resume is different than yours...
Indians have taken over IT almost completely. Most teams I’ve seen are 100% Indian. If you aren’t Indian, you aren’t getting in the door at many companies.
THEN SHOW UP AT THE DOOR WITH A GUN, OR CALL IN A BOMB THREAT
(kidding, kidding....)
Maybe it’s a crap job, but if you’re not working right now, it is because you do not wish to (or, in the case of two people I know, are not medically capable).
On my next useless application, I’m going to try sending something like that in! Can’t be a worse outcome than I’ve had in a long time.
swaths of willing and available workers remain “not visible” to recruiters, who have become increasingly reliant on automated software that is inflexibly configured and filters out large numbers of viable candidates,
A company recruiter is the way to go there. HR sucks, but a Recruiter will look beyond the paper to the person.
I got my current job, 4 years into it already, this way.
Ha! Sorry, hope you are employed now, though
B*** S***. I uses to work on e-recruiting systems. They are extremely flexible.
Even Home Depot will send you to a Kiosk.
HR was not ALWAYS worthless....its downhill started in the 1980s...I know...I got out before it became a Govt type job). As a side note...our company in 1989-90 was a test site for Resume scanning software...during a hiring rampup...And I even got a call from Reuters thinking I was some dumb broad in HR who would spill info...hilarious and heady times.
Forgot to say...I worked in hi tech
Not necessarily. HR people are usually as dumb as rocks.
The easiest way to do that is to apply for a job online, in particular one you are not exactly qualified for. This give you some documentation that you are looking, while not risking that anyone will offer you an actual job.
There is a way to game these online systems. In my out of work past, I took several courses on how to get through the software to a person. Churches often have programs to help people find work, you'd be surprised how good some of them can be--and they are usually free.
My general advice is get a copy of "What Color is Your Parachute" and read it from cover to cover. It's updated yearly, but a copy a used copy a few years old will probably do fine. The advice that you spend WASTE time crafting the perfect resume, mail it to companies, and wait for the offers to come in doesn't work anymore.
BTW, I sat in a hiring meeting and ask other managers if anybody read resumes anymore. The answer was no--from everybody. They might scan it for job history or a specific skill, but NOBODY is reading your resume.
Trying to get a job with a great resume is like trying to travel cross country on a horse. It might work, but you're doing it the hard and inefficient way.
BTW, applying online and waiting for a reply from the company also doesn't work. It's better than a horse (more like driving a car), but it still takes a long time.
Keyword stuffing.
Some systems detect it, others don’t.
I simply put a section at the end titled “Skills” and and list every skill I can think of. Hiring managers know what the deal is. They won’t ding you for doing this.
I know one guy that got rejected from a very high tech job, because he didn’t have Microsoft Office listed on his resume. It was such a mundane skill compared to his others, he didn’t feel he even needed to include it on his resume. He did, because HR rejected him, because they couldn’t find that keyword on his resume.
Here is my most recent experience with a small custom sheet metal manufacturing co. where I was until recently, the bookkeeper/office manager who mistakenly volunteered because of my many years of HR experience, to help them recruit and pre-screen applicants for their numerous job openings.
They were using Indeed to post job openings, but the person posting the jobs had no experience in doing so and posted the very same job numerous times with little information, even a simple job description, anything about the company, the hours or pay, anything about the company and wondered why he was getting few responses.
He was also running up many hundreds of dollars a month in fees with Indeed for multiple/duplicate posts and never looking at most of the applicants or not getting back to them until months later when most had already gotten a job or those who didn’t, didn’t have a job yet because they were unemployable. The owner finally had me shut down all those previous postings and start from scratch.
The first thing I did was to write up job descriptions for our openings, determine the skills required and the number years of experience required, our expectations, etc. I first drafted this up based on postings for similar jobs in our same industry and general location, esp. for jobs like welder/fabricators (did they need more experience in Tig or Mig welding) and for millwrights (what type of mechanical skills did we need) and for our machine shop (what sort of manual machining skills we were looking for).
I also made some recommendations on pay based on the local pay scales and the fact that we offered no benefits opposed to most of our competitors.
Bu it is hard to fill a job position when you tell the applicant on the initial phone interview that we do not offer any health insurance benefits, our STD plan only pays a max of $100 per week, only one week of vacation after one year service and 2 weeks after 10, and a 401k but with no employer match until after 5 years of service.
And I got push back that we shouldn’t offer more per hour than our competitors even after I pointed out that our competitors were offering more generous benefits.
And I got very little feedback from management and the hiring supervisors on these job descriptions BTW. I truthfully didn’t know the difference between different types of welding but spent many hours, even on my off and unpaid time, researching so I could better understand.
So, I did the best I could and tried to make our job postings seem competitive and attractive and got a lot of responses and when I pre-screened the applicants who seemed qualified, that I thought showed promise, I tried my best to talk up the positives.
Then after spending many hours looking over applicants and telephone screening them, when I tried to schedule them for an interview, the production manager only wanted to interview applicants at 10AM or 1PM and was completely inflexible on this. Yet he would come to me day after day and complain how he needed more workers.
We were desperately looking for a manual machinist for our machine shop who not only had the skills we were looking for in manual machining, a bit of a lost art, but also someone with managerial and supervisory experience and I found the who I thought was the perfect candidate who telephone interviewed well.
She was a female, yet highly qualified and experienced and I knew a bit about her because she had worked for over 25 years at a company where we both used to work, and I thought very highly of her.
But since she was currently working, she wasn’t available to interview until after 4PM or later and the plant manger told me he 1) didn’t want to say even an hour late past his 3:30 work day and 2) he didn’t want to interview her while he was alone because…well she might want to accuse him of sexual harassment or “something”.
So, I offered to stay late and sit in on the interview if he was uncomfortable being alone with a woman and after weeks of him ‘thinking” about he finally agreed but of course by then, she’d already found another job.
I also found a highly experienced Millwright, a position I was told we desperately needed to fill ASAP, who phone interviewed well, had a great resume and work experience and who really wanted the job but said he had to turn it down because of the lack of health insurance.
FWIW we already had a few employees who we paid a monthly grossed up bonus to offset their ACA insurance.
I went to the production manager to propose we pay him $27 per hour instead of the $25 we originally offered along with a $500 per month grossed up bonus to offset his health insurance costs.
He told me he wasn’t “authorized’ to make that decision” and of course neither was I. When it tried to talk to the owner of the company, my boss, he blew me off so the position, last I heard is still unfilled.
Some of you all want to lay blame at the feet of HR folks but this is the type of crap we HR folks have to deal with.
The word is out about working for Apple in design.
They are running into the same problem Intel has.
They treat employees badly and no one wants to work for them.
I know someone who just turned down a 60k increase as they heard what it was like at Apple.
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