Perfect worker on the cheap
Via Bloomberg Obsession for the Perfect Worker Fading in Tight U.S. Job Market points to an issue in hiring that has been discussed here at AB:
This is a problem because, at 4.1 percent last month, U.S. unemployment is at the lowest level since 2000 and companies from Dallas to Denver are struggling to find the right workers. In some cases this is constraining growth, the Federal Reserve reported last week.
Corporate America’s search for an exact match is “the number-one problem with hiring in our country,” said Daniel Morgan, a recruiter in Birmingham, Alabama, who owns an Express Employment Professionals franchise. “Most companies get caught up on precise experience to a specific job,” he said, adding: “Companies fail to see a person for their abilities and transferable skills.”
U.S. employers got used to abundant and cheap labor following the 2007-2009 recession. Unemployment peaked at 10 percent in October 2009, and didn’t return to the lows of the previous business cycle until last year. Firms still remain reluctant to boost pay or train employees with less-than-perfect credentials, though recruiters say that may have to change amid a jobless rate that’s set to dip further.
The way the article is cut off with the wage gains chart makes it seem that the article is on the Dean Baker theme of “pay higher wages and they will come,” in which he argues that there is no shortage because you can hire workers away from your competitor, thereby merely moving the deficit from one place to another without eliminating it and unintentionally suggesting that there is actually is a shortage after all.
Immediately after that chart, however, the article segues into a pretty intelligent discussion of employers learning to ascertain “how can your experience be used in my application,” making it unclear why the wage chart is even there.
The “lack of trained workers” complaint has long annoyed me, with its implication that it is the public sector’s responsibility to train workers for the private sector. Why? If a company needs welders, why should that company not train its own welders?
Last week we were reviewing a job description we were preparing for a role in Canada. It was basically a super senior description, they wanted everything, specific experience, higher education, what amounts to a black belt project management certification but also accounting and finance background.
At the bottom it says 5 years experience.
I almost fell off my chair. That’s an indicator of the pay band they were trying to fill at (let’s say 3, and the description was written like a 10-15 years 6).
I tried to explain it to the person who wrote it and I said hey if we put this out there, we will get no hits. There is no one with this experience who will take what you are offering. I’m afraid we’re going to end up with another home country expat instead. They’re often not up the same standard you could get with a local if you reasonably scoped the job and gave a fair offer.
I think companies have forgotten how to compete for employees, and the recruiters are completely out of touch. Or maybe they are aware of the conditions and HR just won’t sign on to fair value.
Before I retired 12 years ago, on-the-job training was much more common. Borders Books (remember them?) trained me for a week with pay for just a temporary Christmas-season job. Employers have gotten spoiled, and I hope they will figure this out. Some of the training programs I hear about just make me sigh. Nobody can afford to be trained while not being paid.
My Wife works as a junior recruiter, the problem she says is with the employers, they want a particular set of traits, and if there is even a slight deviation they balk
She says that one recent employer she worked with wanted so many particulars for not enough pay that even well experienced and well educated candidates she could find were either unwilling to accept the offer, or were missing one or two traits that made them unacceptable to the company.
This is exciting news for many of us who’ve been waiting for the pendulum to swing in favor of potential employees after a decade of reading employers help wanted Santa wish list criteria for a minimum wage job of 40+ hours. I’d argue the unemployment rate is not 4.1%; rather, I know of many intelligent/educated/experienced versatile people who’ve been cut out of the job market and/or chose not to work for breadcrumbs.
HR’s 6 second resume review rule of potential candidates was a massive failure by eliminating candidates whose skills, experience and critical thinking abilities could’ve cultivated innovation across many disciplines. Instead companies looked for drone replacement at slave wages. HR’s narrow candidate searches often focused on resume typos or perceived grammatical errors (highly unlikely HR recruiters have an English Ph.D), thus trashing the resume. Perhaps, HR will be refitted with critical thinking people who see a candidate’s potential beyond the forgotten comma or period.
Bill H,
It can be discussed separately. Glad you followed the link.
Mona.
Many employers seem to expect the hire to train themselves. The topic of training is another whole discussion.
Axt,
I have heard many such examples.
Rps,
The employment to population rate is a metric that is useful. Time to revisit the data.
I wonder how much the move to online recruiting has increased this exact match approach? It’s easy to write a screening program that matches keywords, and ignores resumes that lack them. On the other hand, it is a stupid approach. In the past, I’d mutter something about stupid HR people, but I think stupid computer people should share some of the blame.
P.S. My favorite example of on the job recruiting was Edwin Land, who founded Polaroid. He recruited heavily at women’s colleges looking for chemists. He wanted bright people even if they weren’t chemistry majors. He figured Polaroid could teach them chemistry. The important thing was that they be smart.