This is a very difficult situation. It was not for nothing that it was said that this virus would destroy the world we had arranged before. Now, even qualified workers cannot find a good job, let alone people who have much less competence. Especially considering that now you need to go through special software to get a job. Even our company uses a website that finds out talents and profitable inclinations for a job seeker in our company. For me personally, this is quite an interesting experience.

Gigo (Garbage In, Garbage Out) has been known about computers for over 50 years. If those engaged in the recruitment process cannot be bothered to get their position descriptions right, then of course they are going to get the wrong people. I have no time for such dimwits.

I have read the job descriptions for temp assignments I have worked and if I was looking to apply for a job, I would have passed. One in particular demanded a college degree, I don't have one and yet was considered exceptional at my work. They need to put humans in charge of screening again.

I applied for a job not long ago at a whim. I have all the qualifications but the soft ware rejected me on grounds that I had put in wrong address, I had recently moved and it did not match my address on my license that I had to supply by photo. Anyway, now I am getting calls from the company to please come in for an interview after someone came upon the error.

To compound the problem a lot of 'job seekers' are refusing to comply with mandates as masks and vaccines. Here, our governor has mandated all state workers and volunteers must get the vaccine. This county has done the same yet people refuse to follow basic rules needed to protect others. The ferry system is crashing and some of the ferry workers want to stage a strike and keep any boat from leaving the terminals. This is unconscionable as many ferry workers understand the importance of the vaccine/masks.

I can see why this is happening. For several years prior to my retirement I held a senior position in my company. It was (and remains) a larger company, employing approx. 2,000 people. We had a Human Resources Dept, and the head of that department was a very good and efficient person. However the Department gradually instituted onerous practices. Among these practices was over estimating what was needed to fill various positions. As an example, at one time we required receptionists to have a college degree. That was overkill and thankfully we wised up.

The fancy hiring software, as well as the moving of the application process to being entirely online, even for jobs that don't involve using computers at all, is also a way to weed out or eliminate any older workers who are not computer literate, don't have internet access, or too expensive to insure for health care, even if they might be quite competent for the actual job being advertised. But the online hiring process gives them a backdoor way to discriminate against poor people (who don't have net access) or older workers without actually doing anything illegal or blatantly discriminating based on age. Of course, they will always have the opportunity to do that once the person shows up in person for an interview and the hiring person can then react to the applicant's being too old with the tried and true excuse that they are "over-qualified"..

And conservatives were blaming the job seekers, when it turns out that employers are at fault for not beign able to fill positions.

It's kind of ridiculous to consider workers as a "resource" and also expect them to have a positive view of your company. Companies that share the wealth and have humane expectations are thriving, Costco and Rei come to mind.

Perhaps the job seekers are asking for “too much money”.??? Good. I hope they go out of business.

Fuck ‘em.

I have no sympathy for the employers. They have been spoiled for decades with an abundance of wage slaves to hire and exploit, so they grew complacent with how they could structure the hiring based on that power imbalance and make the job descriptions and hiring criteria so rigid and overly-broad that they could make hiring like a boutique shopping purchase, all the way down to getting that "sweet spot" of what age employee they could get for the job, younger and cheaper being the general rule of thumb in who they prized. Fuck them if they are having problems hiring. They are butt hurt that the power has shifted some, finally, towards the workers, and the employers don't want to adjust to it and give up any of their power and advantage over workers in the hiring process. They also are the ones responsible for overly-automating the hiring process, another thing I hate, so they could save time and money, supposedly, and now they are paying dearly for that. I also remember how before Covid that employers would lie all the time and pretend to have more openings than they did, playing workers who were sincerely seeking jobs only to find out that the employers were advertising for phantom jobs that didn't exist, doing what was called talent banking to get a reserve stock of resumes and applications for jobs they might need to fill later with future openings from workers leaving. The practice was also just a way to keep HR people busy and justify their existence in the company while the company was not hiring very often.

I saw a recent example of this here in a moderate sized community. A fairly large Ford dealership advertised for a parts department manager who would also supervise a parts runner. The wish list of job requirements was so long and seemingly not relevant to the job duties that I thought it hilarious. All they did was to narrow this list of "qualified" applicants to zero.

They could just as well added "able to leap tall buildings in a single bound" and " more powerful than a locomotive".

That could explain a lot of what is going on. It could be that and other things too. I work in a small town of 3,500 and my corporation has been known to take in $10,000 per day. There are 2 grocery stores that cannot hire or keep people and also smaller businesses like Taco Bell and Dollar General that have the same problems. At the start of the pandemic these places had workers and some of them hung on for a while. Now they are gone. People want to tell fantastic stories of phenomenal unemployment amounts that have kept these people from working. I don't believe that was happening. You do not quit the grocery store and start drawing $900 per week. That story does not remain valid once the unemployment stops. I knew some of these people. Now they are gone just like vanishing residents in a sci fi movie.

The only thing that does make sense is corporations adopting a fancy hiring software that is too far over the top. Perhaps they did so because minimum wage increased. The software app would guarantee that you had only the very best people and would now apply to everyone. More people are now excluded. I've heard my boss name a person he wants to hire but our corporation said no.