There is a moderately interesting point to be made here that automated candidate screening software is not a panacea, and while it can do a good job of filtering through the hundreds or thousands of applicants that might materialize for a single post, it might cause you to miss out on a good fit.
On the other hand, this article is laden with so much hyperbolic moralizing that it makes me take almost none of it seriously.
One of SeatGeek's founders (where I work) has written repeatedly about the insane problem of managing job applications [http://jackg.org/screening-with-an-arbitrary-test]. This is not a self-inflicted wound. We're talking dozens to hundreds of actually unqualified applicants for individual jobs, and the idea that a 15 person company is going to carry someone around for 6 months while they're "trained" is ludicrous.
It is absolutely true that there is a skills-gap in some industries. [Software is one of them]
It is absolutely true that a bad hire is more expensive than a non-hire.
It is absolutely true that some HR departments are breath-takingly incompetent, although most have a pretty good handle on their needs and cost structures, to be perfectly honest.
All that said, trying to spin this into a "the corporations are destroying the country!" story is beyond idiocy.
Maybe it's easier and less costly to find someone who's already qualified than to determine whether someone is capable of being trained, and then train them.
As it happens, big companies already have to train even the most qualified new employees, because they usually have developed complicated internal cultures and systems. Training someone in basic qualifications on top of that is a big ask.
One of the few employers who does that is the military, and they often spend years training people. On the other side of that, officers who receive lots of training are usually legally obligated to serve the military for several years. Though even a basic enlisted man will spend maybe 1/2 to 1/4 of his first four-year enlistment in training.
At-will employment makes that kind of contract impossible in the private sector. So not only is it a big ask for companies to train unqualified people, it's an even bigger ask for them to do so knowing that as soon as those trainees are qualified, they can and often will jump ship to another company.
That might be a risk companies are willing to bear if they're badly in need of qualified folks and can get a competitive advantage that way. I'm generally more sympathetic to an actual business case to that effect rather than vague, entitled complaints about corporate America.
If you're talking about the social contract... who is supposed to train employees? It's certainly the case currently that the US workforce bears the burden of training itself currently often by taking on substantial debt to afford a college degree.
But to say that companies that operate in the US don't have a substantial interest in ensuring that the US has a trained and skilled work force... that just seems dangerously short sighted.
Companies have an interest in there being a trained and skilled work force -- which is why they lobby for the government to spend tax dollars on education and training.
There's no inconsistency between it not being advantageous for companies to spend their own money training people and it being advantageous for companies to spend everybody's money training people.
Employees could pay for their own training, and receive a wage premium for their trouble? That's what happens now, and it seems to work well.
The only real issue is that the education establishment seems to sell a lot of low quality training that doesn't provide much in the way of job skills. But that's an issue with the educational establishment, not with the purchasers of skilled labor.
Comments
There is a moderately interesting point to be made here that automated candidate screening software is not a panacea, and while it can do a good job of filtering through the hundreds or thousands of applicants that might materialize for a single post, it might cause you to miss out on a good fit.
On the other hand, this article is laden with so much hyperbolic moralizing that it makes me take almost none of it seriously.
One of SeatGeek's founders (where I work) has written repeatedly about the insane problem of managing job applications [http://jackg.org/screening-with-an-arbitrary-test]. This is not a self-inflicted wound. We're talking dozens to hundreds of actually unqualified applicants for individual jobs, and the idea that a 15 person company is going to carry someone around for 6 months while they're "trained" is ludicrous.
It is absolutely true that there is a skills-gap in some industries. [Software is one of them]
It is absolutely true that a bad hire is more expensive than a non-hire.
It is absolutely true that some HR departments are breath-takingly incompetent, although most have a pretty good handle on their needs and cost structures, to be perfectly honest.
All that said, trying to spin this into a "the corporations are destroying the country!" story is beyond idiocy.
But they're not talking about startups. They're talking about large corporations that could sustain training of new employees.
Maybe it's easier and less costly to find someone who's already qualified than to determine whether someone is capable of being trained, and then train them.
As it happens, big companies already have to train even the most qualified new employees, because they usually have developed complicated internal cultures and systems. Training someone in basic qualifications on top of that is a big ask.
One of the few employers who does that is the military, and they often spend years training people. On the other side of that, officers who receive lots of training are usually legally obligated to serve the military for several years. Though even a basic enlisted man will spend maybe 1/2 to 1/4 of his first four-year enlistment in training.
At-will employment makes that kind of contract impossible in the private sector. So not only is it a big ask for companies to train unqualified people, it's an even bigger ask for them to do so knowing that as soon as those trainees are qualified, they can and often will jump ship to another company.
That might be a risk companies are willing to bear if they're badly in need of qualified folks and can get a competitive advantage that way. I'm generally more sympathetic to an actual business case to that effect rather than vague, entitled complaints about corporate America.
Assuming you're right, who cares? Why must large corporations train employees if they don't feel it's in their best interests?
If you're talking about the social contract... who is supposed to train employees? It's certainly the case currently that the US workforce bears the burden of training itself currently often by taking on substantial debt to afford a college degree.
But to say that companies that operate in the US don't have a substantial interest in ensuring that the US has a trained and skilled work force... that just seems dangerously short sighted.
Companies have an interest in there being a trained and skilled work force -- which is why they lobby for the government to spend tax dollars on education and training.
There's no inconsistency between it not being advantageous for companies to spend their own money training people and it being advantageous for companies to spend everybody's money training people.
Employees could pay for their own training, and receive a wage premium for their trouble? That's what happens now, and it seems to work well.
The only real issue is that the education establishment seems to sell a lot of low quality training that doesn't provide much in the way of job skills. But that's an issue with the educational establishment, not with the purchasers of skilled labor.