Historians will
look back and declare the early twenty-first century the era of automated failure.
We are at that the intersection of specie evolution where our automated
technology exceeds our job-hunting dexterity. In short, our rapidly changing environment
exceeds our ability to adapt.
Nothing
exemplifies that clearer than the disparity between job availability and
employee availability. Employers refer to this as their secret 4:1 advantage.
This is based on the current unemployed
(14.2 million) versus job openings (3.2
million) ratio.
That ratio does not include underemployed,
part-timers, and the never employed. Nor does the ratio include those who have
fallen off the statistical reports. Moreover, the ratio does not take into
consideration the gainfully employed who discretely seek new employment.
When excluded categories
are added to the matrix, the statistics easily double. Realistically, individuals
chasing new employment are closer to 28 million. Naturally, not all are
qualified. Some could be classified as behaviorally and psychoanalytically
challenged, biologically unfit (morbidly
obese for example) and geographically
challenged (opportunity is in California
and candidate lives in Pennsylvania).
Likewise, not
all advertised openings qualify as quality
employment. A third of the openings will never be filled. These always-available,
third-world positions amount to working for slave wages.
We could
manipulate raw data endlessly to project a desired outcome. In an effort to
maintain a modicum of reality-based objectivity, let us settle on there being 2
million decent openings, versus 16 million qualified job seekers. (The Bureau of Labor Statistics are seriously
skewed. The elimination of those gainfully employed, never employed and
underemployed tends to alter the perception of reality.) Hence, the 8:1
ratio is more apropos.
With this data in
hand, I cut to the chase: You are a major employer. You want qualified
employees. You post a mid-management position with decent benefits. You desire
to weed out the crazies, misfits and unqualified, as well as those geographically
challenged.
Your hidden
agenda might also include eliminating women, gays, minorities, oldies and long-term
unemployed. (Naturally, you cannot blatantly
advertise that. There are, however, discrete techniques to sidestep those government-mandated
inconveniences.)
You anticipate
receiving 200 responses. Instead, ten times that inundates your email system.
You do not have time to cull through 2,000-plus, mostly boring and poorly
written résumés. What will you do?
Even allowing 15
seconds per résumé requires 8.3 man-hours! The odds plummet to zero in terming
of spotting the perfect candidate. Solution: You purchase expensive artificial
intelligence (AI) screening software. Have AI scan all applications, and via an
algorithmic routine, select the ideal top five candidates. This avoids confronting
the hordes who might otherwise waste your valuable time.
On the surface,
this logic makes sense. Screening software can make pre-calculated assessments
based on statistical norms. It can calculate within a minute the amount of
travel time it will take an applicant to reach the workplace. Slip in a few
behavioral questions during the submission process, and the software’s algorithm
can mathematically predict an applicant’s work ethic and socioeconomic behavioral
patterns.
Even less
qualified applicants have figured out a simple method for beating this new
reality: Simply copy and paste the job requirements into their résumés. Presto—a perfect match. Call it what you
will, but this automated screening and selection process is a technological
failure.
Applicant-screening
algorithms are touted as a panacean breakthrough. In reality, this time saver is
pure algorithmic alchemy. Three important factors in hiring involve the
candidate’s passion, desire and creativity—none of which these algorithms are
able to compute. As a result, the technological wizardry ignores the best-suited
candidates.
The hue and cry
from employers is that they cannot find qualified employees: Therefore, teachers
are not doing their job, and by the way, the national government imposes too
many regulations! With an 8:1 applicant-to-opening ratio, those arguments amount
to hogwash. But employers feel compelled to blame someone other than their own lack
of business acumen: Thus, teachers and government regulations become readily convenient
scapegoats.
Employers have brought
about a plague of their own choosing. But you cannot tell that to those who
authorized wasted high-dollar expenditures. Whenever this occurs, employers retreat
even further behind their technological firewalls and troglodyte mentalities.
Where does this
leave isolated job candidates struggling to remain positive, yet scrambling to
find decent employment? It leaves them trapped somewhere between clinical depression
and endless frustration. It leaves them questioning their own self-worth, while
their pathway into the future appears algorithmically blocked.
__________
© Robert James, 2012. James is an author and
professional résumé writer based in northeast Ohio serving clients worldwide. He
can be reached at rjames279@gmail.com.