The Job Market is Broken

Anyone who has looked for a job for about the past decade has noticed that hyperbolic and strange language has seeped into job postings. The requirements for jobs have increased and unless you are in very high demand industries, sending out over 100 applications to land a handful of interviews is now common practice. However, this new job application environment is not emblematic of our new economy, such as it is, but it is also a symptom of the modern corporate culture.

You Have to Be Everything

Modern job listings demand that you have a “passion” and be able to be a “ninja” and be willing “to do whatever it takes to get the job done.” Much of this comes from startup culture which has infected almost every area of American life, but it also belies another problem within the corporate culture. Rather than being fully staffed with enough people to handle all tasks, many jobs now include duties that under different circumstances would have spanned 1-3 jobs. Now many jobs include a core job expectation and then pile on other committees, teams, answering phones, providing customer service, or other tasks that normally would be other positions for other people.

Many companies also demand more and more from their employees without the requisite increase in compensation. Work is often a 24-7 task now with emails, texts, and even phone calls streaming in at all hours. The higher up the ladder one climbs the more this is the case. In job postings, this kind of devotion to work turns off older workers who are more used to a structured work setting and it turns off parents and many women. This leads to a culture of fanatical extremists and a culture of mostly young men.

Come With All the Skills

Modern jobs offer little training for new employees or entry-level workers. The attitude is now to “hit the ground running.” Employers want employees to show up already knowing their CRM, all the tools that they use, and to be the perfect employee from day one with no time for learning. Each company, even if they use similar tools to a previous position, takes time to learn how things flow through the organization and how to fit into the culture. For entry-level workers in their first positions, the learning curve is quite steep as they don’t have the necessary years of experience. They need help, training, and proper on-boarding. Companies are shying away from this kind of training in favor of looking for candidates that come ready to go. During the recession, this was easily done as there was a glut of overqualified people looking for any position that could possibly offer them a position.

How Fix This?

According to The Atlantic, the reason the job market is broken is that HR departments have been gutted or eliminated entirely leaving those left behind to do all the hiring. They hire without the experience of what makes someone a good fit for the role or even the ability to clearly define what the role is to start with. Unclear roles and poor hiring practices lead to wasted time on both sides.

Another factor is that many companies no longer promote from within. Many companies, rather than promoting from within will simply hire outside the organization to find new talent. Before the Great Recession, companies hired only 10% of their workforce from outside, now it’s up to 75%. This means that companies have a consistent influx of new people on a constant basis which makes hiring more high stakes than ever before.

To fix this broken job market, companies need to do several things:

• Increase training opportunities
• Hire decent HR people
• Promote from within
• Define roles better leading to better candidates
• Increase compensation

Employment: A Cameron Story

I’ve found myself often on the frontline of these trends. I’ve lived through the years of sending out 400 resumes and getting nothing back. I’ve worked at jobs where I was doing 3-5 positions at any given moment and I’ve had to be that rockstar while not being able to quite pay my bills as a single person. Companies do want you to understand all their internal systems even if you have never had the chance to use their system before. Rather than train you, they would rather move on to someone else who already knows it. There are millions of people who, with a little training, can be great workers. Companies need to staff up, leave workers alone after hours, and learn to define their roles very carefully. The current culture just causes burnout at high rates and adversely affects the of the health of everyone. My own health was compromised due to burnout and I’ve seen how long-term burnout affects workers regardless of age.

The job market is getting much more competitive now and that is getting harder to do. Companies would do well to look at skilled people (like myself) and look for potential and not pass over people over skills that can easily be learned on the job.