Employers Who Complain About a Lack of Qualified Applicants
The economy remains in bad shape. Unemployment hovers around 10% or more, depending on the stats you believe. For every job there are at least six applicants, probably more, maybe 20 applicants. Google receives 1000 resumes every few days. Yet, some companies complain that they have jobs that they cannot fill because they cannot find qualified applicants.
Part of the unemployment problem is this. Because this is a employer's market with millions out of work, they are overly picky, they always want an applicant to be all things, have all the skills listed (many they will seldom use but are nice to have) and then pay lower wages. Granted, some jobs do require certain types of education and experience and skills, but really, many jobs do not, like technician type jobs, say installing satellite dishes, installing home alarm systems, some manufacturing jobs, even some jobs in IT.
What happens is that the company creates a job announcement with basic requirements and preferred requirements, meaning unless you have all of the preferred specs, your chances are far less in getting the job. Employers, because of the bad economy, are more headstrong than ever in waiting and waiting and waiting until they find the perfect person. If they don't, they whine about being unable to fill it because of a lack a skillsets in the applicants.
Well, how about lowering the requirements and train them? What a novel idea. Many of the blue collar jobs are not rocket science jobs, many can be learned by those with only a High School or two years of college education. The same applies to IT jobs, like a Desktop Help Technician. One can easily learn while OJT. No engineering degree required. Jobs in marketing and admin follow the same course. Heck, even positions like an asst. manager can be learned. The requirements for years of retail experience or a four year degree make very little difference in reality- they are just hurdles to weed out thousands of resumes.
The unemployment problem has been acerbated by employers themselves.