Bass Ackwards

Business publications can't stop screaming about the lack of skilled and especially highly technical workers. Meanwhile, companies screen-out by the millions the very people qualified to interview for these positions.

How did we get here? Here's how:

The people screening these resumes are doing nothing more than looking for a series of keywords on these resumes. No keywords or not the right keywords? Into the electronic trash pile it goes. A reasonably intelligent Golden Retriever is capable of this type of low-level resume screening.

Such a colossal waste.

What these screeners are missing is what might be an unconventional background or possibly a somewhat parallel set of skills and work history in which a manager/supervisor can VERY quickly size up and determine if this person is capable and qualified to do the work.

Backing up..in most organizations, managers who primarily supervise work are also asked to do some hiring. We're talking about "hiring managers" here.

Now, these managers are told by the executives above them what an important part of their job hiring is.

These same employers and these same executives, in their endless efforts to increase production while lowering cost, then sabotage the very act and process of hiring good people. More on that below.

Not to be forgotten in all this: jobs that don't get filled are putting the burden of all this extra work on to existing employees.

So here's the part that is just SO ass backwards. People ENTIRELY unqualified to determine if a potential employee is CAPABLE OF DOING HIGHLY TECHNICAL AND SPECIALIZED WORK are the ones screening most or all of the resumes- instead of the line of business manager who has spent years both doing the work and, later, supervising the people doing the work.

Now it's true that, if asked, hiring managers often state they want nothing to do with the labor-intensive screening process.

I ask: What if hiring managers were fairly compensated for being much more involved in the recruiting process? I mean, after all, companies talk a good game about the importance of hiring. But the overwhelming majority of these firms burden the hiring manager with extraneous work, creating a collective position that does echo: "I don't have time to look at candidate resumes!".

Get the hiring manager VERY involved early and often. That is the solution. That is the solution to this perceived "shortage" of skilled and/or technical positions unfilled by the millions.