How to Design a System to Frustrate Job Seekers

I remember when I applied for my first job. The age of the internet was just starting to take hold of us--Netscape required winsock--so you actually had to know what you were doing in order to get on-line. Because of that, we still had to literally "pound the pavement" in order to find a job. Jobs were usually posted on a board outside of the human resources office or could be heard through a job line you had to call. If you found one that struck your fancy and were qualified for, you went in-person to the prospective employer and asked for an application. An actual human being could give you the once-over the same way you gave their establishment and decide whether or not to hand over a hard-copy application that had to be filled out by hand. Resumes and cover letters were welcome, but not necessarily needed since the job applications were pretty extensive in and of themselves, at least in my experiences.

This process seems slow and clunky in today's fast-paced, on-demand society, but when I see incompetent people with stable incomes (or even worse, in positions of power), it's like a listening to a joke (one that was not funny int he first place) over and over again. I feel this extra bit of inconvenience might actually pay off in the long run in the form of a competent, qualified work force that actually puts in the necessary effort needed to produce a quality product or benefit the employer. Sure, it might eat into complacent office staff myspace or facebook time, but those are exactly the people that need to be replaced! As the system is currently, quality and progress are never going to come about because the bar has been set so impossibly high, those that are capable are put off by the inordinate and excessively intrusive applications. Meanwhile the phonies and idiots brazenly walk right under it and into a job (by being "innovative" and "thinking outside of the box"). Further complicating matters are alleged budget constraints make it cheaper to outsource the data-aphid work needed to screen out potential hires to either Bangalore or an algorithm as opposed to a human resident in the location of the job. Quantity counts while quality has been replaced by planned obsolescence because it's cheaper. People have been reduced to living in fear of being replaced as quick as an empty tube of toothpaste with their talent and life squeezed out by an system that only knows the price of everything and the value of nothing either because it is stupid (remember, garbage in = garbage out) or simply does not care.

Yes, I am writing this in frustration as a bilingual, educated, well-traveled unemployed individual who just received a rejection notice stating I wasn't qualified enough to be a utility laborer. Anyone think maybe this is a good time to bring back apprenticeships?

Jay Dead of WA 3:42PM August 03, 2010