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The employment market- Can it cope with a recession?
October 22nd, 2008
Even in prosperous times, the employment market isn’t anyone’s idea of a particularly efficient thing. Within the employment industry, criticism has been long and loud about its various failings.
With a global recession rattling its chains, it’s a matter of opinion if the market can cope with a sudden surge in unemployment. The whole industry is looking very much in need of reform, itself.
The hiring process itself is far from impressive, by modern standards. It still contains the relics of old concepts and the paper trails of the past.
It’s a maddening process, made a lot worse by bureaucratic methods and a series of rituals in hiring which would make the most obscure ancient ceremonies look relatively simple.
Added to which, a lot of the interviewing is being done by people who don’t really understand the techniques used in current hiring formats.
It’s not at all uncommon for people to complain that the interviewers didn’t seem to understand their answers, or ignored them. Equally common is the complaint that their answers, which answered the question, weren’t considered correct, in terms of the parameters of the interview technique.
The addition of psychological techniques to the employment market, whereby people who aren’t trained psychologists are expected to apply those principles, has made it much worse.
The result is that job applicants, who may have made hundreds, if not thousands, of applications, are confronted with a process they don’t understand. Employers are stuck with using methods they may not understand, and not dealing with basic realities of the jobs they’re trying to fill.
That’s not much of an inspiration to those who are trying to stay alive, fighting endless battles with costs, and are, by the way, hoping for a job, not psychoanalysis. It’s no great thrill for employers to discover that their expensive employment agency has found a supply of quite unsuitable people for them.
Recessions are rough on everyone. Employers cut back, competition for jobs increases dramatically. Society’s open wounds get worse.
The obvious question for the job market is whether it can deal with large volumes of unemployment. So far, indications are that it can’t.
The online job market in particular is staggeringly inefficient. Its sole redeeming virtue is that it makes the general inefficiency of the employment market briefer, if not better.
You can waste less time doing applications. That’s about it.
But you can also waste more time. You can read more dubious looking ads for making millions at home addressing envelopes or selling alternative medicines.
Increased volumes of jobless people in the global economy will make the employment market very much less efficient as a social mechanism.
The global employment market is hardly the epitome of over achievement in social functions. In most countries, huge numbers of people are unemployed or under employed.
That’s partly a result of economic forces. But it can also be seen as a result of economic policy and planning, where employment is apparently the last issue to be considered.
The result of that approach is a very haphazard employment base, globally. The employment market reflects the general lack of policy direction in the whole gamut of training, career track design, and meeting social needs.
In a serious global recession, the employment market is extremely vulnerable. Lack of business capital, lack of employment policies, and lack of skilled people in many countries, is a recipe for a real disaster.
The employment industry, if it had any sense, would start lifting its game, and improving its methods. The industry should be lobbying for more effective employment policies, and providing positive assistance for employers and employees in improving performance in placements.
The only certainty at the moment is that an industry not working on small volumes of people will make a dog’s breakfast of larger volumes.
The employment industry has to reform, and it has to match the needs of the global economy and the global society.
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