K
Kathleen Martin
Guest
Companies are desperate to hire tech workers like Stefan Hayden, a 38-year-old software engineer who lives near New York City.
“Not a day goes by where I don’t have multiple recruiters emailing me, or messaging on LinkedIn,” Hayden told me last week. Engineers with a few years experience under their belt, like Hayden, are practically getting stalked by recruiters these days, he said. “I’m specifically a white dude in programming in the middle of my career,” he said, explaining part of his appeal.
The thing is: recruiters are missing out on millions of people, according to a new report from Harvard Business School and Accenture, because they’re screening out applicants who don’t check all their very specific and possibly unreasonable boxes.
The researchers estimate there are more than 27 million of these “hidden workers” in the U.S.
Maybe they don’t have all the required years of experience, or they took time out of the workforce to care for children or an elderly relative or themselves. Hidden workers might also have mental health or physical challenges, maybe they’ve been sick or were previously incarcerated.
Or they served in the military.
Incredibly, even now—in a pandemic that has sidelined so many workers—some employers will stop considering those out of the workforce for longer than six months.
And make no mistake, hidden workers want to work, the authors point out. Employers aren’t even considering them.
Part of the problem is computer algorithms are screening out qualified candidates for failing to meet ridiculous standards, Kathryn Dill, reported in a piece for the Wall Street Journal last week, diving into a particularly maddening part of the HBS report.
Continue reading: https://fortune.com/2021/09/15/recruiters-engineering-men-women-job-hunt-linkedin-technology/
“Not a day goes by where I don’t have multiple recruiters emailing me, or messaging on LinkedIn,” Hayden told me last week. Engineers with a few years experience under their belt, like Hayden, are practically getting stalked by recruiters these days, he said. “I’m specifically a white dude in programming in the middle of my career,” he said, explaining part of his appeal.
The thing is: recruiters are missing out on millions of people, according to a new report from Harvard Business School and Accenture, because they’re screening out applicants who don’t check all their very specific and possibly unreasonable boxes.
The researchers estimate there are more than 27 million of these “hidden workers” in the U.S.
Maybe they don’t have all the required years of experience, or they took time out of the workforce to care for children or an elderly relative or themselves. Hidden workers might also have mental health or physical challenges, maybe they’ve been sick or were previously incarcerated.
Or they served in the military.
Incredibly, even now—in a pandemic that has sidelined so many workers—some employers will stop considering those out of the workforce for longer than six months.
And make no mistake, hidden workers want to work, the authors point out. Employers aren’t even considering them.
Part of the problem is computer algorithms are screening out qualified candidates for failing to meet ridiculous standards, Kathryn Dill, reported in a piece for the Wall Street Journal last week, diving into a particularly maddening part of the HBS report.
Continue reading: https://fortune.com/2021/09/15/recruiters-engineering-men-women-job-hunt-linkedin-technology/
