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How would you know? In this era of web based applications, how do you know what even gets to HR much less the hiring manager? I submitted one application only to discover a few weeks later that instead recording a graduate engineering degree, the form data somehow got changed to less than two years of business school. One look at my resume would have cleared it up, but did it ever get that far?

Replacing people with software may make sense, if it isn't written and maintained by an idiot.

Not only a bad tool for the job, simply the wrong tool for the job, akin to using a lug wrench to peel a potato.

I once interviewed with the owner of a small company that repped a big company. He wanted to hire me and so sent me off to a little room with a computer to take the mandated personality and aptitude suitability test.

I flunked. He said, "This has gotta be wrong. Come back day after tomorrow and take it again." Perhaps in the interim he was going to introduce the aptitude suitability test Stuxnet virus. I never found out; I found another job with a shorter commute. But what neither he nor I will ever know is whether he, the job and I would have been a terrific match - or not.

I have been seeking work a year now, both in my initial field of work (which we can briefly refer to as retail) & also in trying to source a "career-change" by either working more with my brain (administrative/design/create) or into a green job. Most of my applications have been sent via the web as no one has time to talk to people seeking a job in their shop, or because you can ONLY apply online. Most of my applications have been dumped by one or two questions in the screening process.

Nearly every retail job application now carries the question "can you lift 50 lbs?" Nope, sorry, I no longer am able to do so. BUT I can lift 25 lbs twice, so as to get the work done. However, since I am online rather than in front of a human being (or at least a clone of one) all I can do is answer no to the question. Trash this app, she can't the job.

I have been in to corporate stores to request an application, only to be told I have to print the app off my computer & then bring it back to them. I have asked for a paper copy from the store & be flatly told: No, we don't do that. Really? So my only choice is to take the laptop to a place that will print me an application from my drive, pay for it, fill it out & apply. I have done so in many cases, only to find the 50 pounder on the application anyway.

Trying to change into an administrative job from retail is literally impossible, as the experience & qualifications on the resume (even the carefully adapted & frequently "dumbed-down" resume) do not match the key words sought by the office. Yet I know that in managing a store for 10 years, I have handled everything required for the job: customer service, phone skills, the ability to calm the irate, problem solver, budget maintenance, payroll, event planning, and so on ad nauseum. But no, you don't have the skill set we need. You can decide this from a sheet of paper, or a print-out huh?

And I'm not even going near the responses to having run my own successful business, because working for yourself is somehow worse than being unemployed altogether. And then there is the rumor that some of the job search sites will not actually send in your application if your are, in fact, unemployed. That helps a job seeker out quite a bit, I can assure you.

It has all simply become ridiculous. The job search, the job requirements (we're hiring you part-time but we need you to work 50 hours a week -- I don't think that would be part time, do you?) the focus on a single skill set above all else: "if you can't sell our card, you will go through the disciplinary action process, which includes termination" Not everyone can sell something that has no intrinsic value. Not everyone has a sales personality. But now you can be fired for not having it, no matter how good you are at every other aspect of the job. And corporations are people, too.

This guy is spot on and he echoes exactly what I have been saying for nearly two years now. -- There isn't so much of a "skills gap" as there is a screening gap. The software uses all sorts of arbitrary criteria to weed out potential matches and is designed more to cull the herd and make HR's job easier more than it is to find the best candidates.

This is the story that needs to be making the rounds--not employers whining about how they can't find qualified applicants. -- Who are they kidding?? (With this many people unemployed and dying to find a job, they are off their proverbial rockers.)

Recently interviewed with a automation comp in KC. The woman who title was "Director of culture and vision" was so young I thought I was going to have to change her diaper! Funny part she asked the dumbest questions and non behavior type interview. She had a degree in creative writing and on her linked in she had a glamor shot. What are you hiding! Cant make a silk purse of of a sow s ear!