This is a job seeker’s labor market, and workers feel secure enough to leave the jobs they don’t like:
Hires climbed to the highest level of the year at 5.12 million and the number of Americans voluntarily quitting their jobs climbed to 2.75 million from 2.73 million the prior month. The number of voluntary quits tends to rise when people are confident about job prospects.
Most people are so comfortable that they can’t stand good news, so here is what many will consider a welcome worrisome trend:
And the share of Americans participating in the labor force, at 62.6% in July, matched the lowest reading since 1977, a possible sign there’s a mismatch between job openings and job seekers.
I noticed this problem when we were looking for a departmental secretary. This is an office position that requires a very limited skill set. Yet out of the 8 people we considered, 5 were utterly unprepared for any office job. (Out of the remaining three, one was not a good fit on a personal level, one couldn’t decide if she wanted a job, and one we hired.)
We had to hire someone with an MA because candidates with lesser qualifications showed an extreme incapacity to conduct themselves properly in an office setting.
This is a serious problem on the job market these days: jobs that require nothing but a warm body are increasingly rare. In the meanwhile, the number of jobs that require a worker who is a confident denizen of the modern world is growing. And there are not enough people to fill these positions. For instance, one of the insurmountable obstacles for our candidates was the need to work with people from a wide variety of countries. The candidates were visibly (and sometimes offensively) uncomfortable with anybody who was not exactly like themselves. And how many jobs these days welcome this sort of thing?
A significant number of job seekers eventually give up the search altogether because there’s nothing they have that the job market is ever likely to need. Such people are unequipped to arrive at the real reason for their marginalization by the job market (if they were so equipped, they would easily get employed) and start coming up with all kinds of bizarre outlets for the anger this incomprehensible reality produces in them. The political consequences of this anger and confusion are easy to observe.
Clarissa's Blog 
“We had to hire someone with an MA because candidates with lesser qualifications showed an extreme incapacity to conduct themselves properly in an office setting.”
Wow, that is a suprise. My experience has been that the further down the academic rabbit hole people are, the less they are able to function in the normal world.
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I noticed this problem when we were looking for a departmental secretary. This is an office position that requires a very limited skill set. Yet out of the 8 people we considered, 5 were utterly unprepared for any office job. (Out of the remaining three, one was not a good fit on a personal level, one couldn’t decide if she wanted a job, and one we hired.)
I seem to recall a post complaining about some interviews being granted out of pity. That could skew your sample.
Clarissa, how exactly were these people utterly unprepared for any office job in ways which did not show up on paper, besides their obvious discomfort with the idea of a heterogeneous workplace?
We had to hire someone with an MA because candidates with lesser qualifications showed an extreme incapacity to conduct themselves properly in an office setting.
What particular skills does someone with a MA have that equips them for office work over someone with a bachelor’s or an intelligent high schooler? I could see an MA being a proxy for “educated enough to be more educated than the undergrads but not so educated that they have simmering resentments toward the grad students and the professors” but otherwise, I don’t get it.
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I would love to hear Clarissa’s experience, but I myself have had a similar experience while hiring department assistants. I don’t think it’s a BA or an MA per se, and yes, in theory an intelligent high schooler should be able to do whatever is required of an office assistant. In fact some of our (very good) admins do not have college degrees.
But the fact is, most high schoolers who apply for such jobs are completely clueless, and lack basic intelligence, qualifications and professionalism. I am talking about qualifications such as the ability to write short grammatical emails, punctuality, and ability to use basic software such as simple spreadsheets and Google calendar. What I have learnt in the interviewing process is that a BA or an MA is an easy proxy for these qualifications, and I am guessing this is what Clarissa means.
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There were candidates who were getting sulky and pouty. One was making casually racist statements. One got visibly upset when asked if she were willing to learn how to use Excel. One kept offering juicy gossip about the people she used to work with before (and whom we were likely to know in person.)
Mind you, these were not kids. These were all women over the age of 45 who are unlikely to undergo any dramatic growth.
We were not given a chance to choose whom to interview, unfortunately. This was all done by the HR. And I was as shocked as anybody to discover that the only person who could talk to and not feel like we were circus monkeys was somebody with an MA. I’ve always been opposed to hiring over qualified people and setting a bad precedent but that’s where things are headed.
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One was making casually racist statements. Really? Can you give examples?
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I wrote about all of this in detail as it was happening. This woman was so oblivious that she actually did the “one of my friends is actually African American” shtick, delivered in the tone I use to say “I have a PhD from Yale.” This was her response to the question of whether she is prepared to work with people from different cultures. She also informed us that she had once listened to a program on the radio where a book about other cultures was discussed.
This was the same person who thanked me for being articulate.
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There were candidates who were getting sulky and pouty. One was making casually racist statements. One got visibly upset when asked if she were willing to learn how to use Excel. One kept offering juicy gossip about the people she used to work with before (and whom we were likely to know in person.)
Mind you, these were not kids. These were all women over the age of 45 who are unlikely to undergo any dramatic growth.
-Was the person with the MA a similar age or a lot younger? Did any of these women have higher education at all?
-Sulky and pouty is something I wouldn’t expect from an adult in an interview. So many of these particular jobs actually mention attitude and personality so I’m a little surprised.
-“Are you willing to learn how to use Excel?” is such a gift. Good luck finding a similar position wouldn’t just eliminate everyone who doesn’t know how to use it from consideration. You either knew how to use it yesterday or didn’t bother.
-Juicy gossip is not something I would mention in a job interview.
-Apparently casual racism didn’t get in the way of their prior employment? I know many casually racist people who have jobs. It’s neutral with many people and for some it may even be a plus. There’s a flavor to casual racism though: Explaining someone’s culture to them makes you a person of the world; racist email forwards makes you gauche. I’ve encountered both.
I’m sure all of those women are gainfully employed elsewhere.
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“Was the person with the MA a similar age or a lot younger? Did any of these women have higher education at all?”
“Sulky and pouty is something I wouldn’t expect from an adult in an interview.”
“Apparently casual racism didn’t get in the way of their prior employment?”
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Making large generalizations from a small sample,perhaps?
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I have many more examples but I can’t write a post the length of War and Peace.
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The situation’s pretty similar in the EU, as well. If politicians had half the common sense of a drunken monkey, they’d invest all available funds in education. The Western world really seems to be splitting between those who have the skills and have companies fighting over them and those who can’t and are unable to get a job at all, and I’ve no reason to think this split won’t get even worse in the future.
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Absolutely. That’s the greatest problem we are facing right now and it is getting worse.
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This is useful information!
Yet another thing I used to take for granted, but turns out to be a marketable skill.
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