Tossing my resume into the job search recently has shown me just how strange the job market has become. While I’m normally a technology advocate, you can’t solve social problems with technology. I used to be disgusted at the idea of “resume padding”. As it turns out, it seems those people are the ones rewarded. Deserved or not, the resume padders are the winners these days. With the hiring manager taking less and less role in the search process, the job is often left to computerized searches and HR professionals who don’t know the difference between a qualified candidate and one who simply puts keywords on his resume.
Add to this the job qualification inflation, where managers place any possible skill they can think of as required, and you get jobs requirements that no one person can possibly match. In come the resume padders who litter the resume with any technology they have ever brushed against and the only ones who match are those who often have the least experience where you really need it. This of course, encourages more people to pad resumes and more managers to inflate requirements.
Of course resume padding isn’t the only reason managers inflate requirements. I have seen more than a few managers create an impossible mix of skills simply so they can claim there are no qualified Americans that can fill it. This allows them to use a visa to hire a foreign worker at half the rate.
All of these factors make it very bleak for those who simply want to find the right job.
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