It's a question rising from lots of time spent on job hunting.
When I haven't found the job for certain time period, the natural question is why.
- One side is on my side, all prep right?
- Resume, linkedin, working permit, find the right opportunity, find the right channel to apply, am I capable
- The other side is on job side
- Enough job outside, right timing, is the job market efficient
Also the question comes from upcoming Superbowl news.
The best forecast of who will win comes from gambling market because gambling market is an efficient market.
In the meanwhile, NFL is an efficient market. We observe that through prosper trending of the market.
Then for job seeker like me has to wonder why job market isn't like these two markets and what's right in these markets
Here are basic elements for job market before we can answer that question.
A market needs buyers, sellers, goods and information
- Buyers: Potential Employer
- Sellers: Potential Employee
- Goods: Service/Commitment provided by employees with their skill to meet employers requirement
- Information: Info about skills, requirement, sellers and buyers
How to tell a job market is efficient?
- Job seekers can find idea job in short time with fair pay
- Talent seekers can find idea candidate in short time with fair pay
Observation on current job market.
- People in labor force/market are shrinking compared with a few years ago.
- Employers keep on complaining about hard to find right candidates
- Productivity of the whole country increases very slowly compared with before 1970s
Then the next question is where is the issue. I can try to answer the question through each element.
Not enough buyers
- Corporate does not generate enough vacancy
- because global economy is not strong enough,
- because new technology or process re-engineering has replaced some vacancy,
- because existing employees work harder and become more productive
- Shrinking industry with more and more players move out
- Location constraint
- for small town, only so many employers
- Time constraint
- Corporate has concern on year end budget.
- Corporate has concern on upcoming big risk
- Information of buyers are not published/shared
- Small or medium business have limit budget for talent acquisition
- Private owned without much public info released.
- Even for public trade company, working environment, culture even organization structure is little know.
Not enough sellers
- Booming industry with few employees well trained in this fields
- Location constraint
- for small town, not many willing to move
- information of sellers are not published/shared
- Currently, resume, education, and working experience are only info presented if no reference
- Cost of interview (phone or on-site) is high
- Reputation in the circle is limited to top candidates
No enough info about the goods
- Information of job requirement is not well defined.
- Some misalignment between daily work and words in job description
- with technology advance, some jobs have already evolved, but not the mindset of managers, and not the job description
- Information of candidates is not clear presented
- before phone interview, the only info are resume and cover letter. For some candidates, they have LinkedIn profiles. For referred candidates, they have referral from insiders.
- Existing info focuses on tracked records. Progression of title, experience and hard skills listed. But there is a gap between tracked records and capability, a gap between the candidates have done and what the candidates can do.
The next question is how to address the issue.
- Continuous training to address quick change of industry
- education system adapt itself to address industry need
- the corporation is the best resource to provide training because it understands best what it needs
- Match of employer and employee on location
- encourage relocation of employees
- encourage immigration
- encourage corporation to open offices where it finds labor supply
- allow virtual working environment and build procedure to ensure productivity
- Build market for sharing of labor force
- auction market that easily link buyers and sellers
- More apps on profiling of candidates
- more data than education, experience and skills
- recommendation
- progression of career development.
- project sample
- integration with other data
- data mining on data
- More info released on organization and role definition from corporation's perspective
- standardize the role and make it like modular
- provide clear definition of the role
Maybe i can expand the idea of building market for sharing of labor force
