Employers Struggle to Find Qualified Graduates: Poorly Written Resumes to Blame?

Graduates looking for jobs struggle to find them. Employers cannot find qualified graduates. Are poor resumes to blame? An article in The Independent suggests that is part of the problem.

Please consider Graduate Employers Struggling to Fill Vacancies.

The class of 2014 who graduate from university this summer still have a choice of hundreds of jobs that they could snap up, says a poll out today.

Nine out of 10 companies surveyed by the Association of Graduate Recruiters are struggling to fill all their vacancies, it concludes.

The reasons are twofold, according to the AGR – more vacancies being on offer after years of austerity and too many applications of insufficient quality.

The AGR surveyed 68 top companies – with 87 per cent reporting unfilled vacancies. These covered a range of occupations – IT, electrical and electronic engineering and general managements jobs.

In all, 55 per cent of the companies said they had increased the number of jobs on offer this year – but two thirds (67 per cent) said applications were of insufficient quality.

Mr Isherwood added: “sometimes they have not paid drafting the application the attention it deserves. It’s like a spray-and-pray approach and then bang the application out.

“As an employer if you’ve got someone who has put a lot of thought into their application, then that clear the first hurdle.”

Assume for a second, every application was perfectly written. There would still be too many people seeking jobs, than jobs exist.

Other than a possible internship, most of these graduates have no real world experience. Moreover, some of those with internships did not do meaningful work.

What's left is those who get hired.

The problem is lack of relevant experience vs. expectations, and there is no way to hide that problem, no matter how creative the application.

At the margin, someone who writes a better application has a better chance than someone who doesn't, but that will not increase the number of jobs available or the skills required for those jobs.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com