America is pushing the labour market to its limits
It&#x27;s frustrating reading about how hot the labor market is compared to my personal experience.<p>I worked in a technical field with a number of very skilled, very good people.   These are guys you can tell &quot;hey we need this fixed&quot; and they&#x27;re capable of learning what is needed to do the job with very little hand holding, and they&#x27;re great teammates too.  At their job they were highly valued people and well paid.  An acquisition and layoff occurred and many had trouble finding jobs, everyone who did find a job is making less now.<p>You see tons of jobs out there on websites and even &quot;desperate&quot; listings, but the hiring process takes forever, and these guys just don&#x27;t get hired.   Something seems off.<p>These aren&#x27;t guys with traditional backgrounds, mostly &quot;tech school&quot; types, but they&#x27;ve got decades of experience and are very capable.  The folks I worked with were mostly hired under the idea that heir resume showed they were capable and could learn, but I don&#x27;t hear anyone talk about that anymore. 
 The hiring process seems to demand only people with EXACTLY the skills listed no matter how absurd the list, and employers would rather gripe about not hiring anyone than actually hire someone.  Nobody wants anyone to learn anymore or take the chance on someone having to learn.... even if the job would seem to require it.    It&#x27;s a nasty combo of the market changing quickly and seemingly the market demanding only exact qualifications.... you can&#x27;t have both.<p>I decided to change careers and move into web development.  Needless to say that was a pay cut but I was ok with it as I am changing careers (and I really enjoy the work).   The process of looking for a job was brutal.   It felt like there was an artificial filter of recruiters and HR whose job it was to delay hiring and filter out all but what they imagined was a perfect candidate... but they don&#x27;t tell you who that is, and honestly those folks have no clue what the day to day job even IS.    It&#x27;s like they pick the worst people to initially filter candidates.<p>I remember when recruiters and HR were deferential to the actual hiring managers, now it seems more the other way where people who really don&#x27;t know the job filter what the hiring managers see... and even in at least two cases canceled a hire because they didn&#x27;t like something.   That makes no sense.<p>In the meantime everyone wants a &quot;senior&quot; (I put that in quotes because everyone&#x27;s idea was absurdly different) and nobody wants anyone who is learning.<p>I was fortunate and found a job, first person that I felt actually tested my skills via a take home project hired me.  After being hired now I get a bunch of contacts from places I already applied, even was rejected, sometimes for the same jobs they didn&#x27;t hire me for.   I wasn&#x27;t good enough now, but &quot;oh man he got a job&quot; is apparently enough to get my foot in.   Meanwhile capable people aren&#x27;t getting offers.  It&#x27;s absurd.<p>The news about hot job market, lack of rising wages, and wonky hiring systems all seem very weird, and to conflict as far as a narrative goes.