New research says the skills gap is the product of low unemployment, but this new report may be missing the point.

Earlier this year a report from American Economic Association spurred articles by the Washington Post and Vox triumphantly proclaiming the ‘skills gap’ to be solved – since it never existed at all.

The response to these articles on Twitter was mixed, with one economisttweeting, “Every time you hear someone say ‘I can’t find the workers I need,’ add the phrase ‘at the wage I want to pay.’” At the same time,  many recruiters simply retweeted the stories for conversational fodder without committing to an affirmative or negative stance.

Economic analysis and predictions are esoteric practices, and the public doesn’t seem too surprised when pundits get it wrong, so the news of a labor crisis — given credence by the Obama administration and the US Chamber of Commerce — being totally discredited disappeared by the next day’s news cycle.

We couldn’t let it go. We reached out to SmartRecruiters followers in a casual Twitter poll, and 60 percent of respondents named ‘skills shortage’ as their top sourcing challenge. Granted, our sample size was certainly not large enough to make a claim, either way, but it did make us take a closer look at the American Economics Association study, and — as you may have guessed — there’s more to the skills gap than ‘true or false’.

It seems that when the US Chamber of Commerce and then-President Obama talk about the ‘skills gap’, they’re referring to the digital transformation making many laborers obsolete, but when American Economics Association talks about the ‘skills gap’, they’re talking about the degree and skill inflation within job ads.

The thesis of the research from Alicia Sasser Modestino, Daniel Shoag, and Joshua Ballance argues that when unemployment rises, employers can be choosier and require more skills from candidates. Thus the skills gap is a self-perpetuated, non-emergency resulting, in large part, from the financial crises of 2008.

Indeed, the analysis of over 36 million job ads from 2007 to 2012 does show a significant uptick in skill requirements. For example, jobs that previously required a high school education minimum began asking for candidates with four-year degrees. Employers acknowledged this phenomenon as a conscious decision in the report, saying, “the recession is a wonderful opportunity to acquire top talent.”

The question still remains, does this report show the skills gap is a lie? If we look at it from a digital transformation perspective, then no. This digital transformation skills gap, cited by the White House and the US Chamber of Commerce, is about a shortage of IT skills, a shortage which is still very real.

According to a 2018 Statista report, the largest deficits in tech are in Big Data/ Analytics, Technical Architecture, and Security/Resilience. And, it’s not just tech companies that need IT workers, as IT skills are necessary for any business to compete in today’s economy. Even the mom and pop store on the corner needs to consider web presence and data security.

So, if neither is wrong what does this report really tell us about today’s talent economy. We turned to Sarah Wilson, head of people at SmartRecruiters, for some practitioner insight into the conundrum.

Is there actually a skills gap?

It is accurate to say when the unemployment rate is higher and the candidate pool is more plentiful, companies become more choosy and require more experience and education. However, when people refer to a skills gap, they usually are talking about technical skills.

The skills gap in the tech space is ongoing, especially with emerging technologies like machine learning and artificial intelligence. In many areas, technology is advancing faster than the workforce.

I think as more and more new tech emerges, companies (especially large ones) will need to figure out how to upskill their existing workforce because allowing them to become obsolete isn’t a sustainable business model. I see a trend of accountability on the part of the business to provide opportunities for development.

Do recruiters have an exaggerated view of the skills gap?

The tools that we as recruiters traditionally used to engage talent aren’t delivering like they used to. Now that almost every company has a LinkedIn recruiter license, any quality candidate is inundated with in-mails and emails about new job opportunities.

Just as employers take advantage of high unemployment, candidates can be choosier when unemployment is low. Recruiters need to be creative with how they find and connect with talent pools that might even involve sharpening up their tech skills.

I was intrigued last week when I received the results of a survey from the giant Menlo Park-based staffing agency Robert Half, saying that more than three quarters of hiring managers think it’s appropriate for job candidates to ask about compensation and benefits in the initial phone screening or first two job interviews. I’ve written at least three stories saying it’s best for job seekers to put off salary negotiations until an offer is on the table. Was I wrong?

Paul McDonald, a senior executive director at Robert Half, says, “In this market, with 1% or 2% unemployment for some jobs, employers want to get to this business quickly. They want to see if there’s a good fit and they’re OK with the candidate bringing up the salary in order to be efficient with time.” Conversely, he says, applicants should be ready to answer questions about salary early in the process. “We believe honesty is the best policy,” he says.” If someone asks what has been your salary in the past three positions, we coach the applicant to be prepared for that.” The firm surveyed 300 hiring managers by phone in December 2013.

Has something changed in salary negotiation strategy since I first wrote about the topic two years ago? To answer that question I turned to three of my best career coach sources and to Heidi Ellingson, senior director of employment services at Middleton, WI-based Spectrum Brands, a diversified consumer products company with 13,500 employees worldwide, which makes everything from Rayovac batteries to George Foreman grills. She doesn’t recommend that candidates bring up the subject but instead she has her own staff raise salary in the very first phone screening. “We want to make sure we’re in the right ballpark,” she says. Frequently candidates don’t want to reveal either their salary or what they hope to earn, in which case Ellison’s team tries at least to get a range. “We don’t want to waste people’s time if we’re $20,000 apart,” she says.

Have I been giving my readers bad advice? In a word, no. The job of staffing firms like Robert Half is to screen candidates for employers so they can present the most viable candidates, and hiring managers have an incentive to get candidates to name a number early in the process. But from the candidate’s perspective, especially if you are negotiating for a managerial or executive position, it’s best to avoid saying anything specific about salary until a job offer is on the table.

“It’s like saying on a first date, ‘how many kids do you want,’” says Roy Cohen, a longtime coach and author of The Wall Street Professional’s Survival Guide. Sarah Stamboulie, a coach who previously worked in human resources at Cantor Fitzgerald, Morgan Stanley and Nortel Networks, agrees. “You don’t want to be negotiating salary until they’re at their maximum love—their maximum enthusiasm for you,” she says. Once a prospective employer has convinced themself and their colleagues that you are their first choice, they are much more likely to bump up your package in order to get you.

Longtime coach Ellis Chase, author of The Fun Forever Job: Career Strategies that Work, agrees with Cohen and Stamboulie and lays out four reasons naming a salary is a bad idea: 1) If you come in very low, the potential employer won’t take you seriously, 2) If you come in low the employer will think they can pay you less than they had planned to offer, 3) You price yourself out of the running, and 4) Even if you fall in the right range, you may not realize that the job comes with more responsibilities than you had thought and now you’ve ruined your negotiating stance.

There are a couple of exceptions however. Stamboulie has worked with young up-and-comers at top consulting firms who have gotten multiple offers from employers who might not know the candidates want to make at least, say, $150,000. The fact that they don’t need to accept any of the offers puts them in a strong position, especially if they know they want to shoot high.

The other reason would be if you’re a superstar, you’re happy where you are and you’d only leave for a certain number. A third reason could be if you’re talking to a small startup where it’s tough to glean ahead of time what the salary range would be. Then you might want to name what Stamboulie calls an “anchor number” that will help the firm know what you think you’re worth.

What if the hiring manager or decision maker asks you what you make? That’s a tougher question. Chase says you should rarely volunteer a number and instead counter with a line like, “I’m very interested in this position but I would hate for a dollar figure to eliminate me from consideration because if there’s a fit, I’m sure we’ll be able to work it out.” If that doesn’t work, you could try, “Could you give me an idea of your range?” The goal, as I’ve written before, is to wait for the offer and then to get the decision-maker to be the first to name a number. If the hiring manager becomes visibly annoyed, says Chase, then you have to relent, but it’s always better to give a range, rather than a precise figure.

Cohen agrees. “A lot of hedge funds will bring it up. They’ll say what are you earning and what are you looking for. If you don’t give them some sort of benchmark you’ll look like you’re trying to tap dance around it.”

One of Cohen’s Wall Street trader clients can’t hold himself back. “He won’t do his homework,” says Cohen. “He’ll go into an interview and say, ‘I want to know what this job pays, I want to know the base, I want to know the formula, I want to know what cash I’ll get at the end of the year.’” According to Cohen, this candidate has blown three or four opportunities in the first interview. “When the market was stronger, they would tolerate this sort of thing,” he says. “But now he’s shooting himself in the foot.”

The folks at Robert Half may be right about the preferences of recruiters and HR managers, but it’s always best to try to bypass those gate keepers and go straight to the person who will make the ultimate decision about whether you get the job.

This article was written by Susan Adams from Forbes and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network. Learn more about SmartRecruiters, your workspace to find and hire great people.

In a previous Forbes post, we considered the disconcerting reality that while we find ourselves in the midst of an unemployment crisis—one characterized by highly educated candidates who are unable to find skilled work—employers from myriad industries are nevertheless reporting that they’re unable to find the talent profiles they’re really looking for. And evidence indicates that this talent gap primarily refers not to an absence of technical skills, but to an absence of “soft skills,” or what we’ll call 21^st century skills. These primarily refer to interpersonal and general analytic abilities like: teamwork, empathy, leadership, negotiation, adaptability, and problem solving.

This is highly useful information to students and educators, but employers can also learn a lot from this research about how to hire successful candidates. The problem is that 21^st century skills are very difficult to assess with any kind of rigor, especially before one can evaluate a candidate on the job. Can a candidate think innovatively? Collaborate with other team members? Assimilate feedback and coaching? Will the candidate get along with her team members and other colleagues? Will she bring personality strengths to the table that the current team might be lacking? Will the candidate be adaptable to new environments and successfully integrate with teams? It is very difficult to reduce these questions to discrete qualifications and quantifiable metrics in the same way we can assess recognized degrees and numerical grades.

Certainly some approaches exist. For example, businesses have used “type”-based personality tests for decades in attempts to measure the 21^st century skills of prospective candidates, assuming that certain personality types would correlate with high performance. One example is the Jung Typology Profiler for Workplace, which purports to measure qualities such as “Power” (leadership index), “Assurance,” “Visionary,” “Rationality,” and so forth.

The reality is that personality tests such as these have serious methodological flaws and lack the statistical reliability to predict performance among prospective employees. In fact, the makers of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), a closely-related profiler that also has its origins in Jungian typology, clearly state in their ethical guidelines that “It is unethical, and in many cases illegal, to require job applicants to take the Indicator if the results will be used to screen out applicants.”

It’s clear that we need 21^st century methods to assess 21^st century skills. Unfortunately, that seemingly simple idea proves to be much trickier in practice than it is in theory.

Tools for talent development do not work for pre-employment screening

Part of the problem is that many companies are using the wrong tools for the job.   There is a fundamental difference between tools intended to develop existing teams and tools used for pre-employment selection.

While typical personality tests are poor tools for pre-employment screening, there is evidence that newer tests can help managers better develop and deploy the talent they have already hired. For example, Gallup’s StrengthsFinder 2.0 is a tool that helps individuals understand and describe their own talents, and is commonly used by managers to understand and capitalize on the strengths of those they hire. More importantly, it is methodologically sound, and its reliability and validity are backed up by clear evidence.

For example, Facebook uses StrengthsFinder in a clever way to deploy talent efficiently. Regardless of the job openings they have available, Facebook simply hires the smartest people it can find, then uses StrengthsFinder results to understand their talents and create a job tailored to the candidate.

One might naturally assume that the same type of test that helps identify and develop strengths in an existing team could also be used to assess suitable candidates for entry into that team. In the words of Gallup, “Absolutely not… A development-oriented assessment such as StrengthsFinder is markedly different from selection tools because its purpose is not to assess whether an individual is suited for a particular job or role. Instead, it aims to provide talent insights for developing strengths within roles.”

Pre-employment selection tools can predict employee performance on the job

Many pre-employment selection tools succeed at predicting performance because they have a completely different design than development tools like personality tests. Instead of seeking general traits and preferences, selection tools are tailored to a particular job in a particular organization, and are statistically calibrated to provide reliable predictive results (i.e., candidates who score highly on these tests also tend to perform well after they’re hired). In addition to the StrengthsFinder development tool, Gallup also offers these pre-employment selection tools, which include analytic services to ensure the validity and predictive value of the measures for candidate screening.

Pairin, Inc. is another organization that seeks to combine the personality test approach with specialized testing (for specific jobs, values, culture, etc.) as part of a pre-employment selection system. Using the Job Pairin System, employers can assess the presence of around 100 coachable/changeable behaviors such as emotional intelligence, leadership, attraction of followers, and even character.

A new spin on the behavioral interview

While services from Gallup and Pairin provide strong, evidence-based methods, the debate on using metrics to assess 21^st century skills will certainly continue. For good or bad, it is unlikely that the traditional way to measure 21^st century skills – the behavioral interview – will be unseated anytime soon. (Behavioral interviews are those that include questions like “Tell me about a time when you worked effectively under pressure.”)

Certainly, behavioral interviewing has problems of its own – for example, canned and otherwise disingenuous responses are all too common. While most companies still use a behavioral interviewing approach, those with top hiring practices tend to put their own clever spin on the questions to weed out rote responses and thus generate better insights from candidates. Questions like this tend to yield a wider spread between canned responses and those that show more nuance and self-awareness. Google also uses behavioral interviews, but structures them in a way that allows them to perform analytics and prove that certain responses predict employee performance.

Beyond the interview

Whatever method companies use to assess 21^st century skills in prospective employees, it’s important that they reflect on the key principles behind the assessment approaches. Findings from research on 21^st century skills provide an extremely valuable lens through which companies can view all interactions with candidates. Consider: What can you teach a new hire on the job, and what can you not teach? With information now abundantly available to us, almost anyone can learn basic Photoshop skills, for example, via online seminars. But what about abstract but indispensable skills like connectedness and empathy – can they be taught on the job?

When you interviewed the person who is now your highest performer, how did you know she would outperform the rest? Did you spot her innate ability to relate to other people, her ability to intuit the needs of different kinds of people? What were the indicators that she possessed those abilities?  We’d like to hear your thoughts on these questions and your experiences with hiring for 21^st century skills.

This post was written by Kate Jenkins, editor at Ashoka and editor-in-chief of The Intentional Quarterly, and James Ray, a Strategy Consultant for Nonprofit, Human Services, and International Development clients at Accenture It was originally published in Forbes and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network  This post does not necessarily represent the views of Accenture. Learn more about SmartRecruiters, your workspace to find and hire great people.

“First off, we have to get them to believe in themselves, it’s not just to give them soft skills, resume building, it’s also to get them to like themselves,” said Jamie Fountain of Larkin Street Youth Services.

When we think of the unemployment rate, job searching, and interviewing, I often think of the college graduate fighting a tough economy.  What we sometimes forget to think about is the thousands of unemployed youth across the country.  And many of the youth aren’t just up against a tough job market, but also carry the burdens of homelessness, low income, and lack of education.

I spoke with Jamie Fountain, Workforce Development Manager at Larkin Street Youth Services and Jodi Schwartz, Executive Director at the Lavender Youth Recreation and Information Center, both based in San Francisco.  Larkin Street and LYRIC have programs to help not only develop career skills, but also connect the youth to career opportunities.

Before connecting the youth to an internship or job, each program offers multi-step career training programs to help develop the skills of their youth.

Primarily LGBT, LYRIC focuses on developing their young people on the path to a career in social justice.   For LYRIC’s “In the City Internship,” they take a very hands-on approach to job training, allowing them to organize their own events, budgets, and many other job related tasks to gain traditional job experience.

“What we really find effective with our young people is that they’re constantly learning then applying, learning then applying; we call it thematic learning.”

The young people that attend LYRIC are given the opportunity to manage a project, including managing the budget, building teams and committees, and learning how to market and do outreach.  Because of the experience LYRIC youth gain through this program, they are better prepared and connected to opportunities in the social justice field.  After going through the programs, many participants transition to either fulltime staff of LYRIC, or are hired to similar organizations.

Larkin Street takes a multi-facetted approach to career development, offering multi-step programs with participants ranging in age from 12 to 24.  This includes Job Readiness Class, where they find out what they want to do, while developing soft skills in interviewing and job searching.

The Youth are then paired with a job counselor to further develop those skills, or have the opportunity to go to the Institute for Hire Learning, where they are connected to internships with local businesses and organizations.  With over 47 sites in the Bay Area, the internships not only give work experience to youths, but also host and mentor them, developing a diverse number of skills in the work place.

One problem with connecting the youth to jobs lies in their own self esteem.  Fountain says that it is so important for the youth to believe in themselves, and to show them that they are capable of entering the professional world.

“They need to first learn to love and accept themselves.  We need to get them to see that they are special, and that they are intelligent.”

Fountain says that often times, he is able to show the youth that they have developed skills that they might not know about.  Whatever these skills are, they can be transfered to the workplace.

“Some of our young people were involved in street life. So they say, “I’ve never worked.” I ask them how they got the money. “Oh I dabbled in street life. And I ask them if they sold a product. ‘Yeah.’ And I ask them if they were good at it. ‘Well, yeah.’ And I ask them if they had customer complaints, inventory issues, cost control. ‘Yeah.’ And I tell them, that’s business…These are transferable skills. Anything you’ve done, that you were successful at, in any shape or form, is a transferable skill.”

So what is the biggest challenge for the youth in terms of connecting them to job opportunities?  It starts with what Schwartz calls, “The Triangle of Need.”

“Housing, mental and physical health, and a job.  And if any of those three legs of the stool are shaky, the whole thing tumbles down.”

In order to find employment, youth need both a stable living arrangement and stable healthcare.  Once stable living and health is secure, the youth can be better prepared to enter the job market, and employment opportunities arise.  Whether it be developing skills within the program, or being connected to outside internships and mentorships, these youth organizations are opening the doors.

However, the youth organizations are only one part of the equation for connecting youth to job opportunities. The private sector businesses and organizations that offer internships and mentorships to the youth are also an important factor.  Giving the youth a hands on opportunity to further develop career skills is important to the overall goal of youth employment.

Many of the young people at LYRIC have been marginalized from education and any kind of job training. Schwartz said that the youth social service network cannot support youth employment alone, and needs the support of the corporate sector.

“While we can get them through our job readiness program, they still need a lot of support once they arrive at the doorstep of their new job,” said Schwartz.

LYRIC and Larkin Street Youth Services are two of the youth organizations in San Francisco that are guiding young people on the path to satisfying work.  To reduce unemployment, support the youth organizations that open doors to employment.

Connect with SmartRecruiters’ Zero Unemployment & Give Labor Movements. SmartRecruiters is the hiring platform for non-profit.

How more jobs would be created if hiring was made easy.  

 1. Introduction

Search costs for match quality within hiring decisions create friction that increases the time to hire for open jobs, leaves some open jobs permanently unfilled, reduces the amount of “opportunity hires,” and ultimately, limits business output.

In reducing search friction for jobs, the labor market will fill open jobs faster (Part 2), destroy less open jobs (3), improve match quality (4), and create more jobs from the opportunity effect of increased liquidity (5).

Let’s examine each clause with formula in mind:

Friction is measured as a coefficient. Friction is inversely related to jobs created and directly related to jobs destroyed. The less friction in the labor market, the easier it is to create and fill a job.  The more friction there is, the harder it is to create and fill jobs.

2. Fill Open Jobs Faster

This is the simplest piece of the puzzle. If there is less friction in the labor market, open jobs will be filled faster.

3. Destroy Less Open Jobs

Many open positions are destroyed because a company can only exhaust a limited expenditure to fill a position. Friction in the labor market pushes a company toward that threshold point.  After absorbing enough friction, a company that was willing to pay for job will stop spending resources on searching for the right hire. If friction in the labor market declines, the number of potential jobs that remain permanently unfilled (i.e. potential jobs destroyed by search friction) will also decline.

4. Match Quality Improved

If a better hire is made, the average duration of employment will be longer. Better match quality leads to a higher rate of production, fewer separations, and better morale because workers do what they agreed to do.  Hiring is cyclical. Better match quality will create more production. Additionally, this increased liquidity can improve retention (i.e. decrease separations) by increasing wages.

5. Create More Jobs from the Opportunity Effect of Liquidity

A decrease in cost and time to hire will increase a business’ liquidity.  In the long run, more liquidity leads to more open positions.  Moreover, potential jobs consists of publically open jobs and opportunity hires. An opportunity hire occurs when a company is not actively trying to hire for a position, but talent presented itself, and the business has the liquidity to make the hire.

When a business does not hire because of a lack of liquidity, search friction is created. Thus, increased liquidity allows businesses to make more safe hiring transactions and more speculative hiring transactions when opportunities to acquire great talent are present.

6. How would more jobs be created if hiring were made easy?

If search friction for match quality is decreased in the labor markets: cost and time to hire would decrease (part 2), less open jobs would be destroyed (3), business’ would have more liquidity, the average hire would have more daily output over a longer period (4), and opportunity hires would increase in addition to creation of more open jobs (5).

When hiring is made easy:

David Smooke graduated Cum Laude in Economics from the University of Redlands in 2010. SmartRecruiters provides free technology to revolutionize the labor market.

At SmartRecruiters giving labor and ending unemployment are part of our mission. In Richmond, CA, Making Waves and their creative arts program, RAW Talent, are working to beat the odds in a community where you’re more likely to be involved in a crime than searching for a job.

Richmond, California is not the Bay Area people think of when they imagine Palo Alto, San Francisco or Berkeley. In Richmond, the crime index is more than twice the United States average. The unemployment rate is high at 13.8%. Gabriela Ruiz de Mejia, Lead College Advisor at Making Waves says, “It’s not the kind of place people want to invest in.” However, the Making Waves Education Program and RAW Talent are making heavy investments in the education and training of youth.

Making Waves Education and RAW Talent are a safe haven for the youth of Richmond.  At Making Waves, education is key. Their programs provide academic assistance, after-school programs, creative arts, and job development among many other things away from the distractions of the city. The idea is to support Wave Makers as holistically as possible, not only to get them to college, but also see them through it and help them get internships or jobs after.

Donte Clark, a former Wave Maker and the first RAW Talent student is now a Program Director at RAW Talent. Molly Raynor, RAW Talent’s founder and coordinator hired Donte soon after he graduate from high school in 2008, each year RAW Talent and Making Waves have been able to create jobs for the alumni within the program. Raynor says, “If I could, I would hire five more former students each year. We just don’t have the money.”

Making Waves and RAW Talent are setting an example. Investing in education and supporting students’ passions are the catalysts to positive change in a community that Donte Clark describes as, “the bottom of the bottom.”

At Making Waves and RAW Talent, Richmond youth are given the tools they need to take ownership of their futures. They have proven that all the kids need is support to exceed. 95% of all Wave Makers are the first in their families to go to college. According to Gabriela Ruiz de Mejia, upon graduation about 50% return to Making Waves and RAW Talent to support the program and future students. Each day they show there is more to Richmond than meets the eye.

RAW Talent is currently fundraising to finance, “Te’s Harmony” and “Romeo is Bleeding.” The documentary, “Romeo is Bleeding,” details the day-to-day of courageous youth in Richmond as they produce the play, “Te’s Harmony,” a re-write of Romeo and Juliet set in Richmond. The project aims to shed light on the culture of the city and strives to change the common dialogue of violence to peace and opportunity.

To learn more about RAW Talent Email: mraynor@making-waves.org. Click here to learn how to help fundraise for “Romeo is Bleeding. They need $3,000 more, and have four days left!

Imagine a world where people who want to work, can work.
Imagine a world where businesses that need talent, get talent.
Imagine a world where hiring is easy.

A sub-category of the marginally attached is what the BLS calls “discouraged workers.” For September ‘12 this category totaled about 802,000 individuals (489,000 are men, 313,000 are women). The remaining 1.7 million individuals marginally attached to the workforce have not looked for work in the previous four weeks; for family responsibilities and/or attendance in school had impinged on their ability to look for work. Other reasons, according to Castillo (1998), include health issues, disability challenges, or issues connected to transportation. Regionally, South Carolina, Nevada, Michigan, Florida have the highest rates of discouraged workers. Colorado, Iowa, Main, Montana Oregon, and Wisconsin have the lowest rates.

So what are the reasons that fuel the discouragement of the discouraged workers? According to Castillo (1998), these men and women believe that no jobs are available for them because they are essentially unqualified. More specifically, Castillo notes, this group believes that they do not qualify because they lack the required schooling, experience, or skill-set needed to fill a particular position. Finally, this group perceives that some type of discrimination is at work in the job market that would prevent them from a fair shot at a job opening.

The BLS discouraged workers report only points to overall percentages and the primary reasons that make discouraged workers discouraged. What is not included in the report is an understanding of the word “discouraged.” I think unless we first capture a sense of the meaning of the word “encourage,” the impact of the experience of discouragement may be lost on those of us who read the monthly unemployment reports as only broadly applied percentages.

The word “courage” emerged during 12th century in French and conveyed a place of “innermost strength,” or “the heart.” The heart was that place of strength or confidence from which actions materialized. The etymology of the word “encourage” emerged in the 15^th century in French and meant to “put courage in.” The word “discourage” meant to “withdraw or remove” courage. Fast forward now to what the BLS unemployment report about discouraged workers does not tell us. Discouraged workers are those who have experienced a loss of confidence and esteem. They may feel worthless, forgotten, abandoned, disillusioned, inadequate and otherwise discarded by the labor market. This loss of courage is made more insidious because it is felt in the depths of their being. They may believe that they have absolutely nothing to offer to potential employers because of what they lack (education) or who they are (racial ethnic barriers or other visible or invisible barriers that create a perception of discrimination).  This feeling which emerges from a perception strikes are the heart of their identity.

How might employers respond? Let me suggest three actions that can be taken to make positive in-roads to the discouraged worker population. First, be aware of the fact that these discouraged workers exist. Get these people on your employment radar. Understand the tremendous inner challenges facing this population. As I wrote earlier in “The Psychological Impact of Unemployment,” employers have both an opportunity and share a responsibility to connect with the unemployed and, in particular, those who have been traumatized by the experience of joblessness. This would certainly include discouraged workers.

Second, because the discouraged worker is most likely disengaged, they may be hard to locate. Discouragement tends to fuel social detachment and isolationism. Employers who are looking for new hires would be wise to ask for referrals from current employees who know of someone who would qualify as a discouraged worker. Targeting this population is a great way to draw them out of isolation and to begin a process of encouragement. Give these men and women a fair shot at open positions.

Finally, take a hard look at any visible or invisible barriers that can fuel the perception that your organization hires only certain types of individuals while leaving others out of the employment conversation. Examine your human resource hiring processes, structures, and most importantly, the actual metrics of who gets hired to determine if there is any evidence of discrimination.  Inviting the discouraged worker to the employment conversation fundamentally means first taking a hard look at the way we run our businesses and taking action to remove barriers that keep some people fenced-away from a potential life-giving and hope-restoring conversation.

Jeffrey D. Yergler, Ph.D., is professor of Management and Chair of the Undergraduate Management Department at Golden Gate University, San Francisco. He is also Principal at Integer Leadership Consulting, a firm specializing in Leadership Training and Management Consulting (www.integerleadership.com). Email Jeff at jdy@integerleadership.com.

What is often buried in the monthly unemployment numbers provided each month by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, is an understanding of the psychologically traumatic experience of involuntary job loss and ongoing unemployment. I argue that this experience is critical to understand because it can inform how hiring managers, human resource professionals, and small business owners can feel more confident about hiring the unemployed…especially the longer term unemployed (those unemployed for 27 weeks or longer). My findings are based on over 40 in-depth interviews with laid-off senior executives to line employees who were living from paycheck-to-paycheck.

When a job loss is experienced as psychologically traumatizing, there are two major areas that are impacted. First, people’s world view or their “fundamental assumptions” about the way the world works changes dramatically.  Where they once saw the world as generally benevolent and good, they now see the world as unpredictable and unsafe which causes loss of hope and optimism. Where they once saw the world as a place where hard work was rewarded, they now see an environment where it does not matter how much effort is applied to improve oneself or an organization. It simply does not matter. Where they once saw themselves as possessing dignity and value, they now see themselves as possessing low value and little dignity.

Just based on these changes in fundamental assumptions about the way the world is viewed and experienced, it is easy to understand why so many unemployed persons are demoralized, hopeless, and struggling with optimism. This would also explain why many hiring managers are reluctant to hire unemployed persons. They may well sense and feel the fragileness and lack of confidence lurking just below the surface in the person being interviewed. The risk is not worth it despite the fact that the individual is a good fit for a specific position.

The second way involuntary job loss and sustained unemployment can impact men and women is revealed in the disruption to specific attitudes and behaviors that are critical to daily interacting and performing:

• Loss of one’s sense of safety.
  • The experience of vulnerability and being easily threatened by others.
• Loss of trust in others and oneself.
  • The struggle to build trusting relationships with others. Lack of confidence in one’s judgment.
• Loss of self-esteem.
  • The belief that one has nothing to offer to people and employers that is valued and needed.
• Loss of intimacy.
  • The sense of being abandoned by people and communities that formerly carried great meaning.
• Loss of control.
  • The perception that others have made decisions that have negatively altered an entire life trajectory.

Looking, then, at the experience of unemployment through the lens of psychological trauma, it makes perfect sense why the unemployed, especially the longer-term unemployed, are often passed-over for any consideration despite the fact that they possess the basic skillset required by the position description. Simply put, the unemployed often represent too much of a financial and behavioral risk for an organization.

I suggest, however, that businesses have a marvelous opportunity, when they prepare and plan accordingly, to hire an unemployed person and to help rebuild what was lost through the experience of unemployment. The reality is that people do recover from traumatic experiences. They can emerge stronger, wiser, more thoughtful, more generous, and more effective professionals.

This is the work that I am committed to not only as a professor (as I work with many unemployed adult students) but also in my role as a consultant with organizations. I am finding that organizations, though they want to be intentional about hiring the unemployed, often need specific coaching on how to create the type of environment that will cultivate and foster employee engagement for those formerly unemployed persons. Despite the additional effort and hard dollars required to make this happen, it is the right thing to do for businesses given this season of massive unemployment. It also gives businesses an incredible competitive advantage. Being strategic and intentional about rebuilding employee engagement with the formerly unemployed not only builds commitment and gratitude but is also an incredible demonstration of social responsibility.

Jeffrey D. Yergler, Ph.D., is professor of Management and Chair of the Undergraduate Management Department at Golden Gate University, San Francisco. He is also Principal at Integer Leadership Consulting, a firm specializing in Leadership Training and Management Consulting (http://www.integerleadership.com/). Email Jeff at jdy@integerleadership.com.

Yep, I get it.  You have a job until you don’t.  My family has been there.  And when you don’t have a job that is, your whole world changes, your priorities shift, and reality comes crashing in.

This focus phenomenon is called hyperfocus and is a common among those that are diagnosed with ADHD.  I believe the American public is hyperfocused, avoiding the subject of the economy, unemployment, and job creation. Instead they are focused on themselves, their current finances and their own personal economic recovery.  An idea I also understand especially being a parent of a three year old daughter.

For those with ADHD, hyperfocus happens when an individual becomes so immersed in a task that they are oblivious to everything else going on around them.  Imagine a man writing a book in his living room focusing completely on the task so much so that he isn’t even aware that his house and surrounding rooms have caught fire and are burning around him.

That’s exactly what I believe employed Americans are experiencing when it comes to jobs creation, even given this current economy. Job creation’s role in the welfare of our economy cannot be underestimated.

The short story is that 12.7 million Americans remain unemployed even with employers actively trying to fill 3.5 million open jobs. If we are even remotely interested in the future success of our economy and country, job creation has to happen (filling the open jobs and creating more jobs) in order for the economy to grow at a faster rate so that our citizens can prosper as a nation.

Gallup also provides an interesting measurement on underemployment which refers to those that are working part time but looking for full time work.  Their numbers for January 2012 list their figures at 19.0%, which is significantly higher than the reported Labor Department’s unemployment rate for that same month in at 8.3%.

But it’s not just about unemployment, it’s really about the job creation within our economy.  Given the current economic growth trends, twenty-one million new jobs must be created in order for our economy to break even by the year 2020.  The problem is that many of the current skills will not be in demand (the worker must prepare to adapt), meaning that organizational leaders, school educators, and the human resources industry must step up to help develop, train, and educate our future workforce for the skills they will need to be successful in the new economy.  Job creation starts with You.

Jessica Miller-Merrell, SPHR is a HR consultant, new media strategist, and author who writes at Blogging4Jobs. Jessica is the host of Job Search Secrets, an internet television show for job seekers. Photo Credit Ninteman Fitness