A disservice to the economy

I received an email this morning from a trusted source which indicated that a growing trend among some employers is to state in the ad for an open position " the unemployed will not be considered." Corporate America is faced with the real possibility of a labor shortage in some areas whether you believe it or not.  From the Huffington post was this note:

n a current job posting on The People Place, a job recruiting website for the telecommunications, aerospace/defense and engineering industries, an anonymous electronics company in Angleton, Texas, advertises for a "Quality Engineer." Qualifications for the job are the usual: computer skills, oral and written communication skills, light to moderate lifting. But red print at the bottom of the ad says, "Client will not consider/review anyone NOT currently employed regardless of the reason."

In a nearly identical job posting for the same position on the Benchmark Electronics website, the red print is missing. But a human resources representative for the company confirmed to HuffPost that the The People Place ad accurately reflects the company's recruitment policies.

"It's our preference that they currently be employed," he said. "We typically go after people that are happy where they are and then tell them about the opportunities here. We do get a lot of applications blindly from people who are currently unemployed -- with the economy being what it is, we've had a lot of people contact us that don't have the skill sets we want, so we try to minimize the amount of time we spent on that and try to rifle-shoot the folks we're interested in."

The goal of any talent management effort is to  find the right person for the right position at the right time, and by stating that the unemployed will not be considered you may very well eliminate the very source to solve our problem.

 Many organizations have made the decision for "economic reasons" to let go some of the best talent in the country. When we need to stay competitive with the rest of the world, this is not the time for any employer to set out to decide that because someone got caught in the downturn they are no longer valuable talent to the organization.