I don’t think its the job searching process that sucks, its the jobs themselves. In many states in the US currently, you can probably start working in retail by just showing up, and yet you still have a lot of businesses lacking employees, and a lot of people are unemployed. Fixing job conditions imho will solve like 70% of the problem.

There are several ways to fix the search process and some of them require law change…

1. Make Fake Job Posting/Multi-Level Marketing Scheme Illegal, make that a misdemeanor on first strike and at least 10 years felony afterward since they demonstrated that they aren’t willing to change after the first strike. That the offender also need to compensate the interviewee’s time and resources. End of discussion.

2. Interviewee being paid for their time and transportation cost, those aren’t free and it can help in a way that it discourage company from using employee turn over as leverage when we can flip it around against the employer.

3. Making resources more available for allowing people to have an easier time networking for jobs/contracts could go a long way. Apprenticeship, government paid conference for presentation and meeting, and so forth.

I agree with MarcellusDrum on the point of jobs itself being the problem in general in the USA.

As for #1 and #2, I had gone to 8 different job places that are fake, most of them are from insurance companies sometime around 2014 to 2016, I have since quit looking for jobs and switch to running my company afterward. Stuff like that are vile and cruel, I wasn’t particularly well off and it took a lot of my time and resources just to get to those places to have an interview only to find out that they are fake or lying about the position.

The job search process greatly differs by type of job and level of requirements. Could you be more specific to the types of jobs you’re talking about?

Do away with the oppressive and antiquated system that exists currently in favor of a system where you bring your resume to a trained counselor who will take your current strengths, skills and experience and try to match you with existing openings. If there aren’t any matches or none of the openings appeal to you, you will be paid to attend classes to learn new skills that are in demand and that you are actually interested in.

Make it illegal for an employer to give a bad reference for an employee without having actual proof to back up their claims. Employers who give a bad reference and can’t back up their claims must pay the costs to retrain the employee.

I honestly don’t know, but I’m going to be at that point again soon. I just put in my resignation for a low paying but ridiculously easy job, not because I wanted to, but because my situation changed and now I’m being forced to relocate elsewhere. Yeah, I could stay local, but then the job isn’t worth it anymore because I’m driving further (I calculated it, it’s not worth it despite the benefits and how much I like the job). So now I get to pack up my shit, move, and start a-new. Usually when I leave a job I have mixed feelings of sadness and dread, knowing that I’ll most likely never see or communicate with my co-workers ever again (the good ones that I like anyway) and the loss of the financial security net from the job itself. This time around it’s sadness but not so much dread, in a way it can actually feel a little liberating to not have to work, to not be ‘tied to the system’ despite the fact that I’ll have to return to work one way or another, I think for the time being I’m going to enjoy my final days at my current job and then take some time to enjoy life before I return to work right away, it’s going to be hard finding another job that doesn’t leave me feeling dead inside but I guess that’s life for you.

I suppose executing recruitment agencies is out of the question?

Ban ATS’ (seriously, how could centralising all of everyone’s personal information ever go wrong?!)

Have competent people working in Personnel departments (and thank you, I am not a Human “Resource”, that’s just your slave master mentality shining through)

And, yeah, executing recruitment agents. Sorry, but it has to be done, for the future of humanity. (Or maybe it doesn’t? Are they actually able to interbreed with human beings?)

I presented an idea at the recent Linux conference. I think I probably botched the talk. :-(

In any case, the idea I was proposing was this…

Just hire people.

The current way of hiring is high risk low reward.

But if you initially hire someone for a small project as a 1099 that’s low risk high reward. Seeing how the handle a small project can indicate how they’ll handle a large one.

Not sure of a left solution…I suppose passing a law that limits the number of interviews a company can do; or creating a public hiring department so that all hiring decisions are decided at a state/local level and then passed on to employer; or shutting a company down if there are too many complaints about their hiring process…but I can imagine a lot of issues with these.