The Real Reason No One Is Hiring or Getting Hired

All the dots are connecting to one person, and that person needs to start doing their job

Sheila is a very talented friend of mine. There’s this job she wants. And she should get it. She’d crush it. She’d literally make the company extra millions of dollars in her first 30 days there.

But she can’t get anyone at the company to talk to her.

This is a problem. A massive problem. And from my months-long research into the current labor quagmire, it’s maybe the real reason no one is getting hired.

And the ironic thing is that it’s also the easiest problem to fix.

You All Know “Sheila” Already

I’ve been talking with and about her for a while now.

I first wrote about Sheila when her current tech company employer — one you’d know if I named it — made her current tech job impossible to do. At that time, she started her next job search.

That was six months ago.

I’ve known Sheila for about a decade. I’d call her extremely skilled and motivated. I advised her as best I could through her search, including through an episode where a hiring company got the jitters when she started solving their problems during the interview, and another where the hiring company used bad math to justify their unicorn search. Both companies wound up not finding their hire.

Then Sheila found her dream job, which kind of turned into a nightmare.

The Worst Kind Of Silence

About six weeks ago, Sheila checked the careers page of a company she had always admired. To her shock, a new listing on that careers page described a job that Sheila was perfect for.

Excited, Sheila spent a couple hours editing her resume and perfecting the application and the cover letter. She also reached out to everyone at the company she could reach on LinkedIn, and polled her network to uncover any other possible connection.

She waited a week. She followed up. She waited another week. Then another. Nothing.