Why Good People Can't Get Jobs: The Skills Gap and What Companies Can Do About It

by Peter Cappelli

Peter Cappelli confronts the myth of the skills gap and provides an actionable path forward to put people back to work.

Even in a time of perilously high unemployment, companies contend that they cannot find the employees they need. Pointing to a skills gap, employers argue applicants are simply not qualified; schools aren't preparing students for jobs; the government isn't letting in enough high-skill immigrants; and even when the match is right, prospective employees won't accept jobs at the wages offered.

In this powerful and fast-reading book, Peter Cappelli, Wharton management professor and director of Wharton's Center for Human Resources, debunks the arguments and exposes the real reasons good people can't get hired. Drawing on jobs data, anecdotes from all sides of the employer-employee divide, and interviews with jobs professionals, he explores the paradoxical forces bearing down on the American workplace and lays out solutions that can help us break through what has become a crippling employer-employee stand-off.

Among the questions he Is there really a skills gap? To what extent is the hiring process being held hostage by automated software that can crunch thousands of applications an hour? What kind of training could best bridge the gap between employer expectations and applicant realities, and who should foot the bill for it? Are schools really at fault?

Named one of HR Magazine' s Top 20 Most Influential Thinkers of 2011, Cappelli not only changes the way we think about hiring but points the way forward to rev America's job engine again.

Genres: Nonfiction, Business, Education, Economics, Ebooks, Professional Development, Historical Romance

99 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 29, 2012

About the author

George W. Taylor Professor of Management Director of the Center for Human Resources

Reviews

[Eddie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book caught my attention because Cappelli, a business professor, wrote it after his son, a graduate of St. John's College, couldn't find work.
His thesis is simple: good people can't find jobs because companies are incompetent about hiring. The 2008 financial collapse is just the latest in a long line of excuses going back 20 years. Cappelli spends most of the book picking apart employer's objections: skills gap, salary, geography, poor public school education, college graduates majoring in the wrong field.
The real problem, Capelli argues, is that companies only want to hire employees who are already fully qualified before they start working. Resumes are now screened by computers, which disqualify candidates whose resumes aren't loaded down with the proper keywords. Investment in on the job training has disappeared. Employers are chasing unicorns and blaming everyone and everything except themselves when they come back empty handed.
I've been on both sides of this problem. As a job seeker, the only time I've had success is when I bypass online applications and deliver my resume directly to a human being. Skill sets change frequently, and I've personally seen employers have far more success when hiring self-motivated candidates with a strong work ethic and willingness to learn.
It's a stupid simple idea. Why can't the business world acknowledge it?

[Violet · Rating 3 out of 5]

Too bad your prospective employer will not read this book.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

This short e-book (approx. 100 pages) debunks claims that high unemployment levels in the US are the result of mismatches between worker skills and employer needs. A scholar at the University of Pennsylvania, Peter Cappelli looks at the evidence related to skill mismatches on both the supply and demand side of the labor market and judges that evidence unpersuasive. He then looks at something that usually is overlooked: the practices of employers themselves, such as a general refusal to adjust wages to balance supply and demand, a lack of recruitment intensity, a refusal to invest in any form of on-the-job-training, a tendency to define applicable experience very narrowly, an unwillingness to make any kind of commitment to employees, and the gutting of HR offices and functions. This short, inexpensive e-book challenges assumptions and aims to move people beyond blaming the unemployed and identifying the contributions of employer practices and public policies to the creation of the mass unemployment economy of recent years.

[Gwen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm sure that economists and employment analysts could pick apart Cappelli's argument and rip it to shreds, but for this reader, I find the supporting evidence largely plausible. If you've read his articles in the NYTimes and elsewhere, it's very similar to what he's written in the past, just neatly bundled up. (As of September 12, 2012, this book is free for Kindles.)

Overall, I recommend this short work--I've got a few issues with his evidence (or lack thereof), and I wanted so much more in the way of examples, but for an excellent and all too brief exploration of aspects of the current system, Cappelli's work is a must-read.

A couple of myths Cappelli tries to disprove (not an all-inclusive list):

1) Employers can't find workers with adequate skills to fill available jobs. No real evidence for this. (Although personally, I'm skeptical of Cappelli's proof of this one--he bases his argument on one little chart and covers this myth in two pages.)

2) Employers can't find workers willing to take jobs at the going wages. "Just as there is no shortage of diamonds even though they are expensive--you can buy all you want at the market price--not being able or willing to pay the market price for talent does not constitute a shortage."

3) Skill shortages are only part of the problem. Employers must also deal with a lack of knowledge and experience. This is the whole "you need experience to get a job" Catch-22 situation.

4) Even when workers are skilled, knowledgeable, and experienced--and the pay is commensurate with talent--they are often reluctant to go where the good jobs are. "Employment is a two-way street."

5) Students lack the basic competency needed to succeed in the workplace. Public schools are failing their students, their families, the nation's employers, and society as a whole. Employers have had the same criticisms for years; the current state of school output hasn't changed all that much. (Again, I'm skeptical of this, especially in light of No Child Left Behind and an overemphasis on standardized testing instead of critical thinking.) In the last chapter, Cappelli hits on a topic that it seems America has forgotten: technical schools and apprenticeships. After spending many years in Europe and seeing how their process works, I think they're on to something. (I'm not an economist, let alone one who studies European education systems, so what do I know?) But as Cappelli (sadly) correctly points out, the U.S. is too large and too fragmented (and I'd also venture out on a limb and say federalism is a large part of this) to make either apprenticeship programs or government-sponsored tech schools viable options to solving the crisis. His solution (far too weakly explored, in my opinion) is to heavily emphasize co-ops during college. I agree, but I wish he would have given us more evidence to how co-op students succeed.

6) Not enough Americans are graduating from college. The problem of not finishing college, really. So then enough Americans are graduating from college? Considering that so many jobs that require a college degree don't actually need them, I'm kind of wondering if we have too many people graduating from college, leading to an academic arms race, leading to admin assistant positions requiring master's degrees (seriously).

7) Even among college graduates, too many didn't major in fields where the jobs are. Ah, the standard response. "Why didn't you study science? Or math? Or engineering? Or computers?" (Maybe because I'm absolutely terrible in those fields...?) And even science jobs aren't always easy to come by. But students have changed their focus of study, even though they will naturally be years behind the trend. We're always trying to play catch-up to the job market, but we're not stupid--we are able to figure out the direction the market is going even though we know we can never truly catch up to where the market thinks we should be.

8) It's a skills gap, not a training gap. Employers have stopped training their workers, preferring employees to be 100% ready and qualified at all times. There's so little professional development in the industry today, to the extent that I was completely floored when one of my friends said that her company would help pay for training, even though my older cousins said that this was standard at workplaces in the 1990s. I've never had that opportunity. Cappelli remarks that this largely based on employers' fear of employee flight, which, while reasonable to a degree, "is one compounded by an environment in which every employer wants trained workers and no one wants to pay for their training." Employers don't want to take the chance to see if a potential employee could do the job instead of coming in with years of experience--they're letting the perfect be the enemy of the good and allowing positions to go vacant.

THE HIRING PROCESS Of all the parts about job hunting that I hate, this part is the worst. Cutbacks in HR departments, credential creep, and nonsensical requirements--not to mention the need to optimize your resume and cover letter so that automated screeners will accept it--mean that employers are essentially "looking for a unicorn," and "managers pile all the credentials and expertise into the job description to minimize the risk that the candidate will fail, making it virtually impossible to find anyone who fits."

I'm so thankful that Cappelli points out the pitfalls of automated software programs for screening applicants--it's always nice to hear validation to your frustrations. It's true: with the salary field, you're 'damned if you do, damned if you don't' when answering. And not recognizing transferable skills. This is so crucial. So I can't (right now) use program A, but if I'm able to successfully use programs X, Y, and Z--all related to program A--I should be able to use the skills I have from other programs to figure out this one.

As an aspiring copyeditor, I disagree with Cappelli's assertion that "word processing, a fancy combination of software and computer technology, which now fixes typos and spelling errors, handles breaks in lines, and formats all automatically, tasks that used to require some real skill from copy editors and typists but can now be done by virtually anyone." No, no it can't. People think they can, but so many of them have no idea about proper grammar and formatting. And it shows.

I also don't agree with Cappelli's belief that you should submit a resume/cover letter in MS Word over a pdf--the potential for version issues, broken formatting, and file errors is so high.

[Jung]

In "Why Good People Can’t Get Jobs", Peter Cappelli dismantles some of the most common explanations for why companies claim they cannot find qualified workers even while countless capable applicants struggle to get hired. The book argues that the real issue is not a mysterious lack of skills but a series of employer decisions - how jobs are defined, how candidates are filtered, and how little organizations invest in training. Cappelli presents research, economic context, and stories from real workplaces that reveal how hiring has drifted into a rigid, automated, and risk-averse system that screens out the very people firms say they need. By looking closely at productivity data, wage behavior, educational trends, hiring software, and the economics of training, he shows that the so-called 'skills gap' is largely a problem created by employers themselves.

Cappelli begins by examining the period after the financial crisis, when companies reported difficulty filling roles even though job seekers far outnumbered openings. On the surface, it looked like a mismatch between what employers required and what applicants could provide. But the economic numbers told another story. Productivity had jumped significantly after 2008, meaning companies could meet demand with fewer workers. At the same time, the labor force had grown, increasing the number of people searching for work. Many discouraged workers eventually stopped looking, which reduced the official unemployment rate, but the underlying imbalance remained. Companies had learned to operate leaner and remained hesitant to add staff unless a candidate appeared to be a near-perfect match. Instead of viewing vacancies as costly, many firms interpreted open seats as a useful way to save money, especially since they didn’t measure the business value tied to each position. This mindset shaped the modern hiring process.

A major source of disconnect lies in how companies imagine filling a role. Many approach hiring as if they were ordering a custom part: define exact specifications and wait until someone appears who fits every detail. But jobs rarely work like that. Responsibilities shift, teams adapt, and employees learn. A successful worker can come from many backgrounds as long as they have a solid baseline and the capacity to grow. Yet advances in recruiting technology, cheap online posting, and huge applicant pools have encouraged companies to be extremely selective. When hundreds or thousands of applications arrive with one click, the temptation to wait for a perfect match becomes overwhelming. As a result, overqualified applicants push aside perfectly competent ones, and degree inflation accelerates. More people are pursuing higher education than ever before, but employers continue raising requirements because the candidate pipeline is so full. Cappelli shows that the apparent shortage of skills is often a shortage manufactured by overly narrow expectations.

Even so, headlines continue warning about talent deficits. Cappelli explains why these claims persist. Surveys regularly report that employers struggle to fill roles, but the reasons have little to do with academia. Many of the 'hardest to fill' jobs require experience more than technical knowledge - roles like machine operators, sales representatives, and administrative staff. When companies insist on candidates who have already done the exact job elsewhere, the available pool shrinks dramatically. Wage levels tell another story: organizations frequently offer salaries below the market rate, then interpret a lack of takers as evidence of missing skills. Mobility further complicates things. Relocation rates have dropped sharply as families weigh the risks of uprooting for uncertain opportunities. Put together, these factors reveal that most shortages stem not from workers lacking ability but from employers insisting on ideal candidates under less-than-ideal terms.

To test whether workers truly lack foundational skills, Cappelli looks at long-term data on education. Contrary to the popular belief that schools are failing, measures of academic achievement have generally risen or held steady over decades. Reading and math performance for young students has improved, science and advanced math enrollment has soared, and dropout rates have declined substantially. International comparisons place the United States in the middle of the pack, but enormous local variation means improvements depend heavily on regional investment. At the college level, many students struggle to finish degrees, which is a real issue, yet the mix of majors has shifted in line with labor market signals. Business, IT, and health programs have expanded dramatically as demand for those fields grew. When shortages do appear - such as in technology - they often flip to oversupply within a few years, showing how responsive student choices actually are. These patterns imply that education systems are not producing widespread skill deficiencies; rather, employer expectations in certain sectors rise faster than schools can forecast.

The biggest driver of hiring bottlenecks is the modern recruiting process itself. Online application systems invite huge numbers of candidates but rely on software filters that eliminate most of them. Job descriptions have ballooned to include every imaginable task, and each item often becomes a mandatory criterion in the database. Even small mismatches - like lacking familiarity with a specific tool brand - can block an otherwise strong applicant. Cappelli illustrates how this algorithmic rigidity creates artificial scarcity: when each requirement acts as a gate with a limited probability of success, a series of gates reduces thousands of applicants to none. Managers then conclude that qualified people simply do not exist. Since legal pressures encourage consistent treatment of all candidates, it becomes risky to manually reconsider those who were automatically rejected, leaving hiring teams trapped by their own systems.

Cappelli argues that the stalemate between employers and workers is made worse by a long-term decline in company-provided training. Most organizations prefer to hire people who already possess every needed skill, yet few are willing to invest in building those skills internally. Many cite cost or fear of turnover, even though research consistently shows that training improves retention. The alternative - keeping jobs vacant while searching endlessly for ready-made employees - often costs more than training would. The book highlights examples of firms that thrive by adopting a different philosophy: hire for attitude, allow room for learning, and provide structured ramp-up time. One publisher hired a promising applicant with limited experience and gave him a probationary period to grow into the job. Companies that choose this approach not only fill roles faster but also build loyalty and cultivate a workforce more aligned with their values and processes.

When organizations do embrace training, the results can be transformative. Cappelli describes a freight company that created its own driving school because the labor market couldn’t supply enough qualified drivers. By combining company-funded instruction with a clear path to employment, they trained hundreds of workers with exceptionally high retention. Models like apprenticeships, employer-college partnerships, and cooperative education programs consistently demonstrate that the most effective skills are those gained close to real work. Yet these systems require cooperation between educators and employers - cooperation that is still relatively rare in the United States.

In "Why Good People Can’t Get Jobs", Cappelli ultimately shows that the hiring crisis is far less mysterious than it appears. The supposed 'skills gap' is largely a product of narrow job descriptions, overreliance on automated screening, reluctance to pay competitive wages, and decades of declining investment in developing talent. When companies simplify requirements, restore human judgment to hiring, and rebuild meaningful training systems - often in partnership with schools - they discover that strong candidates were available all along. The book’s central message is clear: better hiring and more practical training can create opportunities not just for individuals but for organizations and the broader economy.

[Sarah Cupitt · Rating 4 out of 5]

why do vacancies linger while strong applicants line up?

Employers say they can’t find the right talent. Candidates say they can’t get a fair look. Schools are told to fix it while everyone waits.

main notes:
- Overeducation has grown – about three times more common than undereducation – and has more than doubled over a generation. Put together, economics, fuzzy measurement of role value, and selective hiring habits keep the disconnect in place.
- When offers sit below the going rate, or ask for big trade-offs like relocation, the pool of qualified takers shrinks; that’s a pricing problem, not a skills problem.
- A temp doing the job well fails a personality screen. An engineer who could learn a simple tool quickly is blocked because the posting requires a specific brand name. A solid candidate is rejected because their past title doesn’t match an internal label. Pay screens add another trap. If applicants won’t click “yes” to a preset wage, the system drops them, turning a pricing choice into a supposed talent shortfall and nudging others to underbid.
- Employers say they need job-ready talent, yet many hesitate to create it. Surveys show the dominant reason for holding back on training is cost, cited by 76 percent of firms. Nearly a fifth worry that newly trained workers will leave. When every company wants someone prepared from day one and few are willing to invest, vacancies linger and frustration grows on both sides of the market.
- Employers chase “perfect fits” for loosely defined roles and lean on software that screens out people who could succeed with a short ramp-up. Pushing the gap onto schools sounds nice, but classroom courses don’t teach experience-based skills. Students are left guessing what employers will want next.

Notes:
- In the years after the financial crisis, company profits rebounded while many people still couldn’t find work. The headline blame fell on “missing skills,” but the basic math points elsewhere. By early 2012, productivity had risen about 6.7 percent since 2008, while the whole economy had grown only about 1.2 percent. That means employers could handle roughly the same demand with about 5.5 percent fewer workers.
- Start from a pre-crisis unemployment rate near 5 percent and you'd expect today's figure to be much higher. It wasn't, largely because many discouraged workers stopped actively searching, and the official rate only includes those looking for work.
- Employers can buy fully formed talent or hire for baseline ability and allow time to learn. Whichever looks cheaper usually wins.
- Among employers who report shortages, lack of knowledge ranks below lack of experience. Many want someone who can contribute immediately, which often means someone who has already done the same job, narrowing supply and favoring yesterday’s methods over renewal.
- Finally, mobility. Qualified workers aren’t always willing to move, and with good reason. By 2011, only about one in four job seekers was willing to relocate – roughly half the late-1990s rate – because uprooting families for uncertain roles is a big ask.
- For decades, surveys have put punctuality, time use, motivation, and reliability at the top of the gap list, with academics far lower. A mid-1990s national employer census led with work attitudes, a 2009 business survey did the same, and a 2011 poll of hundreds of hiring managers named only communication as a top attribute tied directly to academics. That steady pattern doesn’t look like a sudden collapse in basic schooling.
- the “wrong majors” narrative misses how students have shifted: business degrees have tripled since 1970, computer and IT degrees are about fifteen times higher, and health degrees have quintupled, while the physical sciences were flat and engineering rose only modestly.
- New technology often automates tasks rather than raising required skills, and employer choices ultimately shape how much skill most jobs actually need.
- Online portals made applying easy and HR leaner, so automated screens now do more of the sorting. Meanwhile, managers often can’t agree on what they want, post broad descriptions that attract floods of candidates, then tack on wish lists to guarantee a day-one performer.

[Bryan Tanner · Rating 2 out of 5]

BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front)
Talent isn’t scarce; our systems for recognizing it are.

Executive Summary
• Argues the “skills gap” is overstated and mostly employer-created.
• Highlights algorithmic screening, inflated job requirements, and reduced training.
• Claims hiring problems stem from unrealistic expectations, not talent shortages.

Review
I’ll admit up front: I tore through this book faster than I should have. Even so, Cappelli’s critique of automated screening and inflated job requirements echoed what I see in learning design every day—systems searching for “perfect” candidates while quietly excluding capable humans. His argument about employer-created barriers helped me name patterns I regularly witness in adult learners’ job hunts.

But my quick read also exposed the book’s limits. The ideas felt more confirmatory than revelatory, and the proposed solutions never quite took shape. I kept wishing for richer examples and stronger evidence—something that would deepen, not just validate, what many of us already understand about hiring’s blind spots.

Similar Reads
• The Talent Delusion — sharper look at how companies misread talent.
• The Knowing-Doing Gap — why organizations fail to act on what they learn.
• The Signal and the Noise — how systems often measure the wrong things.

Authorship Note: This review was co-authored using a time-saving GPT I built to help structure and refine my thoughts.

[Jonna Higgins-Freese · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gwen gives a great synopsis. But there were also some really funny/sardonic lines:

"not being able or willing to pay the market price for talent does not constitute a shortage" (11)

Re: low unemployment for those w/ BA's: "the lower unemployment rate for college graduates comes from the fact that college graduates can also do the jobs that require only a high school degree, and arguably do them better, so they win the competition for those openings. When applicants far outnumber job openings, the overqualified bump out those only adequately qualified" (26).

"The percentage of employees who are overqualified for their jobs, as defined by having at least three more years of education than is required by the job they hold, is about three times greater than the proportion of people who are underqualified using the same criterion. And the proportion of overqualified has more than doubled over the past generation." (27), citing Steve B. Vaisey, "Education and its Discontents, 1972-2002, Overqualification in America" Social Forces 85, no. 2 (December 2006).

"If everyone [gets a college degree, even if there are no jobs that require such degrees, because then one can beat out those who do not have such degrees], we have something like an arms race, where individuals and their families invest in credentials that are not required for the jobs they end up doing but that may nevertheless be necessary for them to obtain those jobs" (27).

"To recap, then, the hardest-to-fill jobs appear to be those that often require the least skills, employers are frequently unwilling to offer the wages necessary to attract the skill set they seek, knowledge is evanescent and experience frequently as hard to attain as King Arthur's magic sword, and would-be employees are wary of uprooting themselves and their families for increasingly short-term job security" (39).

Re: the myth of US school underperformance: "OECD show[s] US students about in the middle of industrial economies. It is true that we used to be higher up, but our relative fall is largely representative of other countries catching up, especially those in Asia, where, until recent decades, economies and levels of public spending were modest. Meanwhile, there is no evidence of any absolute decline in US scores or even of a sharp decline relative to other countries" (47).

"Russia has the highest percentage [of postsecondary credentials] across all ages combined, which reminds us that an economy's success is not related to education in any simple fashion" (48).

Most of today's workforce is doing without any kind of training at all in the past 5 years (70).

[Sally · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent synopsis of what's happening in Australia too. I could have written this book with all the specific grumbling I've been doing. There were no surprises for me but plenty of validation.

I have two years of experience in the recruitment sector, a business degree and a Masters, yet I'm currently unemployed - and having an insiders understanding from the recruitment experience doesn't help at all.

All politicians should read this book and all employers who feel they have a problem with hiring new staff.

[Kathleen Grant · Rating 4 out of 5]

Provides insight to how and why organizations hiring process has pain points. Practical theory of Human Resource Departments have changed impacting candidate selection and more. Well written!

[Jacob · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is kind of a glorified article. The author's argument is that there are three reasons there are people out of work and available jobs and the two are not getting resolved with each other, and Cappelli's arguments are good. They're just maybe not quite enough to fill out a book, even as short as this one.

Like the author, I also don't buy the common assertions about why jobs are going unfilled. I tend to suspect that employers simply aren't willing to pay for the qualifications they want. Cappelli blames the insistence on the automation of searching among job candidates. With an automated system, employers search for the words they want, but they never see the resumes unless those resumes already match what they are looking for. As someone who works with databases, I am only too familiar with the problem of not being aware that there's data you should be seeing and aren't -- it's hard to notice as long as you're getting something to look at. But I also feel like employers are increasingly unwilling to train or hire someone to grow into the role. Cappelli agrees with that, and provides some evidence that the lack of skills employers complain about is much more likely the fault of employers' unwillingness to train than schools not teaching students the skills they need.

I've also seen firsthand how difficult it can be to tell someone's suitability for a position through the traditional interview process. It's pretty terrible and most people are bad at interviewing, including myself, but I don't see anything much better yet. Cappelli's suggestions are good ideas, but I also don't see them revolutionizing the hiring process yet.

[Tamara Hull · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was such an insightful read. I'm currently job hunting due to an international repatriation and had been becoming more and more disillusioned with the inability to find a job, despite qualifications and many years of experience.

Professor Cappelli's arguments with respect to the perceived skills mismatch make a great deal of sense and the failings of the current system pertaining the use of technology for applicant screening clarified many of the challenges facing recruiters, employers, applicants and the wider social construct.

I highly recommend this book for anybody undertaking Human Resource studies or management and for recruiters as well as potential job seekers. The book won't help applicants but you may find it helps retain your confidence.

That Professor Cappelli has written what is an academic piece but framed in in such a way to facilitate clear understanding from the lay person adds significant value and his background lends credence and weight to the message.

[Charlie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This short book does a very effective job at starting a conversation around employability and the statistics that are often bandied about. It gives insight into some of the forces in the employment ecosystem that contribute to whole populations getting jobs or not. The book sheds light on some of the myths that are perpetuated by big corporations and indicates some of the origins of those myths. It is a very good read, and is sure to change your thinking about suitably qualified and experienced people in your own domain.

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

A quick and insightful read about why so many in America are not capable of finding work commensurate with their intelligence and work ethic. The main culprits:
- Companies largely refuse to train people
- Not enough of a corporate/education partnership on teaching the right skills
- HR using fallible filtering methods on resumes
- Too much unicorn hunting, always hoping the perfect fit, and one who is not seeking a high wage, will walk through the door if we just wait a little bit longer

[Crystal Lewis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Worth a read, but now what?

I started this book when I was job hunting, hoping for insight. But finished after 6 months at my new HR role. I think the author makes some good points, and successfully debunked the skills gap myth for me. But I do not think he accomplished the call to action needed to get the industry into gear.

[Jeremy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm hoping this quick read crosses the desks of hiring managers and CEOs alike.

[Eugene Kernes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Demystification of the most popular labor myths. Cappelli tells the story from the general perspective, usually of the employers who make claims about labor conditions, and then explains the actual empirical reason for the supposed problems. The story from employers, whether the blame on education or the skills of the labor force, are heard more often as the employers have the capacity to be loud in their claims, but that does not make them right. As this book shows, the supposed problems of the labor force are actually created by the very employers who claim those problems as true. Employers unwittingly but purposefully create the conditions for the failure to acquire the right employees.

Going from supply, demand, skill expectations, education and training, Cappelli covers the labor issues from various vantage points. Employers want the candidate with skills, but claim a skill gap when their offered wage is not accepted by the candidates with skills they need. Employers seem to think that schools and those wanting employment can guess precisely which tasks and skills are needed in the future.

Students in fact do major in fields which have a demand for, but cannot get the require experience because each job requires prior experience. School does not matter but employers, as their surveys shows that the school skills are pretty low in what they are seeking, but still require huge expenditures on education. Blaming education and schools for the lack of employee skills even though the skills cannot be learned in school and can be learned on site with a bit of training. Setting applicant requires at such a granular level that many of the positions that have a vacancy require a similar prior title, even thought the title is specific to each employer and are not generic. The skill gap can be narrowed if the employers train the employees, but employers claim that costs of training are too high without knowing the cost of the keeping a vacancy.

Due to the cooperative nature of work, the value of each employee is not easy to determine unlike the costs of operations. This book shows that the skill gap is more imaginary than not coming from employers unable to fill positions due to seeking an unrealistic perfect candidate. There is a dig problem with the way employers find the right employees. Cappelli pushes for apprenticeships as the solution to the pretentious skill gap. A quick and easy read with depth makes this book a really good source for employers to look for solutions to the labor problem.

[Chris L.]

I unexpectedly felt like this book was too short.

I like how it went straight to the point. Why are there so many job seekers when there are so many unfilled positions in America? Is it because the job seekers are unqualified? No; there are more college grads than ever, and employees are looking for training that's relevant to modern jobs. The problem is employers who are being too picky without recognizing the costs of leaving jobs unfilled, and a lack of programs designed to support the gap between newer employees and experienced ones.

It'd be useful to read about the differences between this problem in different industries, or more alternative hypotheses for the employment gap, but I guess Cappelli took the common complaint that business books overstay their welcome pretty seriously...

[Karl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Peter Cappelli's short book on the employment situation is a delightful short read. After describing the employment situation (chap. 1), Cappelli examines widespread demand-side and supply-side explanations which usually place the blame at the feet of anyone except employers and businesses (chaps. 2, 3). Finding these "myths" wanting in relation to the facts, Cappelli argues the numerous job vacancies are due to our faulty hiring processes (chap. 4) and a training gap fueled by low levels of employer-financed training (chap. 5). Cappelli concludes this short book with some suggestions for "the way forward" (chap. 6). Unfortunately, Cappelli does not explain why the problem of unfilled vacancies persist, nor why real-world alternatives discussed in chapter 6 are not more widespread.

[Dave · Rating 2 out of 5]

While I did find many of the case studies interesting (Focusing on Education and how schools can prepare necessary skills to increase hiring), I found the book to be underwhelming. We live in a time when the Knowledge Worker is needed in every industry which in turn gives the reins to the applicants. Good to pull back the curtain a bit on how the skills gap is growing but overall I found this to be dry and uneventful.

[Heidi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Listened to the audiobook. Outlines a lot of the problems with hiring practices in the United States: employers who are unwilling to train new hires, looking for a perfect fit, or who rely on resume reading software to sort applicants. Also gives some suggestions on how US businesses should change their hiring practices to make them more effective.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very short, but good assessment of the job hunting experience in America. The book is near 10 years old, but the situation described in the book has only gotten worse if anything. Do note that the book, written during the recovery from the Great Recession, reads somewhat ironically right now (May 2020), as it references the 'recovering economy' every once in a while. ... Yeah. Not so much.

[Elazar · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn’t see before starting this book that it was written c. 2013. So much about the economy and workforce has changed since then, yet still so little of what Cappelli discusses has changed. Even if not entirely relevant, this is still an informative, validating read for someone who has struggled to find sufficient employment since before its publication.

[Synthia Salomon]

match hiring, underinvestment in training, and mispriced wages create empty seats despite ready talent. Streamline requirements, price roles to market, rebuild on-the-job learning with school partnerships, and matches improve quickly. Do that, and vacancies shrink, careers open up, and organizations get stronger. That’s proof that better choices can unlock opportunity for everyone.

[Josh Charvat · Rating 4 out of 5]

This reads more like a long editorial than a book; however, it gives some good, brief insight into the topic at hand while also bringing up some important questions in regards to finding, hiring, and training workforce

[Arda Gezdur · Rating 4 out of 5]

beat the engine
look at apprentice programs

[T S · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 Stars. This book talks about why there seems to be a shortage of qualified workers for companies to hire. He explains the reasons behind this such as companies looking for overqualified applicants, and also offers a very short guideline on how to respond on the societal level to fix this problem.

It is easy to read and short and still contains good insights however I wish he had expanded more on the solution and touched more on how companies can deal with overabundance of applicants. He also writes this book mainly to companies and society and does not offer much advice to students and what they can do about it. The main advice, I got from this for students is GET AN INTERNSHIP in your field if you want a job. Yet, in my experience even with internships some, not all, of my friends have had a hard time finding a job..

[Dee Renee Chesnut · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was free from Barnes and Noble when I downloaded it to my Nook library. I wanted suggestions to help the good people I know who are frustrated about not being able to find jobs or better jobs, There were some suggestions for employers, such as, provide more training or apprenticeships; be willing to grant more interviews of nearly qualified people; and be careful with the qualifications you use for criterion in the hiring software. There seemed to be fewer suggestions for job-seekers. One suggestions is not to quit a job before you find the next one because the gap on your resume looks bad to the hiring software.
I learned about "Home Depot Syndrome," the tendency to think of workers as replaceable parts that plug into the business machine, and "searching for the unicorn," when managers pile all the credentials and expertise into the job description to minimize the risk that the candidate will fail, making it virtually impossible to find anyone who fits.
I recommend the book to business managers so they may take a second look at what they need in an applicant. I think this book would only frustrate job-seekers.

[Jocelyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a short but authoritative and fascinating read about why people who seem perfectly qualified for jobs can't seem to get them, and why the employer argument that there is a "skills gap" is rather full of crap. Employers are looking to fill 3 positions in one, reluctant to provide on-the-job training, and are more apt to wait longer to fill a position because they are looking for a "unicorn", or, the beyond perfect and overqualified person who will be able to walk into the job 120% ready to tackle the job duties and will do it all for less than the standard market salary for that type of position. A good read for those on the job hunt and those helping people find jobs. Or those just interested in America's job market and economy.

[Tim O'Hearn · Rating 2 out of 5]

A bite-sized, to-the-point, smoothly flowing (e)book that contains worthwhile discussion points. It's amusing that the author admits the book "grew out of a series of columns" and that I discovered it by reading a different series of columns by the author promoting this book. Books of this nature are low-hanging fruit for those frustrated with the job market. There is a conscious effort made to not discourage any particular group too much. I've researched his sources and some are borderline embarrassing to have been cited by an academic from Wharton, specifically the articles on resumé screeners, which I find dubious. One article doesn't even have an author, while the others cite "professionals" who I suspect have no direct experience with resumé screeners.