# Why is finding a job so much harder than decades ago? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [December 18, 2012, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-finding-a-job-so-much-harder-than-decades-ago/644378 "2012-12-18T00:15:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2012, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-finding-a-job-so-much-harder-than-decades-ago/644378/41 "2012-12-19T22:22:25Z")
> [@Bob Ducca](#): > > I think part of why it’s harder is due to the Internet making it extremely simple to apply to jobs, so companies are overwhelmed with applications and resumes. Even people with jobs that they like will apply to jobs on the off-chance that they’ll end up someplace better than they are now. Before the internet, people only applied for jobs in person or via mailing a paper resume/cover letter, which acted as a bit of “barrier” and kept the # of applicants at a manageable level. Very true. It might not affect the actual hiring rate, but it certainly means any person applying for jobs has a much lower hit rate than before. And it is the reason why companies no longer respond - with HR cut, we can’t afford to. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2012, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-finding-a-job-so-much-harder-than-decades-ago/644378/42 "2012-12-19T22:27:51Z")
It has nothing to do with minimum wage. Minimum wages have been around for a while, and the current one is probably lower in terms of constant dollars than it was decades ago. I think it is harder. When I graduated in 1980, I got a job without even trying very hard, even though economic conditions weren’t great. It helped that I was one of only 168 CS PhDs graduating that year, but companies then didn’t cut quite as quickly or as deeply in bad times as they do today. Another problem is the definition of skilled worker. Big companies used to have internal universities where they did a lot of training. These seem to have dried up. Lots of companies, to save money, no longer want to hire someone with the right degree and train them in a specific methodology; they want to hire someone with those exact skills so little training is required. And then they complain about the lack of those with the right skills. ---
**Author:** ![Gozu\_Tashoya](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/7993a0/32.png) [@Gozu\_Tashoya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gozu_Tashoya)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2012, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-finding-a-job-so-much-harder-than-decades-ago/644378/43 "2012-12-19T23:20:35Z")
In the “there are fewer good jobs than before” category, keep in mind that software/web companies can do a lot with very few employees relative to old-school we-make-stuff companies. Facebook, with a $59 billion market cap, has ~3,200 employees. Google, $236.2b market cap, ~30,000 employees (roughly 2/3 of which are contractors, which includes support staff like chefs, etc.). Instagram, bought out for over a billion bucks, had **9**. By comparison, Ford, with a $44.7 billion market cap, employs 164,000 people, or roughly 5 times as many as those three tech companies combined. No, it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison, and there have always been industries where revenue-per-employee ratios are stratospheric (I’m sure the financial services industry is out of this world here, for instance), but it’s a part of the puzzle. ETA: FWIW, it’s not like the tech companies (the giants, anyway) aren’t compensating their employees well. Heck, Facebook’s _interns_ reportedly make [$65,000 to $75,000 a year](http://mashable.com/2012/12/14/facebook-interns/), but that doesn’t change the fact that the raw number of jobs is simply smaller in this and other industries. ---
**Author:** ![Kevbo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e47774/32.png) [@Kevbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kevbo)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2012, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-finding-a-job-so-much-harder-than-decades-ago/644378/44 "2012-12-19T23:47:41Z")
> [@Sal\_Ammoniac](#): > > The second phenomenon is what I would characterize as risk-averseness on the part of hiring managers. They’re looking to hire people whose credentials make them a hire they can justify to their \*own \*managers… which is a different thing from hiring somebody because you think he or she can do the job effectively. Or they’ll use a recruiting firm. It’s the same CYA strategy: “Well, I hired the \*best \*recruiting firm there is,” etc. Yes this. The first time I was unemployed I found a job listing with extensive qualifications that I had every one of. It was almost as if it had been written to exclude everyone but me. I couldn’t get my resume/application past their silly assed personnel department. Eventually I got word through my network about a contracting opportunity…You guessed it, same company, same job. I did great work for them and the manager wanted to hire me as an employee, but they had some silly assed rule about hiring contractors. I eventually finished their project for them and found a job. It just seemed really silly that I was demonstrably an exact fit for this job, but the people who knew that were unable to deal with their own bureaucratic sillyness and hire me. A couple years later I am unemployed again. One job I applied for I was a pretty good fit, but no dice. Then I got a call from a recruiting/temp firm, and ended up in the same job I had applied for earlier, except the company also got to pay the hefty recruiter’s fee. “Human Resources” departments IME are a huge part of the problem. Figuring out how to get past this barrier takes a huge amount of skill and luck that have nothing at all to do with being qualified for the actual job. ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2012, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-finding-a-job-so-much-harder-than-decades-ago/644378/45 "2012-12-20T00:14:29Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > Remember when Alabama passed the harsh laws on immigrant farm workers? They all left, scared, and the crops rotted in the fields because of the difficulty the farmers had in getting replacements. > I’m sure they’d do better if they raised their pay. Illegal immigrant workers are similar to off-shoring - it happens to hold down costs. But conservatives only love one of these things. Your post proves nothing, except that farm labor is underpaid. Why do illegal aliens take these jobs? Because welfare, housing subsidies, government paid health insurance is free, and you don’t have to work for them.Cheap food is a “benefit” of illegal alien labor, but we pay for it in other ways (such as free healthcare). Its a complex problem, and one that is distorted by the welfare and foodstamp programs. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2012, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-finding-a-job-so-much-harder-than-decades-ago/644378/46 "2012-12-20T01:13:03Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > Your post proves nothing, except that farm labor is underpaid. Why do illegal aliens take these jobs? Because welfare, housing subsidies, government paid health insurance is free, and you don’t have to work for them.Cheap food is a “benefit” of illegal alien labor, but we pay for it in other ways (such as free healthcare). Its a complex problem, and one that is distorted by the welfare and foodstamp programs. Wow, where is there free government paid health insurance? In California undocumented workers tend to stay as far away from government offices as they can. I can imagine one such guy wandering into an office in Alabama. They just can’t wait to give lots of benefits without looking at documentation down there. Maybe you got Alabama mixed up with Alberta - thought I don’t know for sure that illegal immigrants get free health care in Canada either. ---
**Author:** ![AboutAsWeirdAsYouCanGet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/22d042/32.png) [@AboutAsWeirdAsYouCanGet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AboutAsWeirdAsYouCanGet)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2012, 10:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-finding-a-job-so-much-harder-than-decades-ago/644378/47 "2012-12-20T10:43:44Z")
> [@](#): > > if you can do something literally anyone not in special education can do? Sorry for going OT, but WTF?!?!? Not every person who was in sped is one of those “Who’s President Obama?” dumbasses or a retard! ---
**Author:** ![ekedolphin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ekedolphin/32/10003_2.png) [@ekedolphin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ekedolphin)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2012, 11:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-finding-a-job-so-much-harder-than-decades-ago/644378/48 "2012-12-20T11:20:54Z")
Outsourcing is one of the greatest problems facing qualified candidates in the United States. Why should a company pay American workers to make great American products, when they can get the same thing accomplished for pennies on the dollar in India, China and southeast Asia? Apple doesn’t care that the workers over there are being exploited something _fierce,_ and let’s be fair, most Americans don’t, either, as long as it means we can get our iPods for $229.95. I also think that computerized employee evaluations are set up to be quite tricky. Before, one could expect to be interviewed based on whether or not their resume showed them to be qualified, and how well their connections and references were. (This is probably a little naive and oversimplified on my part). But now, the computer filters out a lot of people with their 50-question psych quizzes and ensures that many people won’t even get to the interview stage. And even if you do, maybe they’ll put you in a job fair and see how you do there. Job fairs are a real joke. I’ve seen a few we do at the video store I work at; of the 10 or so people there, they _maybe_ might hire as many as two. For a _video store job._ I mean, I take pride in doing the best I can at that job, but I _certainly_ don’t delude myself by calling it an “important” job. ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2012, 1:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-finding-a-job-so-much-harder-than-decades-ago/644378/49 "2012-12-20T13:00:29Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > Wow, where is there free government paid health insurance? In California undocumented workers tend to stay as far away from government offices as they can. I can imagine one such guy wandering into an office in Alabama. They just can’t wait to give lots of benefits without looking at documentation down there. > Maybe you got Alabama mixed up with Alberta - thought I don’t know for sure that illegal immigrants get free health care in Canada either. You missed the point..American citizens do not take farm labor jobs, because it makes no sense to do so-you make low wages, and are then lose eligibility for free stuff. Here in MA, any resident gets MASSHEALTH (taxpayer-paid health insurance0, iof you make less than $12,000/year. Section 8 housing and EBIT , food stamps are also limited to those with low incomes That is why farm jobs are frequently filled by illegal aliens. ---
**Author:** ![ladyfoxfyre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ad7895/32.png) [@ladyfoxfyre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ladyfoxfyre)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2012, 1:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-finding-a-job-so-much-harder-than-decades-ago/644378/50 "2012-12-20T13:23:25Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > You missed the point..American citizens do not take farm labor jobs, because it makes no sense to do so-you make low wages, and are then lose eligibility for free stuff. Here in MA, any resident gets MASSHEALTH (taxpayer-paid health insurance0, iof you make less than $12,000/year. Section 8 housing and EBIT , food stamps are also limited to those with low incomes That is why farm jobs are frequently filled by illegal aliens. Not surprisingly, you are wrong about everything you posted here. > [@](#): > > Immigrants who are here illegally cannot get either food stamps or cash assistance. If they have children who are born in the U.S., those children are eligible for food stamps and cash assistance. But it’s just to cover the kids. > > Illegal immigrants are not eligible for Medicaid, the federal program for low-income Americans, and they also can’t get into the state-subsidized health insurance programs through Massachusetts’ Health Connector. In fact, legal immigrants can’t do that until they’ve been here at least five years. > > Illegal immigrants are not eligible for unemployment in this state. In order to apply for unemployment, people have to prove they’d been working legally in their last job, and have the ability to work legally in the future. > **[Q&A: Illegal Immigrants And Public Benefits In Mass.](https://www.wbur.org/news/2010/06/21/immigration-explainer)** > > As legislators grapple with a Senate amendment in the state budget that would tighten access for immigrants to public services, WBUR's Bianca Vazquez spoke to people about their perceptions of state benefits for illegal immigrants — and digs into... So the only thing they do get is access to housing ONLY IF the primary person receiving assistance is a legal immigrant, and some basic healthcare safety net that only applies for people under 19, pregnant women, and emergency rooms. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2012, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-finding-a-job-so-much-harder-than-decades-ago/644378/51 "2012-12-20T17:39:11Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > You missed the point..American citizens do not take farm labor jobs, because it makes no sense to do so-you make low wages, and are then lose eligibility for free stuff. Here in MA, any resident gets MASSHEALTH (taxpayer-paid health insurance0, iof you make less than $12,000/year. Section 8 housing and EBIT , food stamps are also limited to those with low incomes That is why farm jobs are frequently filled by illegal aliens. I thought RomneyCare covered everybody. And there are plenty of programs in many places for the working poor. But, I agree in general. If employers don’t want to pay more than a person can get from welfare (not a lot) they are going to have problems finding anyone who can get welfare to work for them. That’s capitalism. If they are so into profits that they want to risk getting busted for hiring illegals, they should go ahead. It is a level playing field - if they can’t compete with those who are efficient enough to offer decent wages, tough. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2012, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-finding-a-job-so-much-harder-than-decades-ago/644378/52 "2012-12-20T17:42:12Z")
> [@ladyfoxfyre](#): > > Not surprisingly, you are wrong about everything you posted here. > [Q&A: Illegal Immigrants And Public Benefits In Mass. | WBUR News](http://www.wbur.org/2010/06/21/immigration-explainer) > > So the only thing they do get is access to housing ONLY IF the primary person receiving assistance is a legal immigrant, and some basic healthcare safety net that only applies for people under 19, pregnant women, and emergency rooms. I think he was talking about citizens not working because they can get more from these program than these slave drivers want to pay. Like I said, even if illegals were eligible for some of these programs, they are very nervous about getting too close to the government. I can just imagine how much they’d want their address in a government database. ---
**Author:** ![grude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47774/32.png) [@grude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grude)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2012, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-finding-a-job-so-much-harder-than-decades-ago/644378/53 "2012-12-20T18:29:46Z")
Welfare in the USA is mostly state run which means there are big differences in eligibility. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2012, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-finding-a-job-so-much-harder-than-decades-ago/644378/54 "2012-12-20T21:01:17Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > Very true. It might not affect the actual hiring rate, but it certainly means any person applying for jobs has a much lower hit rate than before. And it is the reason why companies no longer respond - with HR cut, we can’t afford to. This is the biggest reason. When I would hire people, we would get hundreds of resumes, most of which would be completely unqualified. The only ones who would get a response from HR would be candidates we actually contacted and put through the interview process. Most people don’t seem to realize that most hiring isn’t done by HR. It’s done by a department manager who has a full time job managing his department on top of his new part time job of interviewing staff. And for the most part, companies do not train people how to interview candidates. > [@Freddy\_the\_Pig](#): > > I question the premise that jobs were easier to get in some mythical past. My father suffered through lengthy bouts of unemployment in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. My blue-collar uncle fared no better, bouncing from one soon-to-be-closed factory to another, afraid to quit lousy jobs with long hours and tyrannical bosses because he never knew if he’d find another. I myself graduated college in 1980 and found no job–zero, zip, nada. I had to go back to graduate school and wait for conditions to improve. > > Sure, if you got into General Motors in 1948 or IBM in 1953, you did well. Not every job was like that–never has been, never will. Not to mention, working for GM or IBM was mostly reserved for top applicants, much in the same way that working for Goldman Sachs or Google is today. > [@Voyager](#): > > Another problem is the definition of skilled worker. Big companies used to have internal universities where they did a lot of training. These seem to have dried up. Lots of companies, to save money, no longer want to hire someone with the right degree and train them in a specific methodology; they want to hire someone with those exact skills so little training is required. And then they complain about the lack of those with the right skills. Most training these days seems to take the form of “cultureal” or “team building” training. Like the company will fly everyone to Dallas to spend a week doing icebreaker exercises and listening to lectures on how awesome it is to work there. Really what companyies are looking for these days are creative, innovative, strategic thinkers. People who can quickly adapt and come up with new ideas how to do stuff. The assumption is that these people are smart enough to learn stuff on their own. And to an extent they are correct. There is no reason you can’t go online and download a software demo or look up the information you need from any number of industry sources. The new “unskilled” workers are the “drones” who want to be told specifically what tasks to perform so they can perform them exactly as told until it’s time to go home. For those type of roles, companies don’t want to provide training. They want to bring in the exact skillset from a pool of exactly the same candidates and pay them the exact market rate. ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2012, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-finding-a-job-so-much-harder-than-decades-ago/644378/55 "2012-12-20T22:59:16Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > I thought RomneyCare covered everybody. And there are plenty of programs in many places for the working poor. But, I agree in general. If employers don’t want to pay more than a person can get from welfare (not a lot) they are going to have problems finding anyone who can get welfare to work for them. That’s capitalism. If they are so into profits that they want to risk getting busted for hiring illegals, they should go ahead. It is a level playing field - if they can’t compete with those who are efficient enough to offer decent wages, tough. That was my point..if you add what you can get (EBIT , welfare, MASSHEALTH, and section 8 housing), it makes no sense to get a low wage job-you get more by doing nothing. Not only that, but there are a variety of educational programs that pay incentives. I never said or implied that illegal aliens were able to get these benefits-I only said that the existance of these benefits is a factor in why illegal aliens take low wage jobs. Put simply, why work if you can get these benefits for free? ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2012, 7:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-finding-a-job-so-much-harder-than-decades-ago/644378/56 "2012-12-21T07:46:23Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > T > Most training these days seems to take the form of “cultureal” or “team building” training. Like the company will fly everyone to Dallas to spend a week doing icebreaker exercises and listening to lectures on how awesome it is to work there. That seems to be gone also, at least from what I see from the people we just hired. For a long stretch so few people got hired I guess they got out of the habit of having these classes. > [@](#): > > Really what companyies are looking for these days are creative, innovative, strategic thinkers. People who can quickly adapt and come up with new ideas how to do stuff. The assumption is that these people are smart enough to learn stuff on their own. And to an extent they are correct. There is no reason you can’t go online and download a software demo or look up the information you need from any number of industry sources. That’s what I look for. But it doesn’t appear to be what the CIOs are looking for. Many of these packages are way too complex to learn in your spare time, and anyhow lots of companies make good money selling courses about them, so there isn’t stuff available. Open source type packages yes. Hell, my company sells some of these types of packages, and I have access to all the training material, but I don’t have a month or two to get even a decent working knowledge of them. > [@](#): > > The new “unskilled” workers are the “drones” who want to be told specifically what tasks to perform so they can perform them exactly as told until it’s time to go home. For those type of roles, companies don’t want to provide training. They want to bring in the exact skillset from a pool of exactly the same candidates and pay them the exact market rate. Drones might use Excel. Expertise on a data analytics package requires a lot more than dronelike abilities. Part of the attitude of these guys is annoyance that schools don’t train students on just the package they need. Schools, good ones, do try to encourage creativity. But some managers (not mine, at least) seem to be scared of that. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2012, 7:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-finding-a-job-so-much-harder-than-decades-ago/644378/57 "2012-12-21T07:48:40Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > That was my point..if you add what you can get (EBIT , welfare, MASSHEALTH, and section 8 housing), it makes no sense to get a low wage job-you get more by doing nothing. Not only that, but there are a variety of educational programs that pay incentives. I never said or implied that illegal aliens were able to get these benefits-I only said that the existance of these benefits is a factor in why illegal aliens take low wage jobs. Put simply, why work if you can get these benefits for free? I agree. So businesses can either break the law, reduce benefits so that those they choose not to hire anyhow starve to death, or raise their wages enough to be attractive. Like I said, capitalism at work. ---
**Author:** ![pullin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c57346/32.png) [@pullin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pullin)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2012, 10:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-finding-a-job-so-much-harder-than-decades-ago/644378/58 "2012-12-21T10:55:03Z")
I wonder if part of the problem is companies doing more extensive background checks. I’ll skip the details, but I’ve seen quite a few instances where an applicant was rejected due to their past, or not hired because they were ineligible for a security clearance. I don’t know how widespread this is, but it seems like it would affect people who in the 60’s-70’s could just move to a new town and essentially start over. That option no longer exists. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2012, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-finding-a-job-so-much-harder-than-decades-ago/644378/59 "2012-12-21T13:56:01Z")
Another problem with the background checks is that lazy checkers don’t distinguish between multiple instances of the same name. Heaven help you if your name is “John Smith” because odds are someone with that name did Something Bad somewhere, even if it wasn’t you in particular. Then there are the companies that don’t want to hire you if you are NOT on social media - there must be something wrong with you if you aren’t spilling your private life on Facebook. ---
**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2012, 3:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-finding-a-job-so-much-harder-than-decades-ago/644378/60 "2012-12-21T15:00:33Z")
[QUOTE=msmith537;15818128}] Really what companyies are looking for these days are creative, innovative, strategic thinkers. People who can quickly adapt and come up with new ideas how to do stuff. The assumption is that these people are smart enough to learn stuff on their own. And to an extent they are correct. There is no reason you can’t go online and download a software demo or look up the information you need from any number of industry sources. [/QUOTE] And then they are disappointed when creative, innovative, strategic thinkers aren’t doers (generally speaking). I’m one of them and its great, bosses love me - but I am not good at seeing things through to the end. I get bored. I don’t like details. I work best with someone who has more discipline than I do and helps me stay on track…and I’m not alone when you are looking at that skill set - a lot of us are a little more the absent minded professor type. Or alternatively, they are great researchers who get lost in one idea for years - also not great in a corporation. My soon to be former boss was a great example of a wonderful creative, innovative, strategic thinker - with the attention span of a magpie. Combined with me, we wasted a year. You need doers. You need people who will hunker down and not really ask why - other than to understand their end result. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-finding-a-job-so-much-harder-than-decades-ago/644378.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-finding-a-job-so-much-harder-than-decades-ago/644378.md?page=4)