This is about a decade ago, but nothing seems to have changed.
I worked at 24×7 L2 (event monitoring and incident management) team as tech lead. I was involved in interviewing several times. Tough job, need tech skills, problem solving skills and people skills. We would take any two and work on the rest.
HR would take all the applications and rank them against the selection criteria. No idea what the process was, but suspect if any human actually read any of the applications, that person didn't understand a single word, because the applicants we got were awful. That came out wrong. Did not match, on paper, the minimum criteria for an interview. I'm sure they were fine people. And those that we did interview… 4 – 8 ,depending… Performed poorly. Either on the technical side, or more often on the soft skills side.
Now, don't take this the wrong way. We were well aware of how difficult interviewing is, and how challenging it can be to perform under that pressure, especially when you need a job. Personal experience and deep sympathy. So that was our base and we tried to make it as easy as possible. Start with a general discussion about them, ease into it. Ex public service company, so standard question-response – we are looking for a 4 part story. Background, set-up, action, consequences. (This is all included in the application, plus explained in the interview)
It was painful. So many great people we couldn't offer jobs to, who's time we wasted, who's experience was… disappointing…
At the same time I was looking for a new role, internally and externally.
I wasn't in a rush so I was only applying for roles where I was at least 80% qualified and often over qualified. Wage wasn't really a factor (I was well underpaid anyway) as much as career path and opportunity to extend my skills.
Sent out 30 or so applications each weekend. For months. That resulted in 5 interviews, of which it was pretty clear in the first few minutes I was not a good match for…
Clearly there is a mismatch between hiring and job seeking that the entire recruitment industry is failing at. How is this possible?
I've had similar conversations with multiple people who hire into technical roles, who deal with HR selection.
Application calls for Scrum Master experience, applicant uses a different term that means the same thing and HR bins it.
Hiring manager knows someone who would be an excellent candidate and wants to interview them. Application submitted, gets binned.
The number of conversations I've had with perfectly lovely recruiters who don't know what skills they are hiring for… Ok, some of them are just rude, like the person who after being told sorry I'm not interested kept calling offering less money… three times… oi vey, rant mode off…
The only way around the problem seems to be to take HR out of the loop. Accept that you will be plowing through hundreds of badly written documents looking for half a unicorn.
(Pro tip. In tech, if you get female applicants, interview them. Or just hire them. Social dissuasion since preschool hadn't deterred them yet. They want to be there and will reward your faith)