The mystifying job market

OK, this just does not add up.

Locally (I live in Kailua Kona, Hawaii) I have this aquaintence who recently got fired and just found another job. Now that's not normally anything to even get a shrug, but for this guy it's a habit. What I mean is, he is such a lousy employment prospect, he is so inept, his personality is such a turn-off, that he eventually gets himself fired. But it seems like only two or three days pass before he has yet ANOTHER job. In THIS market!

Yet, I know people here with stellar talent, skills and experience, wonderful personal qualities and a real find for a business, who cannot even get a lead to save their lives these days. Some of them are on their last bit of unemployment and some have even run out. They sit here unemployed, while people like this jackass I know just effortlessly float from job to job in a 10% unemployment climate.

This does not compute. Is anyone else seeing this sort of thing? If so, why do you think it is? Are employers just not paying attention now, or are they getting some sort of benefit by hiring losers only to fire them five months later?

Why are the no personality, no talent wankers finding job after job and the real employment jems are on the verge of starvation?

Benny packages, everything. It's just ponderous! You would think the "word" would get out about him and he wouldn't be able to be hired in a thousand mile radius....but.....

with all of that experience. Since he sounds like he really doesn't care, I'd say that this is especially true. Another guess is that he's a good BS'er. That skill takes you places.

Whenever I was hired I found out they checked every single one. Or at least had their ear to the ground about a person's rep....

Enough don't though so the shotgun approach works in his favor as well. Hell, you could make up a previous job and have your friend pretend to be your boss. It would probably work.

The guy is practically poison for every place he works yet he continues to walk into job after job. I really cannot figure it out.

In many cases, that assumption is false.

If the manager doing the hiring has limited technical expertise about the job, the manager will not hire the most skilled person as that manager will feel threatened by a talented subordinate.

Such managers will prefer to hire someone just adequate to do the work who will be submissive and never question whatever the boss tells them to do.

This occurs a lot in the information systems field where the top managers have business degrees, but know nothing about operating, designing, or programming computer systems. They hire senior system analysts who know a little bit more than they do, but not much.

There may be a few programmers at the lower end of the pecking order, maybe one or at most two in a small shop, who are reasonably competent, but that is the reality of the work place.

This is true in all fields of work. In the case of the acquaintance you mentioned, the hiring manager didn't imagine how bad he would be on the job. He assumed that the guy couldn't be THAT bad, and previous managers were reluctant to tell what he was really like, and risk a possible law suit.

As for the really talented people, they actually have a harder time finding a job, because they are competing against a large number of the merely mediocre who are less threatening to most managers, and cost less.

My suggestion to your friends who are talented and having difficulty finding work is to not over promote themselves. In difficult economic times, sometimes being adequate will do better for your job search.