Companies won’t even look at résumés of the long-term unemployed

[FreeJoe]

9. It's a harsh reality

In my 25 year career, I've hired probably less than a person a year on average. Once hired, they can be particularly hard to fire unless they are a disaster. I'm guessing that most other people in corporations are in similar circumstances - few chances to hire and you have to live with the consequences of those hiring decisions for a long time. That makes a hiring manager very risk averse. They will often pass over the chance to hire someone that might be awesome for someone that they are confident will be pretty good.

That leads to a lot of soceital problems. One is what was mentioned in the OP. Someone that has been out of work for a long time may be a great worker caught up by circumstances. But then again, they might have other problems. Someone with a huge stack of resumes that needs to be cut down to a handful to interview is going to pass up on any resume with an obvious negative on it.

A similar problem I see is that people hire people they know directly or indirectly. I think about 1/3 of the people I've hired have been people I either worked with in the past or had close contacts that worked with them. This is pretty rational behavior for the person doing the hiring, but it leads to serious societal problems as people on the outside try to break into the social circles of those on the inside.