Connecting employers with jobs seekers in today's economy

About 350,000 newly unemployed people signed up for financial assistance in the United States during the first week of July. The nation’s jobless rate was eight point two percent in both May and June.

Some employers say they would add employees if they could find workers with important technology skills. As VOA’s Jim Randle reports, some experts say better communication and technology could reduce this "skills gap."

​​Angel Gurria is head of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. He says even some well-educated people are having trouble finding work around the world.

ANGEL GURRIA: "There are unemployed graduates on the streets, while employers search in vain for people with the skills they need. There is an obvious mismatch here. And it is a paradox and a great tragedy."

OECD officials say more than 44 million people are unemployed in the thirty-four wealthiest nations belonging to the organization.

In the United States alone, nearly thirteen million people are unemployed. But the country also has more than three point six million unfilled jobs. Experts say some positions are unfilled because those seeking work lack high-technology skills.

A company called Monster Worldwide is using some new technology it says can help solve that problem. Company official Earl Rennison says computer programs called "semantic search" are able to process huge amounts of information. That includes millions of resumes, to help connect skilled people with open jobs.

Earl Rennison says semantic search is designed to choose the right match from the words or expressions around a key word. He says this helps it get the right match even if a job posting, resume or other documents use different words to express the same idea. He says better searches will lead to better matches, and fill more jobs.

Rich Milgram is head of a recruitment company called Beyond.com. He says another problem is that the people who are experts at finding just the right workers were the first ones out of work during the recession.

He also says it will take time for companies to rebuild their workforces, even if they have added new recruiters.

RICH MILGRAM: "They [the new recruiters] don't understand the business that well because they are new, they don't have a rapport with the hiring managers."

Rich Milgram says companies in need excellent workers have to do a good job of writing job advertisements that are understandable. And job seekers need to make it clear to hiring managers how they can help their companies.

And that's the VOA Special English Economics Report. For transcripts, MP3s and now PDFs of our programs for e-readers, go to voaspecialenglish.com. I’m Mario Ritter.