Employers have gotten spoiled  during previous times of massiveunemployment.  They are also cheap, and don't want to trainanybody.  They look for people who can just move into a positionas if they had always been there, and run.

This is massively stupid in my view, but they, as the employer, continue to do this.

I worked in corporate IT, leading large business applicationdevelopment projects that used, for example, a certain softwareset  referred to as Peoplesoft.  Peoplesoft applications areupdated from time to time by the vendor, and these updates come as'releases' or 'versions'.  So there is Version 8.3, then maybeVersion 8.5, and so on.  Usually each new release or version makesa few significant changes, and perhaps many minor ones, but the overallapplication is virtually unchanged, and the actual work with thesereleases or versions is the same.  But you have most employers whowant Peoplesoft analysts and programmers looking for people withVersion 8.5 experience, for example.  If you have 4 years ofexperience with Version 8.3, they will tell you that you areunqualified and they don't want to talk to you, even though the realityis that someone with almost any PeopleSoft experience could do the workwithout much problem.  But the employers just won't consider it.

Now, companies that have been using applications like Peoplesoft forsome time go through these upgrades every couple of years or so. So they have been running & working with Version 8.3 for threeyears, let's say, then they decide to make the upgrade to Version8.5.  Given the logic they use in hiring people from outside inwhich they only will take people who already have Version 8.5experience, you would think that they should fire their entire currentstaff because they don't have Version 8.5 experience either and aretherfore unqualified to work with it--they've been working with 8.3 forthe past 3 or 4 years.  Of course this doesn't happen.  Thisreflects the disposable nature of technical knowledge & experience,most of which is concocted by companies who don't want to train anyoneany longer.  This is part of how an entire generation of softwarepeople have been discarded by American corporations, mostly BabyBoomers.

This kind of thing in tech jobs, by the way, is used as a justificationby companies like Microsoft and a host of others to push the expansionof the H1B immigrant visa program.  Guys like Bill Gates go beforea Congressional committee whining about the 'fact' that Microsoft can'tget enough people from India into this country to work for Microsoftbecause there are not enough workers here who have the necessaryskills.  Gates, of course, is lying through his teeth, as heargued that, to him, immigrant workers from India have done more forthis country than all the American workers every have.  What hedidn't mention before this Congressional committee is that Microsoft isinvesting billions of dollars in India and will likely hire more peoplein India than it will in the U.S.  All this while Gates blamesAmerican workers for being unskilled, lazy, and expensive.  Theguy should be ridden out of the country on a rail.