The personel office won't have to screen thru the thousands of applications for the desperate applying for any freaking job there is. When I was unployed, I had idiot friends pushing to apply for any job - even if there is not a match at all! These morons just think that if a person is w/o a job, the person should apply for work 24/7. I can just imagine a jobless person with a spouse who expects a steady income from him/her. It is hard enough to be with a job and without money. It is much harder when there are idiots who simply expect you to be able to keep doing the stuff you used to do....
Okay, but why use a "currently employed" rule, rather than something else, to accomplish this? A lot of people who are very qualified happen to be unemployed. Sorry if I seem a bit slow on the uptake here.
Agree. This only forces the unemployed into deception. It seems many employers don't want people who absolutely need the job to survive. Some retail stores now prefer retirees, home makers or kids for thieir part-time jobs or full-time work that one cannot live on. Even if one live frugally, basic housing in some cities is simply to costly compare to minimum wage. some Employers are looking for workers working for pocket money, not for living expense.
That is really dumb the more I think about it. Those "full time job hunters" applying for things they aren't qualified for are part of the problem too. They're making it more expensive for companies to hire people because they need HR to spend hours going through stacks of worthless resumes and talk to unqualified people on the phone, etc etc. Yet that does seem to be the conventional wisdom, the idea that job hunting is a full-time job. That really needs to change.
More likely than not, the "full time job hunters" are applying for jobs they are over-qualified for. E.g. A veteran software developer applying for an entry-level program job.
Or the HR department only has 1 person left and the company doesn't want to keep paying her overtime to go through thousands of resumes?
It is not illegal is discriminate against the unemployed. The personnel department must have made the assumption that if a person is unemployed, he/she probable is unemployable or undesirable in some way! Or else why would the person be without work?