There's No Talent Shortage. There's a Sourcing Shortage.

Ask almost any hiring manager why a role has been open for three months, and you'll hear some version of the same answer. There just isn't enough talent out there.

Most of the time, that isn't true. The talent exists. It just isn't showing up in the places companies are looking.

Job boards and LinkedIn Easy Apply capture a narrow slice of the market: people who are actively searching, know exactly what to search for, and are willing to compete against hundreds of other applicants for visibility. That leaves out a much larger group. People who are open to the right opportunity but aren't scrolling job boards. People whose resumes don't use the exact keywords that an applicant tracking system is scanning for, even though their actual experience fits. People with non-traditional backgrounds who never held the "right" title but have done the work.

An applicant tracking system built around rigid keyword matching will filter all of those people out before a human ever sees their resume. So will a job description written as a wish list instead of an honest picture of the role. The result looks like a talent shortage from the inside, but it's really a filtering problem dressed up as a market problem.

Fixing it doesn't start with lowering the bar. It starts with sourcing actively instead of waiting for applications to arrive, writing job postings that describe the real work instead of a fantasy candidate, and loosening keyword filters enough to let a human actually evaluate the person behind the resume.

The candidates your team needs are very likely out there right now. The question is whether your process is built to find them, or built to filter them out before you ever get the chance.