Quote Originally Posted by Loki View Post
I think the same argument applies here as it does to the college diploma one. HR people assume that there's a good reason why someone didn't work for so long, and that reason is that they weren't good enough. If they're not good enough for other companies, why would they be good enough for this one? Again, HR people don't actually have the time to go through each resume and judge it on its merits. It's certainly unfair, but I'm not sure how this problem can be resolved.
I think it's reasonable to look much less at those people without a college degree, but this other practice is not reasonable or efficient, from a global economic viewpoint. There are two things that could reduce the practice. One is lower unemployment, making the application pool smaller. (a catch-22, there) The other is for governments around the world to encourage small and mid-sized business over larger ones.

The fundamental problem is that large businesses have economies of scale -- those are sometimes made via marketing or manufacturing, but it seems that more and more companies achieve this by limiting competition in a variety of ways -- buying suppliers or buying buyers, for instance. (brings to mind Comcast buying 51% of NBC) So, when there are few players in a market, HR practices are done on the basis of what is easiest to the HR people, not what brings the company more money. This goes to two facets that the government can regulate -- (1) stock owner rights (forced granting of more rights to minority stock owners), so that the stock owners demand efficiency, and (2) anti-trust regulation.

Changes in anti-trust aggressiveness by the Obama administration and (if I remember correctly) recently enacted legislation in stock ownership voting rights (or some-such thing) did address both of these issues, but they may both be too weak to be effective in causing any real change.