Reference check-up is an essential step in the process of hiring the workforce. This step gives employers the chance to test the applicant’s labor skills and personal attributes and confirm if he or she is capable of executing the job role applied for. However, many institutions neglect this step. By ignoring this step, job applicants get into jobs that they are incompatible with. The act leads to unemployment for the employee. Organizations are setting their staff for failure from the start by not doing being careful with reference checking before hiring.

There are three discussed reasons why capable job applicants can be affected by a long-term unemployment period.  First, the nature of the work could change, and the outside unemployed workforce may no longer have the potential skills to execute the new jobs. Second, some organizational employers have a belief that a long unemployment period is an indicator of incompetence, lack of skills, despite the required skills for a job remaining unchanged. Third, some employers have an assumption that a long period of unemployment regardless of the applicant’s level of skill indicates lack of ambition and conscientiousness. Categorically, some employers have the belief that when an applicant applies for work after their unemployment benefits expire, is an indicator of a lazy applicant, and the applicant would prefer not to work if he or she could get away.

In conclusion, it seems once in the unemployment world, and the longer the unemployed are there, the more difficult it is to get employed back to the workforce. Therefore, a comprehensive and systematic system of testing the applicants’ job merit through checking and testing on skills relevancy, personal and office attributes is necessary for any organization. All organizations aim at having qualified staff to maximize profits and minimize loss.

Each company includes different testing practices before hiring such as oral interviews, training and recruiting processes. However, the testing methods utilized by these companies come with challenges. The employers’ hiring practices are sometimes witnessed by discriminatory practices for some applicants either directly or indirectly such as employers’ prejudice, corruption, discrimination, and favoritism. I strongly recommend an international labor law to be established to stop an applicant’s rejection based upon a presumption of guilt by the employer after staying for six months or more without seeking for employment. In reality, job applicants who have stayed unemployment for a long time want nothing meaningful than resuming to their prior jobs or getting new ones and should not be subjected to discrimination uncovered in the law due to the employers’ prejudice on their current position.

In conclusion, the unemployed should become unemployable if merited through an open and competitive job hiring process free from corruption, and biasedness. Then the applicant should be proven able or unable to do the applied job and provided with relevant reasons why the employer’s decision. The government should also offer programs which include training who either have or risk having long unemployment periods. In the Andrew Bricknell case whereby he was laid off from his prior job as an automotive designer at General Motors, and could not get back to the same job when the same employer started hiring several years later could be curbed by initiating government programs to equip him on the new technological changes in his field. Unfortunately, car design had moved to more complicated computer platforms over time from drafting boards. Local initiatives in which business entities work together with non-profit organizations to provide job skills to fight all unemployment levels such as agricultural and industrial shows should be encouraged.