As CIPD chief economic adviser John Philpott indicates, the only way we can avoid three million unemployed people next year is if the UK hits its growth targets, and the private-sector job market sweetly hoovers up the people made jobless from the public sector.

John calculates that “the UK economy would need to grow by at least 2.5 per cent (ie, ahead of most current predictions) for each of the next five years for the private sector to create enough jobs to more than offset the employment impact of the squeeze on public spending. Will fiscal pain spur private-sector jobs gain, as the coalition's economic strategy assumes? Yes, but probably not by very much and certainly not any time soon".

But even this presupposes like-for-like replacements – that, say, a fireman can find a similar job in the private sector. Worse, with the private-sector job market still suffering badly, it seems to me that any recruiters (and there are few enough of them as it is) can insist on an absolute fit with their understanding of what the role requires. Candidates won’t stand a chance unless they have precisely the requested skills, experience and behaviours - there’ll be too many people ahead of them in the queue that have exactly what’s being asked for.

I know of one HR director who applied for a job. He had appropriate sector experience and knowledge of the specific industry, both at senior level; he happened to be local, so knew the area; he didn’t even get an interview. The recruiting organisation was so swamped with applications, they didn’t even have time to give feedback or explain how our contact had missed out.

Quite apart from the implications for the unemployment figures, does this mean the death of recruiting by core skills? Will recruiters bother? They have the luxury of being able to be very precise and demanding. It’s a saturated market, very much a buyer’s market – there are plenty enough people with CVs that fit to the letter.

But where will this leave organisations in the medium term? Will it mean bringing in less people with innovative perspectives, as a core skills approach would allow you to do? True, you’re taking a risk with the lack of direct experience, but arguably that can be learned.

Are we silently drifting into a “same old, same old” recruitment strategy?