How companies can fill the skilled worker gap -- start training them again!

FORTUNE -- Today approximately one in seven people in the United States lives in poverty. One of the lessons of the last decade has been realizing our increasing interdependency on each other globally -- with respect to financial markets and the environment, among many other fronts.

Joblessness is a key issue facing the United States today and one that highlights this interdependency, as many people beyond immediate and extended families are affected by it. Joblessness erodes our national optimism, our enthusiasm for innovation, as well as our overall economic outlook and it leads to the wealthiest nation in the world having a poverty problem.

Some of the solutions to joblessness are intractable and complex. Others are more manageable, like for instance, better utilization of the huge idled workforce just waiting for another job in this country.

Among the recent issues being discussed with respect to U.S. joblessness is the number of available jobs for which there are no skilled applicants. But, like the mortgage modeler who came to believe that housing prices couldn't go down, we may not be operating with the right model when it comes to our views on hiring and training. Being able to find people with precisely the right skills to step into a job is a relatively new assumption, historically speaking. Does this model of filling jobs really serve us? Will it help us solve U.S. joblessness?

Thirty years ago, computer companies hired pools of programmers and engineers who did not know how to write code when they were hired but who were expected to learn on the job. Requiring previous Fortran and machine language experience wasn't the norm in those days, and the best programmers may not have even had the opportunity to learn those languages in college. Rather, finding smart people who would learn and put their aptitude to work was the goal.

Fast forward to today when many companies have allowed software -- and the companies that make software -- to rule their businesses. Rather than thinking through what's actually crucial in running a business, companies have become accustomed to buying software from enterprise software companies like Oracle (ORCL, Fortune 500), SAP (SAP), and IBM (IBM, Fortune 500), and organizing their business practices around the less-than-robust thinking required to run the programs. Then, when laying out job descriptions, instead of looking for someone who has handled certain challenges or achieved certain goals, companies simply require several years of experience with that particular accounting, or CRM, or invoicing, or HR suite, and tend to look at little else.

It's not only software firms that have hijacked the thinking inside U.S. business; consultant models have done so also. Management techniques like TQM, Lean, and Six Sigma are quite valuable, but it's the concepts behind these programs rather than an automaton following them that is important. Yet, again, in developing job descriptions, firms persist in requiring specific experience in those particular techniques.

Why is this? Because just as in the time of rising housing prices the mortgage models seemed to work fine, in the time of nearly full employment, requiring specifics was easy and convenient. The need for businesses to work together to shoulder this responsibility of sustained unemployment was not critical, the way it is today.

Time to retool the hiring process

Just as mortgage firms have had to retool, so must companies, with board oversight, rethink the recruiting process. The human-resource function has always been one of the least recognized and least addressed in U.S. businesses. The first place to start is with those who recruit.

Companies and boards need to ensure that their recruiters are people who can think beyond the keywords of software programs and recognize real talent, who can understand that someone right out of college-or someone in their 50s, 60s, or 70s-may have as much to bring to the company as a disgruntled 30- or 40-year-old with the specific experience that the job description asked for.

Reconsidering recruiting systems is important not only for our current situation of joblessness and economic malaise, it's also important in strengthening our firms. Future software packages will change-what was necessary before is obsolete now-and firms need employees who can bridge that gap, not people who know only one thing very well, and resist change or innovation. Companies will need people who can imagine the future and can meet whatever new challenge this changing world brings.

Creating a resilient and enthusiastic staff with diverse experiences is important both in the C-suite and on the shop floor. It begins with boards recognizing that their role in creating the economy includes ensuring that the recruiting practices of the firms they oversee are not convenience- and short-term oriented but rather are aimed at building a core of individuals who can carry the firm through unforeseen changes.

Those individuals may or may not have six years of Six Sigma and two years of SAS. Those valuable employees, if they can think, can easily learn those skills. But it's the thinking that ultimately will matter -- to the firm and collectively to our economic growth.

--Eleanor Bloxham is CEO of The Value Alliance and Corporate Governance Alliance, a board advisory firm.