There's definitely not an oversupply of skilled labor, there is just a ton of noise in the hiring process right now.

Our software engineering job posts on LinkedIn & Indeed generate hundreds of applicants per day, the vast majority of which can't code at all. Attempting to sift through them is just too costly so we mostly use alternate sources: tech recruiters, more selective job sites. The problem is those sources heavily filter themselves and don't always use the most fair criteria.

We used to have unique challenge problems online to offer a more level playing field, but solutions were constantly posted to github so even that became quite time-consuming to maintain.

We're still hiring at a decent rate, but do have more headcount than we can fill right now. There are definitely qualified candidates out there but attempting to filter them from the mass of applicants is difficult.

As for the 'noise' factor, try red-teaming your hiring processes, though for your particular situation it may not be the best. For example: with the major job sites, make a fake profile that is a 100% match, apply for your jobs, see if the fake person gets through, at what rate, etc. Do it for 90%, 80%, 70% matches too (define the % match as you see fit).

Trying to 'hack/red-team' your own system may reveal weaknesses and flaws you weren't thinking of and help the hiring process. See what penetrates, what doesn't, chat about it over lunch, etc. And yes, it does seem like taking an adversarial approach towards your very own hiring processes is insane, but here we are.

I'd love to know which are the more selective job sites. I'm having trouble finding work and i haven't figured out if it's due to a horrible resume (hired a tech recruiter to do it so I assume not) or if I'm horrible at interviews.

I'm convinced that interviewing for programming jobs and being able to code are two different skills. Making it worse for myself is that I come from the military and IC so i dont have any public blogs or Github activity so i can't pretend to be a "thought leader", which I'm also pretty sure is a bullshit term.

Hired.com, Triplebyte.

Working on a side project and creating a real Github commit stream is also useful.

Eh. Triplebyte only recruits for jobs in like three cities.

Your friend needs to pretend to be a data scientist. That's what they call data analysis now. If she's any good, then she'll be a whole lot better than any recent PhD grad (if I wasn't 5k miles away, I'd interview her at least based on your description).

Well, she doesn't have a computer science degree. She's an MBA who's learned SQL, tableau, excel, etc (working at a large company 500+ people). She pulls out data with SQL queries and knows how to use excel inside and out. she's made it all the way to the final interview, but everytime they figure out she had a baby, they assume she's going to have a 2nd one.

I'd be happy to explore with your friend if I know of any consulting/contract opportunities for her and provide some guidance on resources for going forwards with that. She may get better traction that way; contractors are treated much differently from employees.

I strongly encourage her to contact the EEOC. https://www.eeoc.gov/employees/charge.cfm

Isn't that an open-and-shut discrimination case?

Unfortunately no. You can easily not hire someone for "fit" without describing why you didn't think that they fit. You can also say a million other legal reasons for not hiring. Unless they specifically say that you were not hired because you're a momma then you've got a long, long hill to climb.