People, especially young recent graduates who make up a big part of the unemployed, really need job search and interview coaching. Their parents and schools have left them completely unprepared for that task.

Devil's advocate: or is it employers that need interview coaching? If a candidate otherwise suited for the job (with necessary training, skills, aptitude, etc) is rejected on the basis of an interview, I would suggest it's a problem with the interview.

Unless, of course, there aren't enough jobs for qualified candidates, which is a different problem altogether and interview-training some candidates will only result in an arms-escalation without any benefit on the macro scale.

Problem is, who's going to pay? Unemployed, especially long term unemployed don't have any money since they can't blow their monthly food budget on a 15 minute consultation.

My plan, if I ever am unemployed with no chances immediately available, is to work up a consortium with the other people in my position and do some kind of coop business on the internet. We can all get together in a cheap coffeeshop or one of our places and start hacking. I feel very ruthless in this metter: I refuse to just "lay down and take it". I can fix computers, perform small business IT, create websites, software, etc. My time immediately becomes "free" to burn a great deal of it on this sort of thing. Job hunting does not take THAT much time if you're looking in the right place.

If you are long-term unemployed, IMO, you are your business, and you need to hustle very aggressively on that.

I actually have an idea for how to solve that problem but I don't want to blow the idea. There's a startup concept that could work, but I need to pass it by a few key players.

There's also a market opportunity for "career incubators" that train people relevant skills, like that one organization in S.F. that was training Rails developers from the ground up.

Any particular reason you say that other than the existence of the aforementioned "career incubators?"

This story seems to be a problem in need of a solution. Doesn't that suggest a market for solutions?

Imperfectly or no, isn't this what recruiters do?

Recruiters work for the company, because that's who pays them, and because companies tend to be more selective but also more stable as clients (i.e. you'll lose a worker after 2 bad placements, but usually not a client).