I have a CQE and an MS in Quality Engineering Management. I can take a 4 hour course and sift what I need from it and make it useful. Not all recruiter's candidates are equal.  Many other candidates are as qualified and I am or more so. A Six Sigma practitioner in Health Care cannot be expected to 'hit-the-ground-running' in the automotive industry. They may know the methodology but not necessarily when to apply it. There are a boat load of statistical tools to choose from. Just look at the DeMystifying set of books for a beginning.

I do agree that some recruiting firms may try for the 'quick fix' fit but none of the ones that ever worked with over the past 30 years fit that image. All of the recruiting firms that I have used or dealt with spent effort to ensure that I was a good fit for the position. I can recall only one time where I was drawn into a tasking where I had no expertise. I told the managers about it at the beginning. I said that I had only related experience but that I would learn fast. He and she were pleased that I was honest and gave me the shot. I am autodidactic and it was a good fit.

Deming did warn us about 'Instant Pudding' in one of his lists. It is true. But not all recruiting firms are equal just like not all humans are equal. There are some who are in the upper 3 sigma.

I am still a sophmore of Six Sigma and will be entering my "online" training for the blackbelt this winter.  However with the years of employment and have had to use lean, lean six sigma etc, has given me alot of advantages into just assisting in my employers QMS.

We started a new project on site - which is now ended after a year because of such issues you mentioned in this article.  There was such chaos going on and production was literally kicking quality to the curb and winning.  After a certain incident that received the FAA's attention, all of quality top to bottom was called into conference to gather information. The top and middle layers did the finger pointing at others while we, lowers, pretty much stated that we had in both production and quality managment too many chiefs with "fake" war feathers.   As we lower level gave example after example, the outsourced HR group knew we had seen the band-aid problem.  At the end of the meeting, I asked what will the employer do about this?    This was 3 months ago and we still haven't heard any feedback.

What's truly sad is, when I worked for this same company 5 years ago on its new multi-nation made project, they shifted top & middle managers who were on their "last leg" it made the program so awful and stressful to deal with, band-aid after band-aid.  I was told by a directing manger,"it doesn't matter how bad the business plan is or how awful the qms is constantly getting the hit, as long as we're producing the product, we can sell alone on name brand."