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Why Bad Jobs (or No Jobs) Happen To Good Workers
sean_nestor writes "Back in October, an article appeared in The Wall Street Journal with the headline 'Why Companies Aren't Getting the Employees They Need.' It noted that even with millions of highly educated and highly trained workers sidelined by the worst economic downturn in three generations, companies were reporting shortages of skilled workers. Companies typically blame schools, for not providing the right training; the government, for not letting in enough skilled immigrants; and workers themselves, who all too often turn down good jobs at good wages. The author of the article, an expert on employment and management issues, concluded that although employers are in almost complete agreement about the skills gap, there was no actual evidence of it. Instead, he said, 'The real culprits are the employers themselves.'" The linked article is an interview with Peter Cappelli, author of the WSJ piece, who has recently published a book on the alleged skills gap.
and workers themselves, who all too often turn down good jobs at good wages
Unfortunately, a company's definition of "good wages" is all too often directly at odds with what the workers themselves would consider to be good.
What happened to companies hiring a competent worker and training them for the specifics of the job?
Consdiering some of the people hired recently where I work, I would have to agree with this article. Things like personality, which is necessary to some degree depending on the job, are always considered highly above the genuine ability to do a job. People want those who they like around them, more than those that do their jobs.
Many technical workers are very specialized. Just because someone is "highly skilled", it does not mean they are necessarily a match for any given arbitrary technical job.
I am a good match for my current job. If I quit, they would have a very hard time finding a suitable replacement. I might also have a hard time finding work with a very specialized and technical skill set.
... and you turn down *ANY* legitimate job offer that offers at least 80% of your previous job wages, then your benefits can be terminated, immediately. There's currently a bill in the pipe in Canada to reduce that percentage to, I think, 60%. Somebody feel free to correct me if I'm wrong about the exact percentage.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
There was once a comic of two people walking down the street in opposite directions, one person thinking to himself, "why can't I find anyone to hire?" and the other one thinking to himself, "why can't I find a job?"
A lot of it is companies not knowing how to find good workers, and workers not knowing how to draw attention of companies. If either one of these situations were fixed, then the problem would be solved.
Incidentally, one of the most crucial skills for programming managers in Silicon Valley right now is knowing how to find good workers for your team.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
There are lots of people having kids these days, i've read its like the 50s baby boom. both parents work but need to pick the kids up from school/day care.
if you really want to lure people other than onsite child care have a flexible work schedule allowing people to work from home. there is very little that i cannot do from home and a lot of times i'm more productive at home than in the office.
There is supply and demand to empolyment. If the companies want people with specific skills they need to provide the money. The companies real complaint is that they can't find the people they want at the money they are willing to pay.
To the companies I say welcome to basic economics. If you want something specific you may have to pay a lot. In this case the companies are consumers of the labour market. And as we know it sucks to be a consumer.
It is actually pretty simple:
..
1.Networking. This simple word defines 99% of all recruitment decisions. If you don't know someone, then you cannot get the job. As a result, if the company provides good benefits, the chance that you, the lonely wold would pass the initial test and interview are very close to zero, minus zero actually (no pun intended).
2.As a result of the before mentioned networking, most of the bad developers are having the perfect resume, the perfect references, and the perfect self-confidence. And of course, as Darvin already proved, no skills are required, so they don't have them.
3.The consequence of 1. and 2. is that once they are hired, and prove their lack of skills, the HR team would panic, and would try to use some funny ways of finding the best candidate, which will end up hiring the worst candidate of course (the one with networking), and so the cycle is repeated....
It is not coincidence that the Great China Empire fall, not because of some external treat, but because of the corruption, ops, sorry, i mean "networking".
This whole "We can't find the skilled workers we need thing" is just a big H1B visa scam (here in the U.S. anyway):
1) Post ads for jobs with impossible qualifications (i.e. 20 years of Java development experience) or so specialized that only a specific H1B candidate can meet them.
2) Turn away every applicant as unqualified
3) Cry to Congress and the Labor Dept. that you can't find enough qualified workers to fill positions, ask for more visas
4) Get more H1B visas
5) Pay foreign nationals a pittance.
6) Profit!
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
When your a corporate CEO billionaire and need to lay off people in order to buy your own friggin hawaiian island and then come back and bitch and whine that you can't find "talented people" something is fishy.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
Here, we've had a shortage of finding folks with the right education and some experience. We've had terrible experience hiring intermediate or senior folks into the company as it surprising how in our business (engineering consulting) how corporate environment can determine how well folks fit in. Our solution to all our hiring, has been to focus on finding youth with appropriate technical skills, hiring those who additionally had strong communication skills, and providing them continued skill development in both technical and communication while giving them the business skills they weren't given at school. The hiring and interviews are done by the project managers who need the staff themselves. Its long term thinking, not short term. Being employee-owned (and broad based ownership at that) we can afford to take the long term view. We have generally very low staff turnover (less than 5%) in any year, including retirements. Almost half our staff have at least 15 years with us. For us, it seems to be the logical way forward.
If only we could fall into a woman's arms without falling into her hands
I work at a Fortune 5 company, where we outsourced to Oracle, and Oracle in turn applied for H1B workers because they "could not find suitable US applicants". Most of the Indian contractors that showed up had no expertise in installing the software, and were completely lost when they could not find something in the manual.
This is not about experience, this is about screwing hard working and capable Americans out of jobs so that Larry Ellison and creeps like him can buy private islands and retire. It's about putting shareholders above employees and morals. It's about damaging the country that made your success possible in the first place.
And I found it quite interesting. The main point I took away from it was that the "skills gap" is a perception of employers because they are no longer willing to do in-house training to get the specific skills they need/want. For example, they won't hire new graduates because they don't have at least a few years experience in those specific skills. We've all heard the new graduate catch-22 - can't get hired until you have experience, can't get experience until your hired.
I guess I've been lucky in my career in that the three companies I've worked for since graduating were all willing/able to hire new graduates and have the senior employees mentor them. Even in my new job (just over two years), there's a lot of industry specific knowledge that really can't be learned anywhere but on-the-job. So, we regularly have learning sessions (formal and informal) about what we need to get the job done.
The two biggest factors are work/life balance, environment, and the inability for the company to provide challenging work to it's workforce. Believe it or not, people will work for _much less_ money if you create an engaging place to work.
On work/life balance, companies should be offering 4 weeks vacation after 30 days of employment. They should offer a two month sabbatical every 3 years. I don't believe it "working from home" but time off and vacation _should not be audited_ unless a problem occurs with a particular individual. Scary though, huh? We're all adults, treat people like them rather than high school students.
On environment, they should allow drinking in the workplace (oh gasp!). They need to tear up timesheets (no one takes them seriously anyway). They need to _fight_ actively to retain key talent. Furthermore, they need to cut the crud out of their management chain by routinely firing incompetent managers (which creates a morale boost). The need to hire fresh talent for the older jockeys to train.
Finally on the work itself, they need to allow their engineers to drive the majority of the decision making process. First, if an engineers comes and says, "hey if we cut this out of our software stack, it'll make our stuff faster." Rather than say, "No, that's a key investment we chose two years ago" say, "Oh yeah? well prove it. Take one of your teammates and come back to me in two weeks with a POC." This will do two things, first, it will get them to shut up. Second, it may turn into something awesome; win-win situation. The biggest mistake is companies with management overhead blocking engineers from creating value. Engineers are loose cannons. You don't reign them in, instead you let them create lots of raw product, then you pick the best ideas and refine them. Failure to leverage a company's key assets (their engineers) will result in your business paralysis. As soon as engineering decisions become political, you'll see an exodus of your key talent and you won't be able to hire anyone, in essence, you have created your own starvation.
it is simple economics. In my (california) company, the big boss (ceo) simply states "the economy is tight, so you need to find someone desperate for a job." We see all types of SKILLED and HIREABLE people all the time, and I would love to hire ANY ONE OF THEM. Then they see our benes and salary (this is abridged, obviously, for Slashdot):
Mid-level to Senior engineer/tech with at least 3 years microsoft server 2008 admin, 3 years vmware (vsp5 + proven record of HA cluster design), Exchange 200x -> 2010 upgrade experience (lead), at least CCNA, A+, copper and fiber cabling skills (pulls, terms, xc), documented senior WAN design expierience (MPLS, FR, PRI, ATM), documented LAN design, expertise in wireless design and installation, based in so.cal but be available for travel from the oregon border to western AZ w/1 day notice, rotating 24x7 on call, required to work 30% of weekends and expected to work after-hours when needed. 80% @ customer site. No comp time. 7 days vacation AFTER 1 year (vacation is not accrued but lump-sum'd at the end of each working year), paid legal holidays, no bonus, no spiffs, no retirement plan, employer paid PPO. Average work week is 50-60hrs. Salary: $50k/year
Candidates see the bene package and walk. Apparently they are not desperate enough.
The CEO thinks that $50k/year for the above is HIGH. So we get to complain "we can't find anyone to work for us," blame it on the economy, and another company gets added to the 'we can't find skilled employees to fill our positions. And I wind up trolling Craigslist for bottom-feeders with fake resumes.
"Needs 5 years experience with Pascal." (edits resume to change C++ to Pascal). It's a catch-22 where they want people to have experience but they can't gain experience if they never needed Pascal previously. What former-sorority girls or fratboys - now HR people - don't comprehend is that if you are a programmer, you are a programmer. It matters not what language you are using.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
An interesting comment from the linked article:
Yeah, you know, the craziest thing about high tech is the Silicon Valley model, which sort of became dominant in the U.S., replaced the model where IT people used to be groomed and trained from within. And the Silicon Valley model of hiring just in time for what you need came about largely because they were able to poach talent away from these bigger companies that had spent a lot of time training and developing people.
The implication is that the Silicon Valley approach to personnel management helped destroy the traditional system, and it makes a lot of sense when you talk with people who work in the industry. Traditionally, companies would train and develop college hires and employees because they could reasonably expect their employees to stay with them for a set period of time, guaranteeing an ROI on their investment. However, many of these new start ups basically came in throwing around money and stock options, stealing people groomed by these companies. Even employees who would be required to pay back tuition and training costs would still make the jump because the poaching firm would pay for it. The companies that developed these employees then have incentive to give up on the practice and resort to the same sort of poaching.
When I talk with college hires before the floor fell beneath the economy, I saw that mentality: I'll go work for X firm long enough to get training from them and then jump ship to go make big money in start ups or consultancies. If you're a large firm, why would you invest in grooming employees if this is the mentality that the best and brightest are embracing? If the pool is ready to jump ship for the next big salary bump, why should you pay for expensive training and development? Only problem is that we've now begun to exhaust the pool of experienced employees and the "shortage" emerges.
It's the same reason women are more attracted to a guy who already has a hot girl on his arm. Worse, some are attracted to married men. What is she giving him? I can give him more. Break that non-compete agreement. We'll move to a different state. They can't touch us. We'll run away together!
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
They do this in the U.K. What it ACTUALLY does is take away jobs from actual computer science teachers, park maintenance workers, programmers (and whatever). All the while creating a free labor force that's used by corporate interests. A labor force that's VERY compliant, because if they don't do exactly as they are told, their benefits are cut off, and they will become homeless/starve/etc.
I GUARANTEE that you haven't researched any of this, and that you haven't thought through any of what you said.
In the olden days, you would hire someone at an entry position. They they would work with someone experienced who would both train and mentor the employee. At the end of the process, you had someone trained and ready for the position.
But some time ago, companies realized it was cheaper to poach from other companies. Let them do the training, then swoop in, and offer just enough to pry them away.
What we are seeing today is the end result when everyone poaches from other companies and no one is actually doing the training. For some reason, there's a lack of qualified people. DUH!
To conservolibertarians, there are only three political ideologies. If you agree with the right wing propaganda (FOX News, Limbaugh, rightist think tanks, etc.), you are a conservative. If you disagree with FOX News, Limbaugh, et. al. on the topic of drugs and isolationism but agree with everything else, then you are a libertarian. Every single other political view in the entire world gets lumped together under "socialism".
So from there point of view, what you mention is socialism by definition, simply because it is not in line with right wing propaganda. This also explains why they can occasionally look at two opposing positions on a particular issue and declare both to be communist/socialist. You have to remember that they may use the same words, but those words have different meanings to them.
The article pretty clearly states the real underlying problem: Companies strongly prefer hiring experienced people who are doing the exact same job, right now. But they are not owning up to the fact they may be poaching from a limited pool, because they and all their competitors are bidding for the same people. Obviously that will inevitably create a bidding war when the sector is doing well.
Investment in training people can help here -- that is the traditional answer. But companies are scared of that investment because their competitors will poach once the investment finally begins to really pay off, of course.
Now we come what we slashdotters see as the elephant in the room: the the H1B visas. The visa process is so long that provides a partial lock in, and therefore a measure of safety for the employers. Not only will many H1B visa candidates accept slightly lower salary offers, but they are more likely to accept lesser raises until they has their visa.
I do not feel strongly one way or another about more or fewer H1B visas. But it is clear that large companies have a powerful incentive to simply throw up their hands and claim they need more H1B visas, regardless of the underlying reality. They do not care if there is a thousand potential employees who be fabulous after 12 months of in house experience lining up on the street, clamoring for a chance.
Good programmers can pick up new languages as needed, and do so quite quickly. Bad ones, not so much.
We can’t do that, so you’ve got to be able to do the job perfectly from day one. The only people that can do that are people who are currently doing the same job someplace else. So it’s obviously pretty hard to find people if that’s your definition—if you say, “We want to hire people, and they’ve got to be doing the job right now”—because as you’ve probably heard, a lot of employers won’t accept applications from people who are currently unemployed. So basically we’re saying we’ve got to hire from our competitors. And you know what? There is kind of a shortage of people if you say, “You’ve got to be working for one of our competitors doing exactly the same thing you’re doing now. That’s what we want, and it’s hard to find those people.” Well, it’s probably true, but that’s not a skills gap.
That, that's the issue. I'm gainfully employed but I still find this to be a huge issue. If I want to switch jobs I can pretty much only get another job doing almost exactly what I'm dong here only someplace else. If you want to switch your focus you can only switch one or two key techs at a time. If I get tired of what I've been doing for the last 10+ years, too bad because no one will hire anyone with less than 10 years of experience in a long list of precise criteria any more.
Requirements for senior level positions:
PhD or equivalent level of education
+16 years of relevant work experience
Willingness to work for $40,000 a year or less with no benefits
Requirements for junior level positions:
PhD or equivalent level of education
+8 years of relevant work experience
Willingness to work for $20,000 a year or less with no benefits
Requirements for internship positions:
PhD or equivalent level of education
Relevant work experience a big plus
Willingness to work for free with no benefits
"But we don't understand why we don't get any applicants that match these criteria! There must be a lack of skilled workers!"
All those kids that used to live on family farms? Well let's school them to be good factory workers. That's not enough though, let's use the "no child left behind" notion to, not integrate every kid but rather, start lowering standards for every student. And why are we spending so much money on those inconsistent teachers with their different approaches to differing students. And get rid of teacher unions, which just work for livable salaries and benefits which are well below that of the typical CEO giving advice to newspaper transcribers (used to be journalists, now hardly even reporters).
Then, then! Let's eliminate those factory jobs we trained those students to obey without thinking or resenting too much by moving the factories to cheaper countries. Countries where pollution controls and labor laws are rarely practiced. And place them in tax-free zones so no taxes are wasted on schools and infrastructure and such. Yeah the local workers have crap lives, but it's slightly better than farm life, right? And those factory workers in the original country, the ones that lost their jobs? They can go back to school!
And those people that pursue higher education, especially the ones doing it for better jobs? Well let's make universities extremely expensive, so graduates are in debt and will take any job and abuse in order to start paying back loans. Especially their credit card loans, which were offered in hopes of burying them in 12-30% interest payments for life; in addition to the 1.5 to 3% the credit company skimmed off the top. There is a need for a few scientists to figure out what's really going on in the world, and to make new devices (to simplify jobs, reduce worker headcounts, and entertain the poor who can't afford a vacation). And a need for a few financial wizards (that since the 1970s have gained control of 1/3 of the US economy), but those can come from the 1% of already rich families which have about 50% of the country's wealth; and the occasional (H1-B?) computer mathematician who can figure the odds on stocks, nanosecond currency exchanges, and credit default swaps--and fix the laptop. And if those financiers screw up and the whole economic system crashes, there's always the regular taxpayer providing insurance (why is it called "bail outs?") to corporations and their executives, keeping the cash flowing. Those same corporate execs who whine about paying taxes even when they don't. Yeah the newspapers publish that once in a while, but no one changes the tax laws to be more fair; so the facts recede from memory and we can get back to blaming immigrants, teacher salaries, sexuality, skin shadings, religions, and other nationalities--and if someone investigates too honestly there's always "national defense" to end inquiries.
Well, the laws do get changed, mostly by corporate lobbyists, who want to decrease taxes on the rich, remove laws that are costly to corporations (no matter what the effect on people and the environment), and increasingly shift jobs that are performed fairly well by government (social security, healthcare, military, prisons, schools, water, energy, roads) to the private sector. The private sector, AKA corporations, where a select few can make big salaries, shareholders can get their dividends, and workers can be replaced by someone even more poorly off who's willing to work for rent and food money while doing without healthcare (that's what the ER is for, and credit cards, and payday loans). And to make the business profitable, why not reduce expenses like retirement, healthcare, living wages, long-term livable surroundings, education, clean water, cleaner energy, and reliable roads? It's just business, got to keep those shareholders from selling their stock. Nevermind the stakeholders or the public.
And those people with a bad job or no job, what about them? Well they're poor or homeless because of the schools. Obviously. We should implement vouchers for private sector schools, and start training children correctly.
I am VERY good at applying for, interviewing for, and getting hired for jobs. About 10 years ago I took a bunch of courses on how to write resumes, interview well, etc... Unlike most classes of this sort, these were run by an older black gentleman who I can only describe as a genius when it comes to the hiring process.
There are basically 2 ways a company can hire. The old way, which is based on gut instinct. The interviewer reads your resume, meets you, and if they like you, you're hired. This method is fraught with problems that revolve around the basics of human nature. Someone with a weak handshake will almost never get hired. They are immediately seen as passive, slow, lazy. Someone that understands the system (like me) can thoroughly thwart the system by simple changing the subject during the interview. You talk about things that interest the interviewer. Their questions are ALL bad. Every question they ask is a question that is meant to in some way disqualify you. The more you can get them distracted from their questions, the better chances you have. Do they have a sports teams pin on? Pictures of their kids? You bring all of this up... they talk about everything but you and leave the interview with a warm/happy feeling about you.
Some businesses have recognized the inherent problems with human nature and tried to implement methods to get around them. Unfortunately these systems almost always involve scorecards of some sort. The hiring manager lists out the key skills he's looking for... this is the first problem, the managers expectations are almost always wildly over the top. Their asking for someone with a doctorate and they really need someone with a 2 year degree. The person conducting the interview basically scores you off of your resume. As well as on things like appearance, personality, etc... etc... The solution to this type of interview is rather simple... lie. Just flood your resume with technical data. The interviewer gets so overwhelmed they just score you high, irrelevant of your real skills. Always ware a suit. Suit = 10 points. Anything else is < 10 points. A firm handshake and confidence is easy to fake.
The simple fact of the matter is, it is impossible to judge someones ability to do the job you want them to do based on a resume and interview. A degree is slightly better, but as we all know the vast majority of people with those degrees have proven nothing more than that they are good at memorizing things for tests. Actually being competent in a working environment is something entirely different. The entire system is flawed to its core. Many people refuse to be misleading in their interview or on their resume and think that shows integrity... when all they really get shown is the door.
When employers hire people... they hire the people that aggressive at selling themselves as a product... People that are fluent and at ease in an interview. If that person also happens to be good at the job... great! Despite what many people think, if you bluff your way into a job your not qualified for, you don't just get fired immediately. The manager doesn't want to look like a fool for hiring the person and usually they can hang onto the job for as long as they'd like to. Raises and promotions are another thing.
The basic problem with the workforce today is employers have no idea what they need, and even if they did, they have no way of finding out who has the skills they actually do need. Simple as that.
A lot of job postings are also created by going in and asking the person leaving what they do. While on the org chart they were a electrical engineer, over time they took on DB admin because that person got downsized, then network admin when they downsized that person, and janitor, when they got rid of the cleanig service and someone had to vacume and take out the garbage. This continues until the person does no electrical engneering anymore, but spends all his time being a sysadmin.
So the posted job, based on what the person leaving did, becomes "wanted : electrical engineer. Must have Oracle cert, VMware cert, CCNA, and MCSE and be able to lift 50 pounds reguarly and have a CS degree. " Jobs have so diverged from what the postion was for originally it screws up being able to hire because the listed skills no longer have any reference to the actual job being done.
Papa Legba come and open the gate