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Ask Slashdot: Why Are Tech Job Requirements So Specific?

Posted by timothy on from the based-this-one-on-my-nephew's-resume dept.

First time accepted submitter hurwak-feg writes "I am in the market for a new IT (software development or systems administration) job for the first time and several years and noticed that many postings have very specific requirements (i.e. specific models of hardware, specific software versions). I don't understand this. I like working with people that have experience with technologies that I don't because what they are familiar with might be a better solution for a problem than what I am familiar with. Am I missing something or are employers making it more difficult for themselves and job seekers by rejecting otherwise qualified candidates that don't meet a very specific mold. Is there a good reason for being extremely specific in job requirements that I am just not seeing?"

9 of 465 comments (clear)

  1. To hire specific people by tepples · · Score: 5, Informative

    I'm under the impression that the more specific a tech job requirement is, the more likely it was written to target one person, such as a specific foreign citizen on an H-1B visa. That or the company just wants to be a cheapskate, wanting the new hire to be productive from day two instead of taking two weeks to train him or her.

    1. Re:To hire specific people by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Your impression is correct. My immigration law professor talked about this during our visa lectures. The company will find an H-1B candidate they want then the corporate attorney writes a job app matching that person. Bingo, no one matches the description and you can then hire your H-1B.

    2. Re: To hire specific people by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      In at least one case it was to promote an existing employee. Me.

      My boss quit. His boss agreed I should take over, but corp. policy requires a job posting published for 5 days. The two of us sat down w/ my resume and wrote a description very unlikely to be matched by anyone else. 5 days later HR let my promotion go through and the posting disappeared.

    3. Re:To hire specific people by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Specific jobs descriptions are for Labor Certification. Prevailing wage information and the other attestations are for the Labor Condition Application. If you would like to know more, the Wikipedia article for H1-B is pretty thorough.

      But for a specific, non-wikipedia cite: Second to last paragraph of http://www.immihelp.com/gc/employment/labor/

      Labor Certification(LC) is entirely different from Labor Condition Application(LCA). LC is for getting green card and LCA is for getting H1B visa. LCA is much more easier and faster to get than LC.

    4. Re:To hire specific people by theshowmecanuck · · Score: 4, Informative

      It doesn't matter anyway. Companies will bring in people for fake interviews to say they tried to hire locals. Then they will hire H1-B indentured servants because they are cheaper.

      --
      -- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
    5. Re:To hire specific people by Antique+Geekmeister · · Score: 3, Informative

      I'm afraid there's far more concrete evidence. Take a look at the video of the presentation by a law firm on how to hire H1B visa holders while skirting the edge of US law.: it's quite an infamous seminar.

                  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCbFEgFajGU&list=PL126DD55E0E6CD89B

      I've dealt with employers who used such tactics. it's not the only reason to have an extremely specific resume: I've helped create job descriptions that were "wish lists" of job skills, lists that we knew we could not possibly afford if one candidate had them all. But we'd accept 3 out of 5 with demonstrated flexibility.

  2. There are a _LOT_ of candidates out there now by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    The problem is, there are a lot of candidates out there now. A LOT. So we get real specific with what we want, because we still end up getting between five to ten applicants that have those things and thirty to forty who have almost all of them. If we were vague, we would receive probably between 100 and 200 applicants per job. And we're in an area that is NOT tech haveny. We're in the middle of the deep south.

    I remember a friend from google telling me they receive , on the average year, around 195,000 candidates, 30% of which make it to an interview phase. That number doubles every year and a half. By being way more specific , they are slicing that number in half. Or more. Instead of ALL the google employees having to interview 50000 (which doesn't count second or third or onsites that also occur), they're trying to do far less.

    Employers are facing a glut of software engineers/IT/etc. We're just knocking the numbers down to reasonable levels with these extra requirements. It'd probably be in your interest to go ahead and apply if you're close to all.. but rest assured, if you see an advert for a job that contains a lot of requirements, they will probably get 5 - 10 applicants that meet those around here.. and 300 - 400 in a more tech heavy area like the bay area.

  3. H-1 B program by rsilvergun · · Score: 3, Informative

    This is pretty well documented. In America if you want to hire someone for a tech job on a work Visa by law you have to "prove" there is no American capable of doing the job. The easiest way to do this is to have very, very specific requirements. There are law firms that teach companies how to do this without breaking the law, and the gov't is pretty much complicit in this (thanks to 30 years of non stop attacks on perceived 'Bureaucracies' brought on by people that don't like the DMV). Compounding this you have schools in India and China that exist to rubber stamp people with any qualification needed.

    It mostly works because the vast majority of tech workers aren't MIT graduate rock stars but rank and file workers. There's nothing wrong with that, but it means you're easily interchangeable. But us tech workers also have big, big egos, so we're convinced that Unions and lobbying to protect your interests is for losers who just couldn't hack it (and if they lose their jobs and end up a Walmart they blame themselves anyway...).

    --
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  4. Re:If you have 1 Apache admin, they better know Ap by Chirs · · Score: 5, Informative

    My own job is programming Moodle, an LMS with over a million lines of code. That's roughly equal to an entire Linux distribution.

    What are you smoking? Just the linux *kernel* is roughly 12 million lines of code. Firefox is 10 million lines of code. The GNOME desktop framework is 8 million lines of code. The GNU compiler is 6 million lines of code. Chromium is 7 million lines of code.

    That's just a smattering of the packages that can be found in a linux distribution...