The Great IT Hiring He-Said / She-Said

Nemo the Magnificent writes: Is there an IT talent shortage? Or is there a clue shortage on the hiring side? Hiring managers put on their perfection goggles and write elaborate job descriptions laying out mandatory experience and know-how that the "purple squirrel" candidate must have. They define job openings to be entry-level, automatically excluding those in mid-career. Candidates suspect that the only real shortage is one of willingness to pay what they are worth. Job seekers bend over backwards to make it through HR's keyword filters, only to be frustrated by phone screens seemingly administered by those who know only buzzwords.

Meanwhile, hiring managers feel the pressure to fill openings instantly with exactly the right person, and when they can't, the team and the company suffer. InformationWeek lays out a number of ways the two sides can start listening to each other. For example, some of the most successful companies find their talent through engagement with the technical community, participating in hackathons or offering seminars on hot topics such as Scala and Hadoop. These companies play a long game in order to lodge in the consciousness of the candidates they hope will apply next time they're ready to make a move.

Comments

Re:There's a clue shortage

[lucabrasi999]

expecting x years with one product, y years with another product, and z years with a third, while specifying that it's an intermediate position

You misread the job description. The JOB is experienced. The salary is intermediate.

Re:There's a clue shortage

[KermodeBear]

I was greatly amused when the HR department at my company was looking for "Pearl" developers.

Re:There's a clue shortage

[ArmchairGeneral]

Well it goes with Ruby, right?

Re:There's a clue shortage

[Anonymous Coward]

your company has positions for oysters? That is progressive!

Hiring managers perspective

[bigsexyjoe]

Well, you get a lot of applicants to any job these days. A lot of people are looking for work. But you need to find appropriate candidates.

You can't hire anyone too young, because they don't have the skills and haven't proven themselves at a real job. You don't want to hire anyone over 35 because the field moves quickly and you don't want someone who doesn't keep up.

You also need people who have the hot skill right now. Ruby used to be really hot, but now we are looking for Python. Can you train a Ruby programmer to be a Python programmer? When you are running a business you can't take the risk to find out!

You're really looking for about five years experience and experience with the right technologies. This doesn't sound to hard, but a lot of these people are asking for outrageous amounts of money!

Furthermore, you need the right cultural fit. At my company, we all wear hoodies. We wouldn't want to hire someone who wears a fleece. We need someone who breathes code. Last week I interviewed someone who was a good match, except he said he swam in code! We had to cut that interview short.

Also, you can't hire people with too much self-esteem. People with self-esteem are always asking if they can be managers and constantly leaving you just because someone offered them more money. So in addition to the exact right amount of experience, in the right field, and cultural fit, you need someone who is a little bit broken that you can build up into your perfect coder.

It is all very difficult. And we are a firm anyone would want to work for. We can only pay $50,000 a year, but you get to work with really cutting edge technologies like Python! So I'm sure if we have difficultly finding the right people, anyone would.

Re:Hiring managers perspective

[Prien715]

I have an ASCII diagram here describing a technical interview.

Post

  O -- You
-++-
  | |

At what speed does it have to travel in order to make a pleasant "wooshing" sound (2 m/s total velocity) assuming it must also travel at least 2 meters high vertically? (Assume gravity is 10 m/s 2 and air resistance is negligible for purposes of this exercise).

Re:There's a clue shortage

[TWX]

I was greatly amused when the HR department at my company was looking for "Pearl" developers.

I lost out on a job because I didn't have experience with Windows XP Server.

Honestly, it works best when HR passes on the bulk of the applications to the department that needs the staff member, and lets that director and supervisor(s) weed through them for candidates. They can even go with redacted versions that don't show the name or the alma mater of the applicant, and are limited to the last couple of disclosed jobs. It still requires a lot of labor-hours to go through that and to go through a good interview process though, and technical people that work for the company and will probably work with the new hire must be free to ask freestyle questions in addition to the HR-mandated set, to actually learn the technical capabilities of the interviewee.

Fresh out of college with 20 years experience

[Cliff Stoll]

Can't resist tooting my own horn. These are from my Klein bottle website:

    TOPOLOGY CONSULTANT Part-time design of low-dimensional manifolds in glass, wool, plastic, titanium, niobium, pentium, and unobtanium. Ideal candidate is fresh out of college with 20 years experience in applied topology; and can solve Poincare's, Heawood's, and Hodge's conjectures. Pay & benefits are epsilon above unemployment. Compensation package includes trillions in worthless stock options.

    GLASSBLOWER Construct borosilicate manifolds using lampwork. Handy with glass lathe, oxy-hydrogen torch, and bandaids. Must know the usual cuss words to describe breaks & cracks. Experienced in minor burn treatment. Special bonus if you know the difference between inside and outside.

    MANIFOLD OPERATOR. Curvaceous, conformal Riemannian vector field desires normalized Ricci tensor with nice eigenvalues. Will relocate within proper metric space. No polymorphic permutations, please.

    From http://www.kleinbottle.com/job...

Re:Fresh out of college with 20 years experience

[wierd_w]

[This is a joke answer, to a joke post. The only whooshing sound I hear, is the sound of this joke reply going over your head.]

Greetings Mr Stoll,

I would like to apply for position #2, GLASSBLOWER.

I would like to point out however, that they oxy-hydrogen torch you specified may not be the appropriate tool for working with borosilicate glass, as it may not be able to achieve good melt or annealing temperatures with that formulation. A properly fitted acetylene torch with a hot-head and forced air would typically achieve greater temperatures, and is the more common-place appliance for use with this medium. Under very specific conditions I suppose an oxy-hydrogen torch may be suitable and even desirable, where an oxidizing flame would be appropriate, however the lower flame temperature, and invisible nature of the flame would make its use a difficult prospect. (Not to mention, lampwork tends to be small, ornate handwork details-- such as worked glass sculpture or beads-- not blown glass vessels. Those are typically done with a pot furnace and a glory hole.) I would also like to point out that any real shape can be defined as a manifold, which was one of the major points of the poincare conjecture, which was recently proven by a Russian mathematician who famously rejected the Fields Medal for his accomplishment, and told the press to stop calling him when they interrupted his mushroom hunting. I presume your company focuses mainly on non-orientable surfaces, such as klein bottles, (as per your name), moebius loops, and similar topologies-- however, this then makes your insistence upon knowing the difference between "inside and outside" a tricky matter-- the defining characteristic of an unorientable manifold is that there IS NO DIFFERENCE between the inside and the outside. To fill a klein bottle, one needs to submerge the vessel, then turn it end over end several times in the presence of a gravity well. After that, its unique shape will allow either gravity to retain the liquid, or atmospheric pressure will prevent the liquid from escaping through the narrow "neck". Again, there is no true inside nor true outside to this object, as per its geometrical definition. Any retention of liquid is merely an interesting and novel artifact of the interplay between the manifold, fluid viscosity and meniscus formation, and atmospheric pressure. (It is important to point out that superfluids such a s liquid helium will not be constrained by the a-fore mentioned technique.) I am familiar with this particular manifold, and could produce vessels of this configuration, should I be required to do so.

I am reasonably well versed in minor burn care, having had to treat several such injuries over the years. Depending on the severity of the burn, topical application of a cool compress can be an effective remedy, followed by a topical ointment (Such as bacitrin or neosporin) and a bandage to discourage infection and topical agitation. For more severe burns, a more specialized ointment and more intensive care is required-- such as the use of something like silver sulfadiazine cream. This is applied topically to the burned area several times daily with the frequent changing of sterile gauze bandages, as this ointment can cause the burn to produce a clear liquid exudation during treatment. As far as I know, that specific preparation requires a prescription when intended for human use however. I do not advocate the use of veterinary grade pharmaceuticals in humans, no matter how fiscally attractive the option seems, and irrespective of the availability of such veterinary preparations.

Typically, however, one should be wearing proper personal protective equipment, such as gloves, eyewear, and a fire resistant shop apron, which should minimize the risks of this happening. Appropriate foot protection is also a must; Full toe shoes, preferably with steel toe. I have appropriate foot and eye wear, but will need to obtain a suitable apron, and a sheer pair of aramid fiber gloves. I presume your company can either prov

Eunuch Programmers

[Mr_Wisenheimer]

http://search.dilbert.com/comi...

Re:There's a clue shortage

[jandersen]

I was greatly amused when the HR department at my company was looking for "Pearl" developers.

That would be somebody with a lot of mussels, right?

makes snese to me (sic)

[Thud457]

"Pearl" developer == can take an irritating grain of sand and polish it until is has a shiny luster.