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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.
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.
Eight years ago, Ruby Raley and I published (in Cutter IT Journal) an article entitled "The Longest Yard: Reorganizing IT for Success" (you can read it here). Our basic premise is that the current "industrial" model of IT hiring/management -- treating IT engineers like cogs or components -- is fundamentally flawed, and that a model based on professional sports teams would likely work much better. Having spent 20 years analyzing troubled or failed software projects, I believe we need a significantly different approach on hiring and retaining the right IT engineers. ..bruce..
Bruce F. Webster (brucefwebster.com)
or there's a huge number of people who interview really terribly.
I wonder how many of these people have an autism spectrum disorder. An interviewer might get so put off by a candidate's lack of superficial social skills that he or she cannot adequately judge the candidate's competency for the job itself.
So, as I've been in the market for a few months, I'm finding that many of the jobs that glossed over me a few months ago are coming across again... Whether it be a recruiter contacting me (I remember applying for this a while back), a new posting on the company's job search portal of choice (they changed 5 words in the job description), or even a new approach (look, now they're recruiting from my MBA school for this position)... Needless to say, it's infuriating.
Sure, I recognize that I only have 85% of what you're looking for in terms of a skillset; or that you want to pay $5000/year less than my absolute salary floor... But if that job has been open for 3-6 months, the damage caused by it being open (presumably because someone left, and now there's a void that everyone else on the team is not really able to fill) has far exceeded whatever small training costs or whatever you would have to spend on me...
Another issue is that too many companies are still thinking it's the financial crisis, when new recruits were happy to accept 50% cuts in salary to avoid foreclosure or vehicle repossession. This was best described to me by one recruiter--"three asses, one seat". While I've seen some absolutely batshit JDs (where 2 people in the country might have all of these skills), I recently saw one that pissed me off... A company wanted someone who was a SQL Server DBA/BI stack/TSQL & reporting guru, an Oracle DBA/PL-SQL programmer, and a Linux server manager in downtown Chicago--for $95k/year. Good luck finding such a person, with competing technologies, for less than double that...
Another problem that I'm finding is that some jobs are sub-sub-contracted out. I recently saw one in Chicago that needed expert experience in Informatica MDM. Max pay was $46/hr W2. Turns out that MegaCorp contracted out to CompanyX who opened up to numerous companies, CompanyY contacted me with this max rate, asking me to be an employee of CompanyY. My convo w/recruiter: "So everybody has their hands in the cookie jar, and there's nothing left for the guy who's actually doing the work?--What do you mean?--Well, someone with that skillset should be in the $75-100/hr range, but since 2 levels above want to keep their 100% profit margin, $50 becomes $100 and $100 becomes $200, which MegaCorp is probably being billed somewhere around there..."
Finally, don't get me started on "the foreigners"... It seems the boiler-room stock antics of the '80s and '90s have moved offshore, where in some cases I get calls from multiple people about the same job from the same company... They're all in a feeding frenzy, just trying to be the first to pass along my authorization to represent--never mind that I may not be qualified for the role in question. (One conversation went like this... "Well, where in Chicagoland is the job?--Let me submit you and I'll tell you.--You mean you won't tell me where the job is until I agree to let you represent me? It could be an impossible commute...--I need to submit you first...--Fuck off...")
Windows 3.1x calc: 3.11 - 3.10 = 0.00
I'm getting three to five e-mails and or phone calls a day from headhunters. I'm very senior (30+ years in the business) so I'm not cheap. 2007 through 2010 I couldn't buy a job. What changed is the labor market. It just got a lot tighter. It may not be the dot com days when if you could say computer you got hired but it's looking a lot better.
The last laugh is that a lot of hiring managers and HR dweebs haven't gotten the memo and are still pulling the same old bullshit. If you run into one of those, keep looking. There's someone out there who doesn't need a glass navel to see where they're going.
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
Perhaps there is an LCA application (part of the green card process) in progress where the applicant has exactly those skills?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
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.
Not necessarily. A smart manager grooms his own replacement. If his superiors are confident someone can slip into his place, a promotion is more likely. I've had people ask about my management aspirations in an obvious tell that they are looking for that person.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
HR BS is one of the reasons I haven't dealt with FTE gigs in a decade. You can make more money in IT being a consulting and at most companies the consulting pimp deals directly with the IT manager. HR is rarely in the loop, often after the contracts have been signed.
The shortage of workers is real but not for the reasons most people think. When I started working as a programer 15 years ago it was pretty common to see interns and college hires in development departments. Then starting in 2001-02 it plummeted. Some bean counter figured out they could hire H1B labor at about the same money as a college hire, why wouldn't you go with the "experienced" candidate. In the last decade i've only seen a handful of college hire programmers.
Ah, but here's the rub, after spending nearly a decade not investing in the next generation of IT they are having a hard time finding resources. This fact did not go unnoticed to the H1B consulting companies. I've actually seen client's jaws drop when WiPro told them they were jumping their rates to well over $100/hr across the board.
As a bright spot I've seen a nice uptick in college hiring at mid cap companies. A lot of them are on-shoring as well after getting burned.
In the late 90s, while leaving an interview at one company, I came across a physical posting on the window of another business in the same building. It was for a developer, but in particular looking for someone with C, C+, and C++ experience. I had a little time to kill, and figured maybe the HR guy just didn't pay attention (enough stupid stuff ends up in ads for what are still decent jobs). Stopping in, the HR guy right off the bat emphasized that and other prereqs for the position, but said he would introduce me to the head developer anyway. They were moving some business software from Basic to C/C++ without much internal experience in the latter. Turns out the C+ requirement in this case came from the developer, not an HR guy goof, and he got rather defensive about it when asked what he was referring to. Seems nearly every interviewee so far had asked about it, and got shown the door for lack of experience as a result. Not a person I would have wanted to work for, so no loss to me.
The problem is that outside silly valley-- Say, in flyoverland USA, the cost of relocation is not trivial.
Your typical house in silly valley costs more than 10 years salary elsewhere. There is not enough equity in the house they currently own to be able to afford the move.
Sweeten the deal with guaranteed housing, and travel expenses. You will get MANY more people willing to relocate.
OR-- allow telecommuting from another state as an option.
Protecting his ass, or trying to get a buddy into the company.
I'd have told his boss that the guy was making shit up. Even if you didn't want the job, maybe someone else would - someone honest.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Thing is being fired for lying on your CV or in interview is rarer than hen's teeth. I have two siblings who have or still work in employment law in the U.K. Neither has ever come across such a case ever. One of them sits as an employment tribunal judge as well.
As for what is said in an interview it will be he said, she said and vrey hard to prove. Personally I have come to the conclusion that other candidates are telling big fat lies in interviews and I am loosing interviews/jobs as a result of my honesty. My sister an ex employment lawyer has told me flat out that I am too honest and need to tell lies in interview. Go figure.
(protip: no one cares about "duties and responsibilities" - explain cool problems that you personally solved instead)
Do you have any idea how many people will give different pieces of often totally mutually exclusive resume advice? Your "protip" sounds like a great way to never get looked at by a very large number of firms who actually let HR do all their hiring. And yes, those exist.
Your desires, requirements, and experience are not universal. They are yours. It is important to recognize that, and at least try not to penalize other people when their experience with the hiring process doesn't match what you expect or want.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
Studies show that the less capable someone is, the more they are sure of themselves.
Soft science studies measuring subjective things, to be precise.
What makes you think your "perfect fit" could get past the HR barricade?
There was a situation widely reported a couple years ago where a company was looking for a software engineer. They ran the 25,000+ resumes they recieved through their resume vetting service and found "they didn't have a single qualified applicant"! The internet and blind application of something they call "best practices" has made them stupid.
Anytime you automate a human ability the humans will lose that ability. Your cell phone has a contact list right? 20+ years ago the average competent adult had at least 20 phone numbers memorized (maybe more like 50). Now it is rare to find someone who knows more then 5 numbers. The exact same thing happened to HR. They saw easy resume vetting services and laziness and eagerness for the "next big thing" has now made them stupid and they don't even realize they are running an incompetent process.
A little secret for HR types: 95% of the people doing IT as a career are "members of the B team" and you can't tell the difference from the resume from an "A team" type. The difference isn't training or certifications. (Except that the A-Team guy likely doesn't have certifications. He was working.) The difference is the thought process inside their head. How does that person solve problems?
The list of certifications that they put on a job posting is ridiculous. Demanding certifications almost guarantees that you will get a lower level of experience and a less desirable employee. Why? The technologies that we are working with change year to year. An excellent IT tech will pick the new tech up on the fly, and he will pickup the one following that, and following that, ad infinitum. As mentioned before he won't get a certification for that new tech because he is on that endless treadmill WORKING! Almost every tech I've run across with any level of certification was absolute junk. They say the right words but they never see straight to the heart of an issue.
An extremely important fact will be impossible to explain to anyone but a good IT person". It is impossible for anyone but a really good IT person to determine if another IT person is truly qualified. And even that might take a bit as the results of their work are often the only arbiter.
I tell people the same. Know someone on the inside, or don't spend more than 10 minutes applying.
Agree. I have had companies require that I take a test before they would even interview. I got in the top 1% on the tests, but did not get an interview. This infuriates me to no end when companies will wast a half day of your time when they have already picked out the H1b that they are going to hire.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
What makes you think your "perfect fit" could get past the HR barricade?
A little secret for HR types: 95% of the people doing IT as a career are "members of the B team" and you can't tell the difference from the resume from an "A team" type. The difference isn't training or certifications. (Except that the A-Team guy likely doesn't have certifications. He was working.) The difference is the thought process inside their head. How does that person solve problems?
There is one small bit to add. I am writing from country with "different pay range" than US.
HR wants all those nice certificates. Usually I declare that I can pass them in first 6 month of employment. If obtaining one certificate costs 3-4 month salary and it is important to company, they will cover costs. Usually at this phase it changes from "Must have" to "nice to have"