Do Tech Companies Ask For Way Too Much From Job Candidates?

Nerval's Lobster writes The short answer: Yes. Many employers' "required" skill sets seem to include everything but the ability to teleport and build a Shaker barn; the lengthy requisites of skills and experience seem achievable only by candidates who've spent the past four decades using a hundred different programming languages and platforms to excel at fifty different, complicated jobs. Why do a lot of tech companies do that? Dice asked around and discovered a bunch of different reasons. Companies want to make investments in talent, but the inherent costs of that talent also make them wary of hiring anyone but the absolute best. The need to find the right talent, and the concern over cost, often leads to employers producing job descriptions too broad for the actual position. There's also pure idiocy: PHBs don't know what they want, don't understand the technology, and throw just anything into the description that pops to mind. Is there any way to stop this scourge?

Comments

They don't want to up the ante for experience

[bigsexyjoe]

They want everything, but when someone who has everything applies, they don't want to up the ante with high pay.

DICE OWNS SLASHDOT, disclaimer needed!

[Khopesh]

Dear Slashdot editors,

Don't forget your journalistic rigor. I know it's so very often forgotten these days, but I've chosen Slashdot as one of my last "traditional" news outlets (in the sense that it the editors, including Nevral's Lobster, are paid to curate the content) because it used to be better about this. It is irresponsible of Slashdot to omit the fact that Dice owns Slashdot in the article summary.