Have a LinkedIn account. And my own website. My own custom email address. And even a Palo Alto phone number so calls to me are local. My resume definitely is filled with descriptions resembling your second quotation, not the first.
As for the rest of your 'approach' to hiring people, you can get away with that because there are an insane number of candidates in the market. Maybe I can send out enough resumes to enough companies to get an exact match to requirements, maybe I can't. But firms that can't find their proverbial 'purple squirrel' need to be looking in the mirror and wondering if their own requirements are far too arbitrary.
Like seriously, someone trained in hardware engineering can pick up the difference between USB 1.1/2.0/3.0. Software people are almost agnostic to the physical layer stuff. The in-depth technical details can be looked up in books on an as-needed basis.
As for the suggestion that 'luck' is involved, if a tech firm receives 100, 1000 resumes for a position, certainly, being one of the dozen resumes the HR staffer draws to interview is largely a matter of luck. Do you really think tech firms look at literally all resumes received? Of course not. Therefore, there is a degree of randomness, hence, 'luck' in even having one's resume reviewed by a human. It is not an insult towards the individuals who are in the positions, but rather a comment on the overall process.
Your firm, and your approach to reviewing all resumes may very well be different, and if actual technical people review all the resumes, and treat candidates in good faith, then you certainly are to be commended. If you can't find the talent you're looking for in the marketplace, do you provide feedback to the unsuccessful candidates? Maybe a bright hardware/firmware engineer just needs to spend some time brushing up on TCL, or on USB particulars. How will they ever know, if there's a lack of feedback?
No, locking the H-1B's out would be a far better thing to do, as it would force the US employers to actually open their resume queues and start considering US technology and engineering professionals in good faith, matching their qualifications to the positions they have open.
H-1B's are generally used for entry-level, relatively low-skilled labour. H-1B pay is usually based on some of the lowest entry level professional rates.
Once all the US STEM talent is absorbed into the sector, and all the domestic talent settles into jobs that fully make use of their talents, H-1B's may be considered, subject to the provision that firms interview and treat all US candidates for positions in good faith. Instead of doing the Microsoft or Google nonsense thing of throwing out 99% of resume submissions un-read by humans.
Sounds like you're caught up in your own environment, and have a real aversion to bringing people in, even if they need a little bit of mentorship in things like the GPL license.
Outsiders aren't going to have detailled knowledge of your proprietary environment. If you write your job descriptions and try and recruit people whom would only be qualified if they had previously worked for your firm, then it is not surprising to me that you are dissappointed.
I realize that you have a business model that probably runs pretty lean, but I would really have to question if your business model over the long term is viable if you do not have the resources to mentor, for instance, new graduates, on some of these areas in question for which they may be lacking. Otherwise you're going to be perpetually stuck searching for a needle in a haystack. Not to mention that your own business may be at risk if you lose a key engineer or two.
Getting dual CS and EE degrees = 5 years out of my life, 14 hours a day studying/projects/labs/classes, 7 days a week.
Trying to find a job = 10 years out of my life, sending out as many customized applications as I can possibly think of/find to apply to, keeping my skills current, with no success or even more than a handful of meaningful responses from employers.
Nurses, doctors, lawyers, and other professionals don't have to put herculean efforts into trying to find jobs, only to find their employer is in financial difficulty. Yet this is par for the course for top quality engineering graduates. What a shame.
The investment banking outfits only take a small trickle of the overall level of STEM talent out there. Outfits like Goldman Sachs receive thousands of resumes for each position they actually fill. It is rather misleading to suggest that the banks are sucking up all the talent. In fact, given the performance of the financial industry, they probably aren't hiring enough STEM talent.
EE's learn a non-trivial amount of material concerning PDE's, as such is fundamental to stuff like the transmission line equations. Not to the same level of rigour that a PhD Math would receive, but certainly they do receive some exposure which can be built upon.
PhD Math grads aren't 100% straight out of the box either.
A few thousand, at best, and those 6 figure wages for the H-1B's are almost entirely concentrated in the high cost centres where the cost of living and taxes make 6-figure wages barely even middle class in many cases.
"I graduated 12/2001 as an Electrical Engineer. I worked hard and even did my own work, a very novel concept I learned. (Who knew that wouldn’t be such a hot time to enter the work force?) A year earlier, people in my major could expect to be hired right out of school for about 50-60k a year. I spent about 6 months looking for an Engineering job in an area I actually knew something about, it went nowhere. After 6 months of climbing the walls at home, I enrolled in a community college to take some welding and automotive classes. I really enjoyed them, but never really expected to finish the program. In May 2004, I finished the Automotive Technology program. In July, I moved to the San Jose area in search of an entry level engineering job, I would have taken just about anything. When I did get a bite, I would get a call and said they would get back to me. They never did. I took a job at a car dealership fixing cars, it didn’t quite work out and after a couple of months, I decided to cut my losses (It ain’t cheap to live in San Jose), put all my stuff in storage, and moved BACK IN with my parents in lovely Phoenix, AZ. There is very little here for engineers and even less for engineers with my technical interests."
"People who say they can't get a job either don't have any skills or aren't trying."
That's not true. I've personally, as a top quartile grad (unfortunately without a lot of insider connections), sent out thousands of resumes, to receive very little response from the employers. All of the stuff you mention is good general advice, but if interviews aren't even being granted by the employers, then all those preperatory steps aren't of much value.
As you suggested, it really is all about luck. Tech firms receive hundreds, sometimes thousands of resumes for each job they have to fill, and many firms don't even bother considering applications in good faith.
There's no shortage of people in engineering, except in extremely specialized fields. Positions receive dozens, sometimes hundreds of resumes.
Other sectors aren't generally keen to accomodate engineers either, believing that they will demand too much pay, or be retention risks over the long term. Which is unfortunate since engineers are needed heavily in a variety of industries, but simply not hired because of ignorance on the part of the business owners.
Yup, top tech grads can send resumes to prominent tech firms and not receive responses. A joke that goes around is that Linus Torvalds himself could apply at Google or Microsoft as a Kernel Engineer, and not receive the 'time of day' because Google/Microsoft is absolutely overwhelmed with qualified people looking to work for their firms.
The same companies often won't even consider the domestic graduates though. Because of a belief that these grads cost more, are harder to retain, and have greater demands for promotions and exciting opportunities.
I've seen it with my own eyes. And the situation has literally ruined my life.
Firms aren't even bothering to hire the most qualified, and most flexible workers. H1-B employees are paid at levels that are only typically entry-level. Top quartile domestic grads can submit their resumes to hundreds of jobs and receive very little in terms of response from employers. Even MIT and UCB grads suffer significant unemployment in the engineering disciplines.
Actually the vast majority of engineering students are US citizens. Maybe someone will post the actual numbers, but 90%+ comes to mind.
Nearly my entire EE class was young, caucasian, domestic males. CS had a few Asians. But the suggestion that Americans don't study engineering is nothing but a fallacious myth.
Openings, perhaps, but the positions generally aren't accessible to bright Americans, as those firms receive 1000+ resumes for each "position" open, and the Googles and Microsofts only bother to look at less than 1% of resume submissions.
"And no matter what, I'm going to ask about the implications of the GPL in coding. "
So you expect your programmers to also come with law degrees?
Seriously...
"Expert at TCP/IP Networking" can imply a lot of things, ranging from knowing IP internals (ie: the handshakes you describe), to being a router configuration wizard. Test someone in an area not quite covered by their expertise, and you could end up throwing away a perfectly good candidate.
Cynical hiring personnel are a real problem in the industry, and considering the depth and breadth of skills that many engineers have, its not fair to harp on the lack of a very few specific skills that can be relatively easily acquired.
Indeed, and employers tend to exxagerate the value of experience as well, especially when it comes to new approaches to solving problems. Any idiot can solve the same old problems, by looking at stuff done in the past. It takes bright people, sometimes with little or no experience, to solve the truly interesting problems.
Good luck actually getting that job though. Those positions receive thousands of resumes, and entry is rather exclusive and based on criteria that has little nexus to one's qualifications (like connections).
Anyone with a CS degree, almost by definition, has a statistics background or should be able to figure out most of it with relative ease.
Maybe you're aiming too low on the talent pool and then complaining that the candidates don't measure up?
So you've considered new grads? Or you're demanding all this experience in topics that are relatively trivial to learn (ie: performance testing and QA), don't have a mentorship program, and are insisting solely on candidates local to San Diego?
Also, on the topic of resumes, usually applicants will put all sorts of keywords on their resumes. Employers have been abusive by playing 'keyword bingo' and making ridiculous demands of employees with their laundry list of keywords. Applicants, just to get noticed, often are forced to do the same.
Just because I can't answer an in-depth question about a programming language I last used 15 years ago, doesn't mean I'm not qualified to program in that language, or qualified overall. If the skill was/is relevant to a job, I could re-learn it all within a few days on the job.
Really, can always find jobs? Why has my 2002 CS/EE resume, top quartile grad of a top-20 school, submitted thousands of times to various tech companies, not receive anything but a cursory response? Why is the same repeated amongst my peer group?
Finding a job in the tech industry or in programming is not trivial. And assessing someone based on a 5 minute coding test on an interview really is denigrating the CS degree.
No kidding walterbyrd, US citizens studied STEM (particularly EE/CS) in droves in the late 1990s and early 2000s, looking to join what was an exciting industry. Most of them, upon graduation, never were even given the courtesy of receiving the 'time of day' from employers who constantly claimed a 'need' for guest workers. Older workers, who built the Internet, created all of the magic, have been systemically kicked to the curb.
Bullshit. There is plenty of talent that is here, and is already trained. Firms like Microsoft don't even bother looking at their resumes (Microsoft looks at fewer than 1% of resume submissions) before going overseas to find cheap guest workers.
There's 15 million people in the USA with undergraduate STEM degrees, but only 5M STEM jobs. No shortage of STEM talent at all, but there is a huge shortage of honesty amongst those who claim a 'shortage' of STEM workers, or a shortage of students studying STEM.
No, absolutely not. Not until all American graduates in STEM actually receive good faith treatment by US employers, instead of having their resumes ignored.
I'm a 2002, top quartile graduate of a top 20 school, in EE/CS. Sent out thousands of customized cover letters and resumes, only to receive, at best, a dozen responses over the years, and many of the phone interviews/inquiries weren't even in good faith (ie: it was obvious that at least a few were only intended to disqualify me).
H-1B and guest workers have destroyed the industry, destroyed the job prospects of people in the industry, and destroyed lives like mine.
A hundred resumes, and dozens of phone interviews, and you can only fill 2 out of 3 positions? Doesn't sound like you're very motivated to fill them. You're really trying to convince me that all these people wasted their time applying to your outfit?
Slashdot Mirror
Have a LinkedIn account. And my own website. My own custom email address. And even a Palo Alto phone number so calls to me are local. My resume definitely is filled with descriptions resembling your second quotation, not the first.
As for the rest of your 'approach' to hiring people, you can get away with that because there are an insane number of candidates in the market. Maybe I can send out enough resumes to enough companies to get an exact match to requirements, maybe I can't. But firms that can't find their proverbial 'purple squirrel' need to be looking in the mirror and wondering if their own requirements are far too arbitrary.
Like seriously, someone trained in hardware engineering can pick up the difference between USB 1.1/2.0/3.0. Software people are almost agnostic to the physical layer stuff. The in-depth technical details can be looked up in books on an as-needed basis.
As for the suggestion that 'luck' is involved, if a tech firm receives 100, 1000 resumes for a position, certainly, being one of the dozen resumes the HR staffer draws to interview is largely a matter of luck. Do you really think tech firms look at literally all resumes received? Of course not. Therefore, there is a degree of randomness, hence, 'luck' in even having one's resume reviewed by a human. It is not an insult towards the individuals who are in the positions, but rather a comment on the overall process.
Your firm, and your approach to reviewing all resumes may very well be different, and if actual technical people review all the resumes, and treat candidates in good faith, then you certainly are to be commended. If you can't find the talent you're looking for in the marketplace, do you provide feedback to the unsuccessful candidates? Maybe a bright hardware/firmware engineer just needs to spend some time brushing up on TCL, or on USB particulars. How will they ever know, if there's a lack of feedback?
No, locking the H-1B's out would be a far better thing to do, as it would force the US employers to actually open their resume queues and start considering US technology and engineering professionals in good faith, matching their qualifications to the positions they have open.
H-1B's are generally used for entry-level, relatively low-skilled labour. H-1B pay is usually based on some of the lowest entry level professional rates.
Once all the US STEM talent is absorbed into the sector, and all the domestic talent settles into jobs that fully make use of their talents, H-1B's may be considered, subject to the provision that firms interview and treat all US candidates for positions in good faith. Instead of doing the Microsoft or Google nonsense thing of throwing out 99% of resume submissions un-read by humans.
Sounds like you're caught up in your own environment, and have a real aversion to bringing people in, even if they need a little bit of mentorship in things like the GPL license.
Outsiders aren't going to have detailled knowledge of your proprietary environment. If you write your job descriptions and try and recruit people whom would only be qualified if they had previously worked for your firm, then it is not surprising to me that you are dissappointed.
I realize that you have a business model that probably runs pretty lean, but I would really have to question if your business model over the long term is viable if you do not have the resources to mentor, for instance, new graduates, on some of these areas in question for which they may be lacking. Otherwise you're going to be perpetually stuck searching for a needle in a haystack. Not to mention that your own business may be at risk if you lose a key engineer or two.
Getting dual CS and EE degrees = 5 years out of my life, 14 hours a day studying/projects/labs/classes, 7 days a week.
Trying to find a job = 10 years out of my life, sending out as many customized applications as I can possibly think of/find to apply to, keeping my skills current, with no success or even more than a handful of meaningful responses from employers.
Nurses, doctors, lawyers, and other professionals don't have to put herculean efforts into trying to find jobs, only to find their employer is in financial difficulty. Yet this is par for the course for top quality engineering graduates. What a shame.
The investment banking outfits only take a small trickle of the overall level of STEM talent out there. Outfits like Goldman Sachs receive thousands of resumes for each position they actually fill. It is rather misleading to suggest that the banks are sucking up all the talent. In fact, given the performance of the financial industry, they probably aren't hiring enough STEM talent.
EE's learn a non-trivial amount of material concerning PDE's, as such is fundamental to stuff like the transmission line equations. Not to the same level of rigour that a PhD Math would receive, but certainly they do receive some exposure which can be built upon.
PhD Math grads aren't 100% straight out of the box either.
A few thousand, at best, and those 6 figure wages for the H-1B's are almost entirely concentrated in the high cost centres where the cost of living and taxes make 6-figure wages barely even middle class in many cases.
http://www.quarterlifecrisis.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7857
"I graduated 12/2001 as an Electrical Engineer. I worked hard and even did my own work, a very novel concept I learned. (Who knew that wouldn’t be such a hot time to enter the work force?) A year earlier, people in my major could expect to be hired right out of school for about 50-60k a year. I spent about 6 months looking for an Engineering job in an area I actually knew something about, it went nowhere. After 6 months of climbing the walls at home, I enrolled in a community college to take some welding and automotive classes. I really enjoyed them, but never really expected to finish the program. In May 2004, I finished the Automotive Technology program. In July, I moved to the San Jose area in search of an entry level engineering job, I would have taken just about anything. When I did get a bite, I would get a call and said they would get back to me. They never did. I took a job at a car dealership fixing cars, it didn’t quite work out and after a couple of months, I decided to cut my losses (It ain’t cheap to live in San Jose), put all my stuff in storage, and moved BACK IN with my parents in lovely Phoenix, AZ. There is very little here for engineers and even less for engineers with my technical interests."
"People who say they can't get a job either don't have any skills or aren't trying."
That's not true. I've personally, as a top quartile grad (unfortunately without a lot of insider connections), sent out thousands of resumes, to receive very little response from the employers. All of the stuff you mention is good general advice, but if interviews aren't even being granted by the employers, then all those preperatory steps aren't of much value.
As you suggested, it really is all about luck. Tech firms receive hundreds, sometimes thousands of resumes for each job they have to fill, and many firms don't even bother considering applications in good faith.
There's no shortage of people in engineering, except in extremely specialized fields. Positions receive dozens, sometimes hundreds of resumes.
Other sectors aren't generally keen to accomodate engineers either, believing that they will demand too much pay, or be retention risks over the long term. Which is unfortunate since engineers are needed heavily in a variety of industries, but simply not hired because of ignorance on the part of the business owners.
Yup, top tech grads can send resumes to prominent tech firms and not receive responses. A joke that goes around is that Linus Torvalds himself could apply at Google or Microsoft as a Kernel Engineer, and not receive the 'time of day' because Google/Microsoft is absolutely overwhelmed with qualified people looking to work for their firms.
The same companies often won't even consider the domestic graduates though. Because of a belief that these grads cost more, are harder to retain, and have greater demands for promotions and exciting opportunities.
I've seen it with my own eyes. And the situation has literally ruined my life.
Firms aren't even bothering to hire the most qualified, and most flexible workers. H1-B employees are paid at levels that are only typically entry-level. Top quartile domestic grads can submit their resumes to hundreds of jobs and receive very little in terms of response from employers. Even MIT and UCB grads suffer significant unemployment in the engineering disciplines.
Actually the vast majority of engineering students are US citizens. Maybe someone will post the actual numbers, but 90%+ comes to mind.
Nearly my entire EE class was young, caucasian, domestic males. CS had a few Asians. But the suggestion that Americans don't study engineering is nothing but a fallacious myth.
Openings, perhaps, but the positions generally aren't accessible to bright Americans, as those firms receive 1000+ resumes for each "position" open, and the Googles and Microsofts only bother to look at less than 1% of resume submissions.
"And no matter what, I'm going to ask about the implications of the GPL in coding. "
So you expect your programmers to also come with law degrees?
Seriously...
"Expert at TCP/IP Networking" can imply a lot of things, ranging from knowing IP internals (ie: the handshakes you describe), to being a router configuration wizard. Test someone in an area not quite covered by their expertise, and you could end up throwing away a perfectly good candidate.
Cynical hiring personnel are a real problem in the industry, and considering the depth and breadth of skills that many engineers have, its not fair to harp on the lack of a very few specific skills that can be relatively easily acquired.
Indeed, and employers tend to exxagerate the value of experience as well, especially when it comes to new approaches to solving problems. Any idiot can solve the same old problems, by looking at stuff done in the past. It takes bright people, sometimes with little or no experience, to solve the truly interesting problems.
Good luck actually getting that job though. Those positions receive thousands of resumes, and entry is rather exclusive and based on criteria that has little nexus to one's qualifications (like connections).
Anyone with a CS degree, almost by definition, has a statistics background or should be able to figure out most of it with relative ease. Maybe you're aiming too low on the talent pool and then complaining that the candidates don't measure up?
So you've considered new grads? Or you're demanding all this experience in topics that are relatively trivial to learn (ie: performance testing and QA), don't have a mentorship program, and are insisting solely on candidates local to San Diego? Also, on the topic of resumes, usually applicants will put all sorts of keywords on their resumes. Employers have been abusive by playing 'keyword bingo' and making ridiculous demands of employees with their laundry list of keywords. Applicants, just to get noticed, often are forced to do the same. Just because I can't answer an in-depth question about a programming language I last used 15 years ago, doesn't mean I'm not qualified to program in that language, or qualified overall. If the skill was/is relevant to a job, I could re-learn it all within a few days on the job.
Really, can always find jobs? Why has my 2002 CS/EE resume, top quartile grad of a top-20 school, submitted thousands of times to various tech companies, not receive anything but a cursory response? Why is the same repeated amongst my peer group? Finding a job in the tech industry or in programming is not trivial. And assessing someone based on a 5 minute coding test on an interview really is denigrating the CS degree.
No kidding walterbyrd, US citizens studied STEM (particularly EE/CS) in droves in the late 1990s and early 2000s, looking to join what was an exciting industry. Most of them, upon graduation, never were even given the courtesy of receiving the 'time of day' from employers who constantly claimed a 'need' for guest workers. Older workers, who built the Internet, created all of the magic, have been systemically kicked to the curb.
Bullshit. There is plenty of talent that is here, and is already trained. Firms like Microsoft don't even bother looking at their resumes (Microsoft looks at fewer than 1% of resume submissions) before going overseas to find cheap guest workers. There's 15 million people in the USA with undergraduate STEM degrees, but only 5M STEM jobs. No shortage of STEM talent at all, but there is a huge shortage of honesty amongst those who claim a 'shortage' of STEM workers, or a shortage of students studying STEM.
No, absolutely not. Not until all American graduates in STEM actually receive good faith treatment by US employers, instead of having their resumes ignored. I'm a 2002, top quartile graduate of a top 20 school, in EE/CS. Sent out thousands of customized cover letters and resumes, only to receive, at best, a dozen responses over the years, and many of the phone interviews/inquiries weren't even in good faith (ie: it was obvious that at least a few were only intended to disqualify me). H-1B and guest workers have destroyed the industry, destroyed the job prospects of people in the industry, and destroyed lives like mine.
A hundred resumes, and dozens of phone interviews, and you can only fill 2 out of 3 positions? Doesn't sound like you're very motivated to fill them. You're really trying to convince me that all these people wasted their time applying to your outfit?