The Great IT Hiring He-Said / She-Said 574
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.
There's a clue shortage (Score:5, Insightful)
The biggest clue shortage on the hiring side is requiring x years of experience with a tool or product that has only been out for less time than they're demanding. I've lost count of the numbers of times I've seen such asinine job posting requirements.
Another good clue shortage is 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. Make up your mind -- either you want someone with only 5 years of experience or you want someone who's spent time with the tools you're requesting -- the two are mutually exclusive!
Re:There's a clue shortage (Score:5, Funny)
You misread the job description. The JOB is experienced. The salary is intermediate.
Re:There's a clue shortage (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:There's a clue shortage (Score:4, Insightful)
Agree about the certifications. The only ones that aren't immediate red flags to me are government issued ones such as Professional Engineer (PE). The reason the government certs carry more weight is they also carry legally enforced responsibility, including, but not limited to, misrepresenting your abilities or competence in a given area or discipline. There are often legally enforceable ethical codes with the law typically deferring to the the discipline's governing body, for instance, for electrical engineers, the state of Illinois defers to IEEE for the ethics code (even better that the corrupt politicians don't attempt to come up with "ethics").
For the paid certs, it feels often as if the person took a crash course on $INSERT_VENDOR_HERE just long enough to pass a test, paid the money and got the cert. A cert doesn't make up for years of hands on experience. I know more about tuning SQL than most DBAs, but I'm not now, nor will I likely ever be certified by any vendor. People that can do. People that can't... get certified, or rather, plaster their certs all over their resume.
Re:There's a clue shortage (Score:5, Funny)
I was greatly amused when the HR department at my company was looking for "Pearl" developers.
Re:There's a clue shortage (Score:5, Funny)
Re:There's a clue shortage (Score:4, Funny)
your company has positions for oysters? That is progressive!
makes snese to me (sic) (Score:5, Funny)
Re:There's a clue shortage (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Re:There's a clue shortage (Score:5, Insightful)
Thing is, the project manager does usually set the skills requirements, HR just mangle it into a job advert and pick out the "best" five CV's they receive in X amount of time. Like any other "purple squirrel", software devs often get invited to apply for jobs via word of mouth long before anyone talks to HR.
I have no idea what a purple squirrel is supposed to be, but I don't even bother to apply for jobs any more unless I know someone. Which means I don't apply for many jobs. But the alternative is to waste time.
With apologies... (Score:3)
Is the apology because the original piece(s) of doggerel were about a purple COW?
Re:There's a clue shortage (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:There's a clue shortage (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:There's a clue shortage (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Eunuch Programmers (Score:5, Funny)
http://search.dilbert.com/comi... [dilbert.com]
Re:There's a clue shortage (Score:5, Funny)
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?
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He was 6 foot 4 and full of muscles!
Re:There's a clue shortage (Score:4, Informative)
I was told by Google HR that they do NOT require CS degrees for their computer scientist / software engineer positions. They were eager to hire me for this position despite my not having a CS degree (I have a related advanced technical degree). However, I wanted a product manager position, and they refused to even interview me for it on the basis that I didn't have a CS degree. They said a CS degree WAS required for this position. We went round and round about the absurdity of not requiring it for a computer science position but requiring it for a product management position, until I said, fuck it, this doesn't sound like the place for me. Sad.
Re:There's a clue shortage (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:There's a clue shortage (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember: HR people generally don't know the first thing about what they are actually hiring for. They're told to find someone who can program in X or is decent in OS Y. After a few filters go over it, it suddenly because 5 years in X along with 5 years each in a bunch of semi-related stuff. Its just like if you tried to hire for a position for something you don't know the first thing about, but you have to figure out who the best person is.
Re:There's a clue shortage (Score:5, Informative)
While we're happy to review any resumes HR sends our way, managers where I work spend significant amounts of time personally searching sites like Linked-in and reading resumes themselves, and directly calling candidates who look good. Our biggest problem is willingness to relocate - candidates who are already on the West Coast are so hammered by recruiters that it's hard to find anyone actually looking, but there are plenty of qualified engineers elsewhere.
The moral of the story is: make sure your resume appears in the right places, and does a good job of selling you (protip: no one cares about "duties and responsibilities" - explain cool problems that you personally solved instead). And realize most of the programming jobs are in Silly Valley and (increasingly) Seattle, so look where demand exceeds supply, not in a town with 2 programming jobs and 3 programmers.
Re:There's a clue shortage (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:There's a clue shortage (Score:5, Insightful)
Our biggest problem is willingness to relocate - candidates who are already on the West Coast are so hammered by recruiters that it's hard to find anyone actually looking, but there are plenty of qualified engineers elsewhere.
Sounds like the real problem is that you are unwilling to relocate. Putting your company somewhere where the cost of living is high and there's a shortage of talent seems to be very popular, but difficult to understand. Why not find out where there's a pool of talent and open an office there? Or do what a number of tech companies have done and allow remote workers, then start building satellite offices where you find clusters of competent people.
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I always wondered why tech offices were located in the centre of some crappy city or soulless business park (eg Winnersh in Reading, sigh).
If I had a big company to set up somewhere, it'd be in an area usually frequented by tourists - there are enough people wanting to move from their shitty rat race commute that they would want to relocate to a nice area. And you'd have the side benefit of having a trapped workforce who would never want to relocate back to their grimy city commute days.
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Ah, Winnersh. If it's always summer in California, it is always February on Winnersh Triangle station
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Sounds like the real problem is that you are unwilling to relocate. Putting your company somewhere where the cost of living is high and there's a shortage of talent seems to be very popular, but difficult to understand.
One of the main things that drives this is how funding works. It's amazing how difficult it is to get funding if it requires the VCs to travel. Certainly a significant hurdle even for places like Austin where you have a decent-sized high-tech community.
Since there are already WAY more companies than they'll ever fund just down the street, it's hard to blame the VCs for not wanting to get on a plane constantly. Founders know this, so guess where they tend to start their companies?
Of course, while they ar
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Re:There's a clue shortage (Score:4, Interesting)
(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
Re:There's a clue shortage (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps there is an LCA application (part of the green card process) in progress where the applicant has exactly those skills?
Re:There's a clue shortage (Score:5, Insightful)
My personal favorite - and one I was dinged on several times before I learned to basically just lie my ass off about it - was how many servers I've been responsible for at one time. At some ISP jobs I've had, I've had to touch hundreds of unique servers while helping clients, but only had maybe 20-30 to worry about day to day. But companies hiring based on this metric want to hear that you were administering 200+, 500+, whatever number of servers on a daily basis. This is bullshit for two main reasons:
1. No single person is personally touching dozens or hundreds of servers on a daily or even weekly basis. A _team_ of people might, but a person isn't.
2. Once you get into a mid double digit number of servers (or sometimes even sooner) you're using automation stuff like Chef or CFEngine or BladeLogic or whatever. At that point 50, 100, 500, 5000 servers become rapidly irrelevant, because you're thinking in terms of a single task affecting an arbitrary number of servers, not a one-to-one situation. You're not logging into each individual server and firing off Windows Update every Patch Tuesday. In fact if you're wasting your time doing crap like that I would argue you're not a very good system administrator, because you're not learning and growing, you're simply caring and feeding.
Re:There's a clue shortage (Score:5, Insightful)
My personal favorite - and one I was dinged on several times before I learned to basically just lie my ass off about it - was how many servers I've been responsible for at one time. At some ISP jobs I've had, I've had to touch hundreds of unique servers while helping clients, but only had maybe 20-30 to worry about day to day. But companies hiring based on this metric want to hear that you were administering 200+, 500+, whatever number of servers on a daily basis. This is bullshit for two main reasons:
1. No single person is personally touching dozens or hundreds of servers on a daily or even weekly basis. A _team_ of people might, but a person isn't.
My take on this is that if there are 200+ servers, any on of which you may be required to service, the fact that you don't "touch" them all daily doesn't matter and that there's no lie involved here.
That's like rating the fire department on the number of houses they visit instead of the number of houses they protect.
The more servers you have to touch on a daily basis, the more likely that they're not well-configured.
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Problem is, there aren't any 10k centers in Northern Nevada, yet they got oodles of tax breaks to "make local jobs".
Someone didn't think this through.
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You're not logging into each individual server and firing off Windows Update every Patch Tuesday. In fact if you're wasting your time doing crap like that I would argue you're not a very good system administrator, because you're not learning and growing, you're simply caring and feeding.
Until that one time the automated patching system causes the critical server to fail in some way that could have been easily cleared if a human was watching.
Seriously, we automate all the patching we can, but some of the bizarre software running on our VMs means they have to be rebooted manually so that if something screws up, it can be fixed fast. And, yes, I know that for any critical service, there should be some sort of clustering, but generally I'm taking about VMs that interact with specific scientif
Re:There's a clue shortage (Score:4, Insightful)
Poaching (Score:3)
The biggest clue shortage on the hiring side is requiring x years of experience with a tool or product that has only been out for less time than they're demanding.
If they're asking for experience from before when it was out, then you need to have worked for the company that produced it. It's a way to disguise poaching.
Re:Poaching (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't that how it should be? (Score:5, Insightful)
All pack animals imitate their alphas. Our leaders are the best liars in the world. They lie as easily as they breathe. Every single one of them.
This is the example we are given to follow, because this is what brings success.
Honest workers are liabilities. They might out you just like Snowden did. Why in the world would you want people on your team who won't get on board with how you lie to your clients?
The interviews are made impossible to screen out the honest ones, because deceit is the foundation of success in America.
Re:Poaching (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:There's a clue shortage (Score:5, Insightful)
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It's Quite a Lot of Fuckery To Be Sure (Score:5, Informative)
Basically the job boards are now so useless that your best bet is to start networking in-person with as many local companies as you can. I've already run across some companies that are starting to realize this and host technology meet-ups. While this isn't the best state of affairs, at the very least we might be able to start flushing out some useless HR staff that make it impossible to even interview remotely qualified employees. It'd be funny if this entire process goes full circle and we end up with job postings in classified sections of local papers. That would probably be better than what we have now.
Re:It's Quite a Lot of Fuckery To Be Sure (Score:4, Insightful)
So the people who get jobs are the people great at schmoozing? Somehow I don't think that's the way to get the best people either, unless you're looking for sales staff.
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It'd be funny if this entire process goes full circle and we end up with job postings in classified sections of local papers.
I do see postings every once in a while with a mailing address as the only point of contact.
I Suspect (Score:4, Insightful)
So Wrong (Score:2)
The job candidate decides whether or not he/she will accept the position at the terms presented.
Employment-at-will means you can leave at any time.
Re: So Wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the Libertarian dream; the freedom to starve.
Re: So Wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
Because society is just one big playpen for sociopaths, and the weak must die!!!!
Agreed (Score:4, Insightful)
Senior software developer here.
We get *lots* of applications from candidates who consider themselves to be senior-level, and have a good 10 years (give or take) of working experience to back that up.
But once we ask them to solve novel problems, they fail. They go on and on about all these sophisticated technologies that they have worked with, and how they integrated them together. But all they can do is integrate other people's solutions together. They cannot cook up solutions of their own (not, at least, if the problem is any more complicated than a simple automation script).
So, we avoid senior level candidates these days. Interviewing them isn't worth our investment of time. We would rather hire a junior level candidate that can actually solve novel problems, and train them up.
Re:Agreed (Score:4, Insightful)
Another senior software developer here.
The problem is your interview technique. You are looking for candidates who ware good at solving problems in interviews. Many of the best developers don't work like that - in fact I'd say it's almost guaranteed to find bad ones who come up with quick solutions that aren't necessarily the best ones.
When I have a tricky problem I think about it first. Maybe do some research online, see what other people have done. I usually have a few ideas, but just hastily implementing one is a good way to end up with some nasty technical debt later.
I don't know what industry you are in, maybe hacking stuff together is fine (web development maybe?) In my industry products have to run for 5+ years without intervention and without crashing or getting into a state where they drain their non-rechargable batteries prematurely. They do some pretty complex stuff as well. When interviewing we look at examples of the candidate's previous work, and ask them to discuss interesting aspects of it that show their understanding and problem solving abilities.
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I agree, whilst a simple fizzbuzz program can weed out the truly incompetent or pure scammer, anything beyond that is just luck based on the developer or the interview. People think differently in interview situations anyway, so a test is usually a very poor means of determining their ability, especially with unfamiliar tools and environment.
One place I interviewed for set me a test of doing some code review, they gave me a visual studio project and asked me what I thought of it - not only could I demonstra
Re:Agreed (Score:4, Insightful)
I call this sort of interviewing "Tech Trivial Pursuit"; it's stupid, it won't give you any indication of how the person is going to work out in your team, and it doesn't give any indication of how someone produces a real solution to your actual problems.
It just tells you how quickly someone can come up with a reasonable solution in an interview, and/or how quickly they can remember the solution to your problem that they read in one of the "How to Interview at Google" books.
It's worse when the people interviewing you aren't from the team you'll be working in. I feel bad for those teams... they're going to get someone who's good at answering interview puzzle questions, but maybe they're entirely impossible to work with, or total assholes in day to day situations.
Yeah, yeah, Google's very successful and rich. But it's not because of their broken interview process.
There's a clue shortage on the hirEE side (Score:2)
There's plenty of crappy coders out there who think they're way better than they really are.
Asperger syndrome (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Asperger syndrome (Score:5, Interesting)
That's almost an urban legend. I've worked with a couple hundred developers over the course of my career, and likely interviewed a hundred more, and can only think of a couple who fit the movie-nerd stereotype. Most are simply professionals working a professional job.
The problem is that so few working devs actually have good problem-solving skills. You simply can't be good at this job through memorization.
Re:Asperger syndrome (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Aspberger/HFA "sufferer" here, who also happens to be the team leader of a consulting group.
Probably quite a few of the "brilliant" coders fall into the HFA category (High Functioning Autism, the "other name" for Aspergers now that it is a number on the ASD scale, or is it a different condition? Great question for starting a fight in a room full of cognitive psychologists...), and we can be a nightmare to integrate into a team - the lack of social skills hampers the ability to communicate and co-ordinate with other team members.
There are some things that are hard to teach effectively - team-working and critical thinking skills being the two most relevant in the environments I work in. If a candidate has those two and if I can see that from a CV and interview and a bonus of self-discipline and motivation, then I almost ignore what functional experience they have with systems, they have the job. It will take weeks or at most months to train them in the systems and applications, but getting the world's best coder in, who can write Tetris in a single line of Basic code or solve NP hard problems in their head is useless if they cannot work with the rest of their colleagues.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:There's a clue shortage on the hirEE side (Score:5, Insightful)
If that's that case, then I must be a fantastic programmer, and not even realize it.
I know how to write software, but am not driven to delve into it. I dont find it all that pleasurable, but do find it a valuable skill to have when I need to make something that does $FOO, when I need it to. My solutions may not be the most efficient, or the most pretty, but they do $FOO, and I am the only person that needs to worry about the ugly code. I can recognize ugly code when I see it, (as I make plenty of it, and know it to be ugly.)
I am honest about that. I do not consider myself a good programmer at all. There are many people out there that make much better code than me, and do so with greater speed, alacrity, and skill.
I keep hearing horror stories about people who can't pass a fizz-buzz test, or who can't make a good function that can withstand having strange edge cases thrown at it. I can do that, but again-- I dont even really consider myself a programmer. I did a little bit of VBA backend wallpaper-paste type crap for one of my recent jobs to fill niche needs for my company because nobody else in my department knew how to use VBA, but any really competent programmer would have run circles around me.
The major problem I see here, is that if I said this at a job interview, the hiring manager would laugh nervously, thank me for coming, then promptly shred my file.
Could I learn to be a good programmer? Sure. All the programming skill I picked up is entirely self-taught, because I wanted to learn how to do it, because it is one of those essential skills of this century. I really do think that it will be as "expected" as being able to use a word processor or a spreadsheet program. Given the right motivation, I could become very good at it. I just dont find it pleasurable to do.
That's the real heart of the issue.
Hiring managers dont look for people that can be molded to fit a position in the company.
Hiring managers want the candidate that "Is a perfect fit"-- which really means "Is just like that other guy we had, but who isn't that other guy."
This is analogous to a starving man looking for "Just the perfect morsel of food", standing at an all you can eat buffet, looking at food with minor blemishes on it.
"Oh, that apple has a spot on it." he says. "I can't eat that apple-- but, oh, i'm so hungry!"
After looking at every single morsel of food on the table, he makes the bold assertion that he just cant find anything to eat there.
"There's a terrible food shortage!" he screams, holding his stomach, as it rumbles angrily-- Surrounded by a mountain of perfectly edible food. It just isn't absolutely perfect, and he wont dare lower his standards on what he considers to be perfect.
So, he goes crying to the government. "I'm starving!" he screams, amid a giant buffet of food. "I need food or I will die!"
The government says "Ok, We will import food for you, since there does not seem to be enough. India has food they can provide, we'll ask them to send some."
"YAY!" says the hiring manager.
What does india do? They say "The man's expectations are unrealistic, which is why he wont eat the food that surrounds him. He does not realize that the food he has is better than what we have to offer, so we will just peel or cook the food first, to hide the blemishes. He wont know the difference."
So they do that.
The man sees the cooked food-- which has been peeled, boiled, fried, and otherwise rendered so that the blemishes are no longer visible-- even though the ingredients were far from the model of perfection he held in his mind. But it looks appealing, and it isn't obviously bearing any defects, so he digs in. "MM! This is good shit!" he says. "Gimme more!"
That's what I really see as what's going on here.
Am I a perfect programmer? No. Do hiring managers demand perfect programmers? yes. Is there a shortage of perfect programmers? Probably-- NOBODY is perfect, especially when the definition of "Perfect" is very m
Re:There's a clue shortage on the hirEE side (Score:5, Insightful)
So, let me make sure I understand this perfectly, and without error:
You wouldn't hire me, because I am not writing in the way you have come to expect to be written to, (Please, do enlighten me with a stellar example of such communication, so that I might emulate it for you. I don't want you to starve to death standing at an all you can eat buffet, because the food there does not "meet your standards".)
Here, let me be blunt with you.
You are hiring for a position where you want a technical problem to be solved with a robust and fully logical solution. That's what good programmers provide. Yet, you have now redefined the role to be the logical union of ((Good analytical skill) + (Creativity in problem resolution) + (Competency implementing the solution as real computer code)) with ((Writes like an English Lit major when communicating with peers) + (Keeps trying even though logically there is no viable solution.))
Just so you know, those two compound sets do not overlap. ;) "Keeps trying when there is no logical solution" (and provably so) is mutually exclusive to "Good analytical skill".
But again, rather than accept this with aplomb, and reconsider your position if even for a moment-- you have instead resorted to an ad-hominem attack at worst, and a non-sequitor at best.
Remember, I don't even want the job you are offering. I have moved to a completely different career path, far removed from IT. I have no interest in the positions you are offering. My only interest is to see you stop acting illogically, as it will make the hiring experience better for you and for your applicants. That's all.
Your response was to say that you would rather take people that are not capable of understanding large and complex problems, because they don't complain.
(And you wonder why your programmers are sub-par, and cant understand basic concepts in logic?)
Re:There's a clue shortage on the hirEE side (Score:4, Interesting)
Studies show that the less capable someone is, the more they are sure of themselves.
Soft science studies measuring subjective things, to be precise.
We use the wrong model for IT hiring and retention (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [brucefwebster.com]). 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 [brucefwebster.com] and retaining [brucefwebster.com] the right IT engineers. ..bruce..
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Like hiring sports teams in what sense? Like the NFL draft? Big companies get to pick who they want from each year's graduating class, with little if any choice on the part of the new-minted engineers, and most of the graduates don't ever get to use their skills professionally?
When we hire we look for specific skills that are relevant to our business. Maybe that's what you mean. We try to be careful about what's an absolute must (e.g. knows C++) and make the rest of the qualifications "preferred" or "des
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As a guy working on both sides (Score:5, Insightful)
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Hiring managers perspective (Score:5, Funny)
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 (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Hiring managers perspective (Score:5, Funny)
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).
Some of the most successful companies (Score:5, Insightful)
"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."
So, you are supposed to work during the day and participate in hackathons during the evening and week ends. These are looking for slaves. I can't believe this is the model someone consider as being successful. Why only in IT this kind of things happen? Do you ask a lawyer to do hackathons? Participate in contests for a slice of pizza and a flat beer? Do IT employees considered people with families, with kids, with a right to do something else not related to computers during the week ends, during the evening? This world is broken.
As a IT prospect, do you respect yourself enough to refuse this kind of slavery?
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I have experienced this first hand (Score:5, Insightful)
I am currently searching for a development job and everyone seems to want 3 years experience or 5 years experience. I am seeing "graduate" jobs asking for 2 years commercial experience.
And its impossible to even get your foot in the door because of the "IT Recruitment Firm" who will reject any resume that doesn't match exactly what they are looking for.
If I could just get to the point where someone would actually TALK to me and find out what I can do and just how good I am at writing code, I might have a chance...
Re:I have experienced this first hand (Score:5, Insightful)
If you have recently graduated think of the worst person you just went through university with. The one who plagerised all their assignments and never seemed to get caught, who struggles to understand the difference between a loop and an if block, the person you would fake a heart attack to avoid getting stuck with in a group project.
This person has the same qualifications as you do.
In fact, the person described probably has better qualifications on their CV because they are more happy to lie about them.
You need to figure out how you differentiate yourself from them. As someone hiring that person is the absolute last thing I want to end up with and I will happily chuck 50 maybe CVs to avoid them.
This differentiation is where things like prior work experience, open source contributions and memberships of local user groups plays a role.
Btw, being in Aus have you signed up for linux.conf.au yet? lots of recruitment happens in forums like this.
I'm in the job market, and I'm dealing w/morons... (Score:5, Interesting)
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...")
Re:I'm in the job market, and I'm dealing w/morons (Score:5, Insightful)
These are not real positions. They are non-jobs. There's tons of them. Lots of reasons they exist -- recruiters fishing for resumes to put in their database, ad to satisfy some visa requirement by not finding anyone, internal corporate requirements, etc.
Re: (Score:3)
Our company keeps jobads for all positons open all the time.
Reason: when the boss fires someone in a snap, there is always a few weeks worth of applications to start looking for the replacement.
That should be illegal. You're wasting the time of people who desperately need to spend that time gainfully. You are Bad People. I hope you go out of business.
Probably moot for a while (Score:5, Interesting)
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
Re: (Score:3)
HR shouldn't be hiring people (Score:5, Insightful)
Managers should be the ones hiring and firing people. HR's job should be managing employee paperwork. The actual task for hiring people should be done by the managers themselves.
Will this mean that hiring practices become much more chaotic and lack uniformity? Yep. Guess what... when you get hired your managers are going to be different and the jobs you're getting hired for are going to be different. So why pretend that the hiring process has to be uniform when the work environments you're applying for are not uniform?
Now some will argue "this will take time from the manager's other jobs etc"... well that means either you don't have enough managers or you're over complicating the process.
Ultimately, the manager should get some face time with whomever is applying for the job. He/she should ask the new potential hire some questions to get to know them... and then go from there.
I seriously don't understand why we even bother with HR in regards to hires? Anyone actually know?
Give department heads budgets for their departments as well as responsibilities they must fulfill by given deadlines. If they're competent they'll work it out. If not then they won't. HR is not doing anything to make that process easier. If anything what they're doing is putting an artificial barrier between the manager and the potential employee. Possibly screening out people the manager might otherwise want to hire.
And if these stupid job apps are just ruses so they can hire someone specific then why even go through that game? Just let the manager hire his friend or whatever. Cut to the chase please and stop polluting job listings with bullcrap jobs that aren't actually open.
Re: (Score:3)
Liability is understood, however that has to be addressed in another way because this non-functional.
As to bad managers... I strongly believe in making it very easy for incompetence is be detected. I see no reason to hide it.
And as to training... one of the most unforgivable things about the modern American work place is the lack of continuous formal training. This causes all sorts of needless skill shortages as well as causing good employees to become obsolete over time because the stupid company didn't ke
Consulting, Twice the Money, Half the BS (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Fresh out of college with 20 years experience (Score:5, Funny)
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... [kleinbottle.com]
Re:Fresh out of college with 20 years experience (Score:4, Funny)
[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
Comment removed (Score:3)
Imagine if you will (Score:5, Insightful)
Your friend looks at this and then looks at you as though you had totally lost your mind. You ask "What's wrong?" He tells you, "Look when I said I was thirsty what I meant is I wanted a non-alcoholic raspberry lime rickey. Of course made with 7-up, not that cheap store brand stuff and of course freshly squeezed limes and definitely Zyrex syrup. What's wrong with you man?"
Two things come to your mind. The first is your friend is kind of an asshole. The second is he isn't that thirsty and should shut the fuck up about how he thinks he's going to die from dehydration.
The perennial disconnect... (Score:5, Insightful)
There are two fundamental dichotomies that hide under this argument, and they've been going on for years, if not decades.
First, there's the disconnect between large business and small business. Second, there's the disconnect between what people have previously been paid (or their peers have), and what they are actually worth. This is coming from a guy who has hired 5 software developers so far this year, and has 2 slots still available...
A lot of developers are looking at what happens at Google and Microsoft (aside from the layoffs...), and try to use that as a standard when they apply for a position at a 50-person shop in the midwest. This creates an expectation disconnect where someone gets an offer for $65k, but won't take it because they've been convinced by the Internet, their Career Planning & Placement department, or the job postings on career boards, that their skills are worth $90k.
This is an "expectation shortage", and results when there are not enough candidates willing to take the positions that ACTUALLY EXIST. It's all well and good to say that employers are under-paying developers, and looking for cheap labor. But the market does set rates, and the fact is that most software projects away from the coasts just don't support paying developers $120k/year - at least not sustainably.
The second disconnect occurs when people misconstrue what it takes to be hired and promoted in the majority of companies, other than the mega-corporations who can have 200 people doing the same job. The sad fact is that you pretty much have to be a specialist to GET a job, and then you have to be a generalist to KEEP it. The specialists who stay in their pidgeon-hole are always the first against the wall when the next re-org comes. But the generalists who have 75% competency in an array of skill-sets rarely make the cut during interviews, but have enormous job security in their current positions -- though often feel themselves "stuck" in positions where they may not feel like they're advancing quickly enough.
This is a failure of cultivation and and expectation problem on the part of employers. It creates a market distortion where people are encouraged to specialize, and then dumped back onto the market with inflated expectations of their overall worth when that very specialization becomes a liability. (Ruby, anyone...?)
From the inside, I think it's undeniable that there is a shortage of quality, trained developers, with attitudes and ethics that will lead to long-term advancement and quality employment. That doesn't mean that there is a shortage of bodies with the raw skills necessary to do the job. But, in the end, that hardly matters... companies aren't hiring automata, even if some of them want to pay as though they were.
There are ample failures on both sides of the equation, and large companies are exacerbating those problems with their treatment of many H-1Bs and "mass hiring" of fresh graduates (at insanely inflated salaries) who then get culled 9 months later.
But candidates are also making the problem worse by viewing software development as a single, unified market, and clinging to the belief that just because Company X in Boston could afford to pay $x for a given product/project, that their skills are still worth $x when they move to Company Y in Pittsburgh, creating software for a completely different industry.
The end result is a shortage of jobs that don't require specialists to get through the door, and a shortage of employees able to adjust their expectations to the realities of the market we are in. When you meet in the middle, it's a real shortage, regardless of how it came to pass.
Re:The perennial disconnect... (Score:5, Insightful)
"But the market does set rates" - You clearly don't understand how markets work. If you make an offering and no one takes it (assuming the reasons why aren't some substantial intervention in the market by some large actor), your offering is below market rate. That is pretty much the definition of what those words mean. Either you don't need the position filled (it will bring in $X dollars and cost $Y and X Y), or you need to pay more.
If those software houses in Pittsburgh cant sell software for a profit offering developers market rate then the market doesn't need the software those software houses provide because it costs too much to make. Either company Y needs to (and can afford to) pay more, or it needs to shut up shop because it is not viable (or at least not do the project it cant afford to hire people for). The one thing it cannot do is complain that it has to compete with other companies both in selling it's goods and sources it's raw materials (which include human resources).
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Recently, the local news wondered if the Seattle area would have more tech
What am I doing wrong? (Score:3, Informative)
I'm a "former" developer and current IT hiring manager. I am trying to fill a couple of developer positions. I worked with HR to craft the job description that best described the job opening... Without any crazy years of experience requirements. It is a senior level position though. At any rate, we have received only two qualified candidates in two months. And we have received only four or five resumes so it's not as if we have been weeding out a ton of candidates before interviewing them. One received a promotion from their current employer before we could bring them back for a second interview, the other was asking for almost double what we could have offered plus wanted to telecommute from out of state half the week. We just are not seeing candidates. Where do developers go when they are looking for jobs? Job boards are expensive and we can't afford to hit every one of them.
Re:What am I doing wrong? (Score:5, Insightful)
You aren't paying enough. It is sort of obvious. Youe offering is below market so no one applies and those that do apply get promotions or can reasonably expect much better pay and conditions. Either you don't need the position filled, or you need to pay more to fill it.
Can I ask, why is it when it comes to hiring technical staff business people have such a hard time understanding supply and demand. You never hear them saying 'Why cant I buy a top of the line server rack for $1?", but are shocked that no one applies for their job offered at half market rate.
Re: What am I doing wrong? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah so you are sabotaging yourself by refusing to indicate prices up front. I don't apply to places that don't list salary ranges (I'm not a techie but still) because it is a bad faith negotiating tactic that places the power in the employers hand.
Re: (Score:3)
Show us the description and the salary or GTFO
Ha the hiring game (Score:3)
How Does this Affect Mid-Career (Score:3, Insightful)
Awesome, the companies are learning to market themselves. How unhelpful.
In any corporation, workers are just another capital expense. It is delusional to see yourself as any different to your employing corporation than the chair your ass is in. Both are seen as replaceable cogs, the corporate machinery will continue to chug along with or without you.
As some point, software engineers will need to accept that this is a tradesmen profession and we are fools to ignore history.
Every employer forces you to sign a contract upon hire.
Until we have our own contract, we will always be on the losing side of negotiations. We need a guild, a union, whatever you want to call it. We need representation if we ever hope to be treated as the tradesmen we are.
Shortage of People Sort of... (Score:3)
There is definitely a shortage of senior people who really have a clue. Everyone I know that I would ever recommend hiring, already has a job and they have jobs at "A" companies. The companies really having trouble getting "A" people are the "C" companies. Companies are going to have to stop writing off everyone that failed to get back on the horse immediately after the recession ended. Companies are going to have to give young people a chance to enter the industry and actually help them develop. When everyone outsourced every job they could to offshore vendors in 2003-2010, they killed the pool of candidates for the long term. Many of those workers who had a ton of experience left and never came back. Many of those young workers never got the chance to develop into senior workers. Companies now want nobody with less than 8-10 years experience yet there aren't enough "A" or even "B" players that entered the industry at that time. More H1-Bs is only a cop-out to bandage a systemic problem that business doesn't know how to hire, develop and retain people to maintain the pipeline.
Re:entry level systems architect (Score:4, Insightful)
Good luck on your application. Let us know how it goes.
Re: (Score:3)
There is no HR any more. That's part of the problem. My first job came from a corporate HR employee who found me online and contacted me directly. Now all the dedicated HR roles are gone with the necessary administrative bits delegated to former secretaries. All the searching for new candidates is outsourced to the idiot recruiters who act like over judgemental gatekeepers to inflate their own sense of value.
Re:Perspective from the other side - Liars & F (Score:4, Insightful)
And, of course, you fail to comprehend why this is the case.
The reality is that the people you really want probably dont have a degree. They probably dont have the exact skillset you want, but can easily attain it, given half the chance.
You create an iron-curtain that is rigorously enforced by a computer to pre-screen your applicants, "Because there are so many out there!", which REAL computer experts and programmers understand perfectly well, and KNOW that they will be systemically excluded before they can even talk to you-- the actual person at the other end of that dark tunnel-- Leaving only the people that outright lie, cheat, and plagiarize other people's work that make it through your filter.
Rather than realize that your filter is an effective tool at concentrating charlatans and liars, and not an effective tool at concentrating actual talent-- then making the appropriate action, you instead conclude that there are too many charlatans and liars!
It boggles the mind!
"But they have these really attractive resumes and degrees!"
Seriously.
Re: (Score:3)
And THAT, is your problem.
Never mind that by the numbers, the actual top A+ talent does not fall into the "Has prestigious 4 year degree!" demographic.
(And that those who DO go the 4 year degree route, often have oppressive student debts, and cannot accept low-ball salaries.)
There isn't a shortage of talented prospects.
There's a shortage of invisible pink unicorns.
That's why you get such a large number of frauds-- You only accept applicants that claim to be both invisible, AND pink, AND are unicorns.
Re:"Progressive" Labor Laws (Score:4, Informative)