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You Only Need 50% of Job “Requirements”

talent.works

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Re: You Only Need 50% of Job “Requirements”

#161

Post by hinkley »

rossdavidh wrote: post #68

I think many people write their job description's requirements, as if it were the opening stage of a negotiation. You list everything you want as if it were a requirement, and you will only get about half of that. But the problem is, it isn't a negotiation, it's a minimum spec (especially if you put the word "required" next to that line), and so many quite good candidates won't apply. However, typically, I see 20-30…

I got a lot of traction in my early days simply ignoring the requirements and asking myself if I could do the job.

Some skills can be picked up easily. Others are difficult to teach. You have a detail oriented position, you need a detail oriented person. If they’re sharp they can learn pretty much everything else.

Hell I’ve taken over internationalization coding because I understand how grammar works in two languages and an inkling of Japanese grammar. I couldn’t translate a UI to save my life but the hard part is stitching sane sentences together from data.

Re: You Only Need 50% of Job “Requirements”

#162

Post by [deleted] »

mbesto wrote: post #114
techstrategist wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having many unqualified applicants is unrelated to how many good 50-75% candidates self-select against applying. It’s likely entirely different groups exhibiting the inverse effects of Dunning-Kruger.

> how many good 50-75% candidates self-select against applying Got some data to back that up?

[deleted]

Re: You Only Need 50% of Job “Requirements”

#163

Post by potta_coffee »

dfxm12 wrote: post #105
rossdavidh wrote: post #68

I think many people write their job description's requirements, as if it were the opening stage of a negotiation. You list everything you want as if it were a requirement, and you will only get about half of that. But the problem is, it isn't a negotiation, it's a minimum spec (especially if you put the word "required" next to that line), and so many quite good candidates won't apply. However, typically, I see 20-30…

so many quite good candidates won't apply. Shame on someone for writing unrealistic or unnecessary "requirements", but also shame on the engineer who doesn't even apply because of them. I wonder how truly good a candidate is if they get discouraged so easily. Maybe a hidden requirement 1 is showing a willingness to try to punch above one's weight or displaying some self confidence during the application process. Afte…

Anecdotal, I didn't meet most of the requirements for my current gig, but I applied because they listed one framework I'd been using quite a bit. I ended up being getting hired and pretty much being the senior guy there.

Re: You Only Need 50% of Job “Requirements”

#164

Post by pbhjpbhj »

adetrest wrote: post #31
JustSomeNobody wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By the 5th time you see the question, you're fuming so you shout, "YES! I ANGER EASILY!!!!" Ahem... Sorry. I worked at a place that was bought out and the new team immediately made everyone take a battery of these style tests. A few days later they did a mass firing based on the results. I survived long enough to find work elsewhere.

Firing based on test results sounds illegal. Same reason why employers can't give iq tests to candidates anymore IIRC.

I assume that you're in USA as you don't say, what law prohibits it? Any insight on the rationale?

Presumably it is not illegal to require a particular educational level or particular certificate pass which are likely to be close proxies for an "IQ" test result?

Re: You Only Need 50% of Job “Requirements”

#165

Post by astura »

anticensor wrote: post #145
astura wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sort of reason for not hiring a 60 year old is illegal in the US.

Unless the job listing is specifically intended for interns .

You're conflating different things.

If you were hiring an intern and you got two resumes in order to comply with the law you'd have to consider a 60 year old intern still in college the same way you'd consider a 19 year old intern still in college.

Re: You Only Need 50% of Job “Requirements”

#166

Post by nyghtly »

GhostVII wrote: post #39

It's interesting how women seem to get interviews when matching fewer of the job requirements than men. Might be worth looking into whether this is due to gender discrimination in recruiting, or if women just apply to jobs that are a better fit, regardless of job requirements.

It's tough to draw conclusions from a pool of 118 industries. It could be that women are applying to less competitive jobs in greater numbers than men. That would explain both how they are getting more interviews and also why they are turning down more jobs.

Tech is a great example, where software engineering positions are very competitive and most of the applicants are men. This would pull down the numbers for men in general, making it seem like they need to fill more of the requirements for a job than women, when in reality they are just applying for more competitive jobs more often.

It would be more instructive to compare the numbers for the same type of job in order to see what the bias really is.

Re: You Only Need 50% of Job “Requirements”

#167

Post by indigochill »

scarejunba wrote: post #151
chrisbennet wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I see a position that has been open for longer than a month, I assume they are not serious about filling it. Either they aren't really hiring or they don't want to pay the market rate.

Most of the job positions all of FAANG have posted have been open for months, some for over a year. They are really hiring and have no problem paying market rate. That's a counterexample.

If a company is really hiring and paying market rate, what's the situation leading to positions open for over a year? Unicorn-hunting?

I've been part of a hiring process that took a couple months (and by the end had management breathing down our necks to just hire -someone-), but that was because we were hiring into an out-of-the-way location that generally lacked the skills locally that we were looking for. Neither of which would apply to FAANG.

Re: You Only Need 50% of Job “Requirements”

#168

Post by [deleted] »

sillyquiet wrote: post #152
anticensor wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does US anti-discrimination law really operate like "you have to serve the protected class whatever the consequences for unprotected ones?" European ones typically require both weak and strong classes be served equally, not in results, but in the manner and the matter.

Not sure what you mean by 'consequences' for the unprotected classes in this context, but the age discrimination case would only be valid if both the Over-40 candidate and Under-40 candidate were equally qualified, and the Over-40 candidate was rejected solely because they are too close to retirement age. Note that due to the letter of the EEO law, there is NOT actionable age discrimination if all candidates were ove…

[deleted]

Re: You Only Need 50% of Job “Requirements”

#169

Post by seanmcdirmid »

jriot wrote: post #155
alain94040 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great point. Having been on both sides of the hiring table, I can tell you that the candidate has no idea what we use to make decisions, because the candidate has no visibility into our internal issues. Most of our decisions (especially to pass) have nothing to do with the candidate. And they have no way to know, so instead they over-analyze their resume or what was said during the interview to try to extract some ki…

Those are the most frustrating reasons. You wonder why people hate finding a job, its because of people like you doing this type of nonsense. Figure out what you want and need before wasting people's time.

Don’t assume parent is making this decision on their own, or even at all (inspite of using the proverbial “we”). Most of us are just caught up in the system with little recourse to go against it.

Of course, if you are using a proverbial “you”, my comment doesn’t apply.

Re: You Only Need 50% of Job “Requirements”

#170

Post by JustSomeNobody »

Double_a_92 wrote: post #75
throwawaymath wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, unless you and I have radically different definitions of what "comfortable" means. If I'm hiring an engineer with the seniority I'd expect them to have at 20, 30 or 40 years in industry then I want them to ramp up inside of a year. I'm not going to expect them to be completely self-sufficient within a month. But they should be capable of implementing performant solutions to nontrivial problems with autono…

I meant comfortable as in knowing exactly how to solve something, instead of first having to read and debug through (legacy) code for 1-2 days everytime you touch some new area of the application. For me personally the worst unsecurity is not knowing where to put new code, without messing up some architectural separation that I'm not aware of.

I once worked on a very large project in the healthcare industry. During code reviews you had to provide evidence you did a full impact analysis because the system was so large that not a single person could keep it all in their head. We're talking millions of lines of code. Being senior doesn't make you a superhuman.
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