Why is it taking longer and longer to fill open jobs? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why is it taking longer and longer to fill open jobs?

#61

Post by weland » Sun, Jun 21, 2015, 8:25 AM UTC

GreenPlastic wrote: post #31

smil wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So compensation is not relevant to your point at all since you didn't list it. Or were you looking for mind readers? The low response rate makes sense in that case.

Fair enough, but the information is publicly available on glassdoor. A couple reasons why I didn't list comp: 1. I didn't want to get candidates purely motivated by the high cash comp in the area. 2. Cash comp isn't core to how the company markets itself to employees and its culture. The company prefers to sell itself on being an employee friendly place to work. Like the article hypothesizes, I thought we'd get 50-10…

The usual reason is #3. You're only willing to pay shit and instead of compensating for that with actually useful things, you're selling philosophy and crap like "company culture", as if a company that's not at least 15 years old can have that.

The reasons you listed are all nice, but most of the people who do it are doing it for reasons like #3 above. You risk ending up in the same pot as they do.

Re: Why is it taking longer and longer to fill open jobs?

#62

Post by ryandrake » Sun, Jun 21, 2015, 8:26 AM UTC

logn wrote: post #55

GreenPlastic wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leaned on the company's official materials for this. Employee focused culture where we work hard and play hard. XX on best companies to work for list. Fast growing company with great benefits, dogs allowed at work, etc.

Companies described like that tend to be for underpaid workaholics. Also I think the "work hard play hard" phrase implies an unhealthy culture of excess. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/is-work-hard-play-hard-code-for-...

Yea, definitely "work hard, play hard" is almost always a red flag for me when I read it.

Everyone is expected to work hard. When it's explicitly spelled out in a job description, that is usually code for "long hours, required face time, leading to burnout". And Play hard? What does that even mean in the context of a job? I don't go to the office to play games.

Re: Why is it taking longer and longer to fill open jobs?

#63

Post by d4nt » Sun, Jun 21, 2015, 9:09 AM UTC

resoluteteeth wrote: post #18

I think another interpretation is that it's become easier for companies to keep jobs "open" and collecting applicants without really having to put in effort to find people. Or, to put it another way, the idea of an "open job" has become meaningless, if it was ever meaningful in the first place. As a metaphor, we can imagine many people wanting to buy apples, but not being willing to pay the 1$ the supermarket will ch…

This aligns with my person experience in a startup incubator. If I was a ruby/php/js guru willing to work for £25,000/year plus a bit of equity, I could take my pick of 100s of jobs.

Re: Why is it taking longer and longer to fill open jobs?

#64

Post by vellum » Sun, Jun 21, 2015, 9:11 AM UTC

GreenPlastic wrote: post #26

smil wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but this is not a relevant response to my comment unless you meant it as an insult.

Wasn't meant as an insult. Just have a lot of phone screens where people list 100 technologies on a resume and don't have a rudimentary understanding of any. The majority of candidates have never used source control or haven't spent the time to brush up on basic data structures questions.

>where people list 100 technologies on a resume

People list 100 technologies to get through the automated HR filters. If companies would just list the core skills required, instead of a unicorn wish list, people would put less keyword spam in their resumes.

Re: Why is it taking longer and longer to fill open jobs?

#65

Post by d4nt » Sun, Jun 21, 2015, 9:26 AM UTC

My theory is that people are shopping around for better employers and better cultural fit, and that it's not just a question of taking the highest offer any more. That would explain why wages are not rising.

Re: Why is it taking longer and longer to fill open jobs?

#66

Post by Sir_Substance » Sun, Jun 21, 2015, 9:34 AM UTC

GreenPlastic wrote: post #31

smil wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So compensation is not relevant to your point at all since you didn't list it. Or were you looking for mind readers? The low response rate makes sense in that case.

Fair enough, but the information is publicly available on glassdoor. A couple reasons why I didn't list comp: 1. I didn't want to get candidates purely motivated by the high cash comp in the area. 2. Cash comp isn't core to how the company markets itself to employees and its culture. The company prefers to sell itself on being an employee friendly place to work. Like the article hypothesizes, I thought we'd get 50-10…

>The company prefers to sell itself on being an employee friendly place to work.

You can sell your company however you like, but at the end of the day, you're offering to pay me money for my time. It's an important part of my assessment of your job offer that I know how much. Sending out CV's is stressful, and I have to prep for interviews on a per-job basis.

If you won't tell me how much you pay until after the interview, your job offer gets put on the "too coy to be worth dealing with" pile, along with all the people who only let you contact them via webform.

Re: Why is it taking longer and longer to fill open jobs?

#67

Post by wyclif » Sun, Jun 21, 2015, 9:40 AM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #59

wyclif wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like almost all of this, and I think it's far better than the hiring culture than we have now. Especially the part about making it clear that they're not just fishing and intend to let the req sit open for a year, and not making you do 3 or 4 interviews over the course of a month. But I just wanted to add that I don't think your #5 could ever work, because of liability. There's a good reason why companies don't do…

Companies (at least in the US) only have to worry about legal liability if their reason for not hiring someone is based on one or more of a very clear enumerated list of reasons: race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability or genetic information. As long as the company's feedback cannot be traced back to one of these, they should be in the clear to provide helpful, actionable feedback.

IANAL, but the only reason anyone would attempt to trace feedback in the manner you're describing would be the result of a legal action like a frivolous discrimination lawsuit. The point of not providing feedback from their side is to avoid such lawsuits altogether.

Re: Why is it taking longer and longer to fill open jobs?

#68

Post by mattmanser » Sun, Jun 21, 2015, 10:04 AM UTC

GreenPlastic wrote: post #31

smil wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So compensation is not relevant to your point at all since you didn't list it. Or were you looking for mind readers? The low response rate makes sense in that case.

Fair enough, but the information is publicly available on glassdoor. A couple reasons why I didn't list comp: 1. I didn't want to get candidates purely motivated by the high cash comp in the area. 2. Cash comp isn't core to how the company markets itself to employees and its culture. The company prefers to sell itself on being an employee friendly place to work. Like the article hypothesizes, I thought we'd get 50-10…

The other problem other people aren't mentioning is that you will have been excluded from all searches where the job hunter put in a minimum salary.

I have no idea how common it is, but I certainly used that option when I looked for jobs. Otherwise you have to wade through all the shitty jobs.

Re: Why is it taking longer and longer to fill open jobs?

#69

Post by golergka » Sun, Jun 21, 2015, 10:10 AM UTC

resoluteteeth wrote: post #18

I think another interpretation is that it's become easier for companies to keep jobs "open" and collecting applicants without really having to put in effort to find people. Or, to put it another way, the idea of an "open job" has become meaningless, if it was ever meaningful in the first place. As a metaphor, we can imagine many people wanting to buy apples, but not being willing to pay the 1$ the supermarket will ch…

That's a reasonable theory, but it doesn't correspond with the stats about "labor quality" problem.

Re: Why is it taking longer and longer to fill open jobs?

#70

Post by XorNot » Sun, Jun 21, 2015, 10:25 AM UTC

golergka wrote: post #69

resoluteteeth wrote: post #18

I think another interpretation is that it's become easier for companies to keep jobs "open" and collecting applicants without really having to put in effort to find people. Or, to put it another way, the idea of an "open job" has become meaningless, if it was ever meaningful in the first place. As a metaphor, we can imagine many people wanting to buy apples, but not being willing to pay the 1$ the supermarket will ch…

That's a reasonable theory, but it doesn't correspond with the stats about "labor quality" problem.

Sure it does. There's a problem in that there's not enough quality labor willing to work for peanuts and then watch their life get destroyed when a major medical event happens.