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?

#91

Post by icelancer » Sun, Jun 21, 2015, 1:37 PM UTC

eropple wrote: post #80

icelancer wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot by smart employers. When I ran a data science team, we hired mostly physicists and math majors who had only secondary knowledge of CS. Best bargains on the market and they don't come with baggage. Now I work in sports science. I try to hire brilliant people who have never played the sports in question. Still very, very hard.

I occasionally, casually interview for sports gigs (NBA, NHL) and I see it the other way - the needs are not that technically difficult, but the folks doing the hiring are rarely qualified to be doing the interviewing and most are very cheap relative to market so an established, skilled person is infeasible for them. Literally everyone I've met in the industry is super nice, though, and I've made many friends in the…

Oh, working for teams directly is often a joke. Many MLB clubs are not, though. One club is packed with PhDs in their sports science department. They are an exception. The brunt of the great work is being done in private practice.

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

#92

Post by walshemj » Sun, Jun 21, 2015, 1:45 PM UTC

GreenPlastic wrote: post #35

ryandrake wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What did you have under "here are some great benefits" or "why it's awesome to work here"?

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.

So that will be a final salary pension then :-) is that 1/30 or 1/40 accrual rate.

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

#93

Post by tomjen3 » Sun, Jun 21, 2015, 1:48 PM UTC

raverbashing wrote: post #83

slyall wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ask for a cover letter explaining why you are a fit for the job How does this help anything. Plenty of these out there which the applicant can attached to the application. "I am very enthusiastic to leverage my [INSERT HERE] skills to help [COMPANY] transform the [WHATEVER] industry "

This 99% of cover letters will just be, self-importance exaggeration, prospective employer excessive praise, etc.

And resumes are not?

I am a decent programmer but not exceptional, but when you read my resume you will see that I am a child prodigy - and that is done without any lying at all just selective highlighting facts.

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

#94

Post by vonmoltke » Sun, Jun 21, 2015, 1:49 PM UTC

gizi wrote: post #75

I am busy already. I already have a job that I like. So, I am not even remotely looking at what other jobs are around, because at the moment I consider that to be a distraction, a waste of time. Now you can generalize this: you can safely assume that anybody who is even just remotely good at what he does, is already busy. He already has a job and he is not interested in your job advert. In other words, above a certai…

This attitude is so wring, and hearing it so many times has contributed to my perceptions of myself as a shit engineer.

There are plenty of good engineers like myself who are at times actively or semi-actively looking for a job. I'm in Dallas, and I have a lot of hot keywords associated with myself that are not my core competency. What that means is over 90% of the jobs I get approached about are inappropriate, sometimes wildly. I only get approached by the highly active recruiters, since so many seem to have limited geographical areas and I am not in a position to network with non-recruiting people. These recruiters frequently misinterpret or misunderstand my background.

Thus, I am forced to actively apply to openings if I want something new. Hearing things like this gives me the impression that I will be viewed as inferior just because I had to stoop to the level of applying like the rest of the plebs.

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

#95

Post by walshemj » Sun, Jun 21, 2015, 1:50 PM UTC

dba7dba wrote: post #17

ryandrake wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Extreme pickiness. Every hiring manager is convinced that they must only hire A+++ players or their business is doomed. They'd rather a position go un-filled for 6 months than take a risk on someone simply hungry and enthusiastic. Companies are holding out for that unicorn employee (but, strangely enough, not offering unicorn salaries).

They need to wake up. They are not google or apple.

so right I rember the boss of a supermarket chain complaining about quality of candidates some one needs to take them aside and say your a "jumped up grocer" you don't get to employ Oxbridge first's to work on the checkouts.

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

#96

Post by walshemj » Sun, Jun 21, 2015, 1:51 PM UTC

spacko wrote: post #88

Maybe HR tends to complicate the process to expand its power and justify its existence. There is this "law" that proclaims this is what happens in bureaucratic organisations - hierarchies tend to be grown for that purpose.

Exactly read the laundry files

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

#97

Post by vonmoltke » Sun, Jun 21, 2015, 1:52 PM UTC

tomjen3 wrote: post #93

raverbashing wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This 99% of cover letters will just be, self-importance exaggeration, prospective employer excessive praise, etc.

And resumes are not? I am a decent programmer but not exceptional, but when you read my resume you will see that I am a child prodigy - and that is done without any lying at all just selective highlighting facts.

Mine isn't. Maybe that's my problem. :P

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

#98

Post by coldcode » Sun, Jun 21, 2015, 1:59 PM UTC

memracom wrote: post #47

GreenPlastic wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't post the exact description but the jist of it was: Strong understanding of objective C and iOS SDK Swift experience a plus Passion for design / UX Proven track record of quality apps in app store That's literally all I had under qualifications.

Did you try to get all the Apple details out of your posting and replace them with Android ones? What difference does it make whether they built an iOS app if they are a mobile app developer? Also, why not look for a web app developer specializing in front end. Same skills, just a few minor technical details are different. I think a lot of employers do not understand what the word "skill" actually means. Generally sk…

As an iOS developer who works with Android developers, we couldn't be further apart than if it was Lisp and Fortran. Sure I could learn Android but if I tried to be an expert in both, I would be an expert in neither.

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

#99

Post by pluma » Sun, Jun 21, 2015, 2:08 PM UTC

memracom wrote: post #39

Don't well written cover letters help employers quickly evaluate a large number of applications? And don't complain that you don't get them along with the resumes. 1) Ask for a cover letter explaining why you are a fit for the job. 2) Discard applications that don't include them. 3) Resist the urge to look through the resumes anyway. And if you directly ask for a cover letter, and you get anm application that doesn't…

Cover letters are worthless unless you're looking for salespeople. You don't want applicants that can convince you they're obsessive fans of your company, you want applicants that are interested in their work and whose interests line up with the job you're offering.

For many jobs, you don't even need that. There are a lot of jobs where any given applicant will have applied to dozens if not hundreds of companies. The only thing an enthusiastic cover letter tells you in those cases is that they are lying.

Unless you're looking for co-founders or C-level managers, they don't have to have big ideas about how they can make your company better. But they should know how to do their job and be interested in finding ways to help you help them do their job better.

Job applications are for coarse filtering based on vague qualifiers. Two years experience as a C# drone at a bank? Too bad, we're looking for Clojure greybeards. Shoddy formatting and everything is misspelled? We need people that care about the quality of their deliverables. And so on. It's a first impression, not a hiring decision.

Of course this all depends on the number of applicants, the number of openings and the size of the company.

But yes, if you expect certain things to be in a job application, be explicit about it. If you want the cover letter to answer some interview questions ahead of the actual interview, say so.

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

#100

Post by pluma » Sun, Jun 21, 2015, 2:11 PM UTC

mozumder wrote: post #48

ryandrake wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, make sure there are no better offers out there. If you think your employees are going to leave after you train them, that's a problem you can solve.

The proper solution to this is to offer stock options that vest over several years to keep the employee, and to continually offer new set of options each year.

> offer stock options

Outside the valley nobody cares about stock options. Even within the valley many people are aware they're a gamble at best. You're most likely not working for the next Facebook.