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

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

#141

Post by jacquesm »

mpdehaan2 wrote: post #109
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…

I've seen it happen with some startups that jobs are posted as "open" to attract applicants when they are not really hiring, or not removing those postings once filled to passively collect resumes and make it look like the startup is bigger than it is. I really don't like this as it hurts the applicants time and distracts them from finding a place that does want to hire them now.

And sometimes to be seen to be in a growth phase when in fact they are stagnant.

It's pretty easy to puncture that though, simply ask how many open positions they have for each department and when the last hire was for each department. That will show quickly whether or not they are actually growing and at what rate. (You can't lump them all together because with a larger company one department may be growing while another is declining).

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

#142

Post by mgkimsal »

GreenPlastic wrote: post #37
xeni wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ahh, why exactly don't you list compensation? Also, I think you should mention some details: The size of the team -- lone iOS developer, small team (2-4 people), or larger? Whether the application is a standalone mobile app (and the business is built around it), or simply a frontend for a pre-existing web application/product. (i.e. Working on Tinder versus working on OKCupid's mobile app) Disregard this if you includ…

See above. Mostly because I thought that listing cash comp was inconsistent with how the company markets itself to employees and the company's culture, which tends to be more on the humble side. I did have some information about the work in there but nothing really about the team size - I'll keep that in mind for future listings. Completely agree on your statement that the type of candidate you'll attract depends on…

"listing cash comp was inconsistent with how the company markets itself to employees"

You're not marketing to employees - you're marketing to people who are not yet employees.

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

#143

Post by walshemj »

reagency wrote: post #138
walshemj wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So from my perspective for job search linkedin would be a second tier site I wound't even search on glassdoor and indeed is considered where the "shit" jobs go and that is a direct quote from a director of one of the big UK job sites.

A Glassdoor competitor said Glass door is bad? Unassailable authority.

No a director of a market leader said that indeed was shit. and who the F looks for jobs on glassdoor or posts jobs on a site where all your negative points are on display

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

#144

Post by stormbrew »

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.

I know of companies that have literally won awards for being 'best places to work' that treat their employees like disposable work units to have every last ounce of motivation wrung out of them through gaslighting and cultish "we're just a family here!" I know this from knowing people who actually work there and I'd have to be pretty desperate to work for them.

Needless to say I, personally, don't really put much stock in how companies sell themselves on the soft side of things any more. I suspect a lot of people with a bit more experience don't.

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

#145

Post by arenaninja »

hebdo wrote: post #78
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…

A relevant read: Whaddaya Mean, You Can't Find Programmers? http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000050.html

I finished reading the article, and only then realized that it's from 15 years ago. Incredibly relevant still, and in my experience companies still pinch pennies when hiring developers

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

#146

Post by ChuckMcM »

Historically long lead times to hiring has been a leading indicator of wages rising. The mechanism is pretty well understood.

Employer A decides that if they can get an employee at a low wage, they would hire another employee and they create an advertisement for the opening. If the economy has moved up, they don't fill it and it remains open.

Meanwhile employer B loses an essential employee for some reason and they go out and actively try to recruit a replacement (generally from other employers in the same industry / space) They find employer A's top performer and offer them a raise to come work for B (which A takes because they have had really poor wage increases over the last 5 years)

Now Employer A has a problem, they are down a key employee and they had an "opening" already so they are in danger of losing income if they don't replace their employee. In order to do that they raise what they are willing to pay the "right" person who walks in the door. And they may try to recruit out of other employers.

"Nice to fill" job openings are an indicator that the business is profitable enough to add labor, which means that the labor it is employing is at or above the productivity rate needed to succeed or expand. In that environment some firms will seek to grow more aggressively than others and that will result in opportunities to be employed at the entry level.

That is a good indicator for folks who are coming into the workforce. How the rest of the economy responds will be interesting indeed.

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

#147

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

eropple wrote: post #82
GreenPlastic wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I didn't want to get candidates purely motivated by the high cash comp in the area. This is an extreme red flag for me. While your motives may be better, as I don't know you and won't assume, I've never met a potential employer who said that who wasn't trying to run a cult. I contend that there is no "employee friendly" company (outside of cooperatives, which don't really exist in tech) and that company culture is…

You should read up on how the Clif bar company is run. Pro employee businesses do exist.

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

#148

Post by logicallee »

d4nt wrote: post #65

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.

Wages only rise if the demand curve doesn't drop with the higher price. In other words, just because something is scarce won't automatically drive its price up. Strawberries might be scarce in the winter, but that doesn't mean their price will be $10 or $20. It just means the volume at the normal price is negligible.

Likewise, programmers are quite useful as they can automate things and so act as a lever on requirements. But that doesn't mean companies have $500K to pay to someone to do that. It just means the volume at the normal programmer salary is very low compared to the demand at that same salary.

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

#149

Post by codeonfire »

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.

Work hard, play hard always means engineers working hard nights and weekends and people in charge not really doing anything in the way of work but drinking, drugging, partying, etc all the time.

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

#150

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

walshemj wrote: post #143
reagency wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A Glassdoor competitor said Glass door is bad? Unassailable authority.

No a director of a market leader said that indeed was shit. and who the F looks for jobs on glassdoor or posts jobs on a site where all your negative points are on display

Because they're scared shitless that Indeed is taking away their business. Monster used to be the leader and they squandered it all away with a crappy, candidate hostile site. Nobody else could come up with something better before Indeed because they were too focused on trying to wedge themselves into the position of profiteering middlemen to bother with improving the actual search process.
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