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Discussion: Job seekers can't find a job and Employers can't find an employees

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Re: Discussion: Job seekers can't find a job and Employers can't find an employees

#121

Post by gkoberger »

duxup wrote: post #13

I don't understand the hiring people industry. The questions thrown at me are trivia, if I knew the answer, or not, it doesn't mean anything. People are looking for weird specifics for things that ... really don't need it. The job inevitably doesn't even rely on those specifics. I'll learn whatever anyone wants, I like doing that ... no honestly I do. Can I just talk to the folks I'll potentially be working with / fo…

That was my thesis at my current company, and people REALLY love our interview process. I don't understand why so many companies put so little work into something that is so important and will go on to set the tone for the rest of the person's time at the company.

https://blog.readme.com/designing-a-candidate-focused-interv...

Re: Discussion: Job seekers can't find a job and Employers can't find an employees

#124

Post by cratermoon »

nox101 wrote: post #58
duxup wrote: post #13

I don't understand the hiring people industry. The questions thrown at me are trivia, if I knew the answer, or not, it doesn't mean anything. People are looking for weird specifics for things that ... really don't need it. The job inevitably doesn't even rely on those specifics. I'll learn whatever anyone wants, I like doing that ... no honestly I do. Can I just talk to the folks I'll potentially be working with / fo…

Because on the other side, there are too many applicants who can't do the job but apply anyway. So the company needs some way to filter, otherwise they'll waste huge amounts of time and money interviewing people that can't do the job. They have no good way to filter, so they'll left with only bad ways.

> there are too many applicants who can't do the job but apply anyway. So the company needs some way to filter,

If we take that as a given, and I don't disagree with you, what happens? The hiring pipeline becomes optimized to prevent unqualified people from getting through the process. It's focused on reducing false positives: hiring the wrong person. As a side effect, it eliminates more people who might be hired before they get far. In other words, the number of false negatives is not controlled.

In short, the way the filter works is broken. Good candidates never get to the offer stage. They are incorrectly filtered out by a process optimized for filtering, not discovering.

Re: Discussion: Job seekers can't find a job and Employers can't find an employees

#126

Post by kerkeslager »

tlb wrote: post #8

It's not any kind of paradox. Structural unemployment happens when the skills of the work force don't match the needs of employers, so there is both unemployment and difficulty hiring. Structural unemployment is usually high when there's a rapid change in demand for skills, as of course there is in tech. It results in crazy high salaries too. People with machine learning experience are getting 7-figure offers, while…

> Structural unemployment is usually high when there's a rapid change in demand for skills, as of course there is in tech. It results in crazy high salaries too. People with machine learning experience are getting 7-figure offers, while people with jQuery experience can't find jobs.

Another cause of structural unemployment is workforces aging into retirement, and again there's stacks of money to be made filling this gap.

This applies to Cobol developers. There are a ton of "too big to fail or rewrite" applications written in Cobol, particularly in finance. The people who wrote them are retiring. Finance is generally a great industry to have your hand in the pockets of anyway. A friend of mine has been doing this since shortly after he graduated college in 2010. He was able to start freelancing a lot earlier than I was, and his billing rate in 2012 was something like $125/hour (only slightly less than my current billing rate). Last time I talked to him he was billing $300/hour and had a 7 month backlog of work. I'm not good at keeping up with people, so we haven't talked in a few years, but it would not surprise me if he's billing $350/hour now.

I've largely prioritized time/freedom over stability/money in recent years, but if I ever had a kid and needed stability/money again, I'd be transitioning toward that.

Re: Discussion: Job seekers can't find a job and Employers can't find an employees

#127

Post by maccard »

jeltz wrote: post #92
ativzzz wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> various pseudo tests Leetcode fits this too

All people I know who have been good at leetcode have been good at coding (of course they may lack other important skills but that you can assess with other questions). You can't become good at leetcode without being good at logical thinking. But not all good coders are good at it because it also requires skills unrelated to the job to be good at leetcode. I do not advocate for leetcode tests, but I think they have a…

I agree with you, for what it's worth. I think some of the "easy" leetcode questions are probably a decent filter, they're often contrived enough to force you t handle an edge case or two but simple enough that they should be solvable within a few minutes - they're a step above fizz buzz.

They filter for a few super important qualities - can you solve a simple problem, follow some basic instructions, write somewhat comprehensible code. But most importantly, if you get stuck, how do you react. If your response is to lash out and blame the questions or the interview, that's a huge red flag that you're going to react like that when challenged in the work place. I wish I wasn't speaking from experience.

Re: Discussion: Job seekers can't find a job and Employers can't find an employees

#128

Post by dukeyukey »

lapcat wrote: post #38

> If you're too specific about the position, you get too few quality candidates. What do you mean by too few? I'd say that zero is too few, but one quality candidate might be perfect, because then the hiring process can go very fast. There's no reason why you couldn't or shouldn't hire the first quality person you find. In my opinion, the biggest problems with job postings are: 1) No salary/compensation listed, which…

Out of those quality candidates that apply:

Some will find a job before they finish you interview process.

Some will change their mind.

Some will have a change on personal circumstances.

Some (many?) will ask for more than you can offer.

To hire one good person, you usually need many to apply.

Re: Discussion: Job seekers can't find a job and Employers can't find an employees

#129

Post by Mountain_Skies »

CoolGuySteve wrote: post #79
underdeserver wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a very large number of employers. If you want to convince me they're all unreasonable, you'll need to show me some pretty compelling evidence.

They're almost all cargo culting the same whiteboard algorithm hiring criteria for otherwise humdrum jobs so yeah, they're all kind of unreasonable. An HR fad can cause structural employment just as easily as bona fide requirements not being met.

The latest fad appears to be forcing all candidates to be vetted by an external recruiter, even if they are already known to people inside the company. Apparently, this is for reasons of "fairness", but it's yet another segment of an increasingly long pipeline full of holes that drop out candidates somewhat randomly rather than based on the actual required attributes to perform the job effectively. The HR filter was already bad enough but now having a recruiter filter before the HR filter just means even more random rejections of candidates who could have filled the role successfully.

Re: Discussion: Job seekers can't find a job and Employers can't find an employees

#130

Post by coldpie »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #33
tlb wrote: post #8

It's not any kind of paradox. Structural unemployment happens when the skills of the work force don't match the needs of employers, so there is both unemployment and difficulty hiring. Structural unemployment is usually high when there's a rapid change in demand for skills, as of course there is in tech. It results in crazy high salaries too. People with machine learning experience are getting 7-figure offers, while…

You can have all the skills and education you want, if employers are unreasonable about their hiring and requirements, you have no control or recourse. You have to be lucky (including knowing someone, ie networking), not necessarily good.

> You have to be lucky (including knowing someone, ie networking)

I don't think it's right to consider networking/knowing someone to be luck, exactly. Networking is a skill and a tool, and has consistently been presented as that for my entire career. As a result, I go out of my way to try to make those connections. I go in to the office, I have lunch and drinks with coworkers, I say Hi to people I recognize from chat at large meetings, I make friendly conversations on chat and email. When someone I have made a connection like that with leaves, I say goodbye and pass them my personal email address. It is difficult, I'm not an outgoing person and I have to make conscious effort to start those connections. But it has paid off, I've received several job pings over the years, and when I was ready to move on from a job recently I took up one of those pings on the offer. It wasn't luck, it was a skill and resource I specifically put work in to cultivate over years.

Cold-applying is the absolute hardest route to getting hired. A big part of your career is doing what you can to make that your last resort when job hunting.

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