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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

#161

Post by dijksterhuis »

unshavedyak wrote: post #142
surajrmal wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also not helpful when employers refuse to train and demand folks with the skills they want. If the supply of folks you want doesn't't exist, you need to do your part to grow them.

Yea this is my biggest issue. I make a point of pushing for hiring green devs in our company. A balance of green and senior. My argument to management is that we’re never hiring people for what they know, we’re hiring people to learn our problems and figure new ways to solve them.

> we’re hiring people to learn our problems and figure new ways to solve them.

I might steal this line in the future if you don't mind. That's a decent way to explain it.

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

#162

Post by z3t4 »

It's a market like any other, sure it's very hard to evaluate a software developer. But if prices meet demand the problem will fix itself. Right now the market is flooded with new workers. But employers want people with experience and those are very few and in high demand. Also all those new people without experience are asking for too high salaries. When I started my first engeneering job I worked for 10 bucks an hour, and that was with over 5 years of prior coding experience building games and websites. I wold actually have made the same or more money working in a grocery store.

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

#163

Post by shagie »

ralphc wrote: post #95
surajrmal wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also not helpful when employers refuse to train and demand folks with the skills they want. If the supply of folks you want doesn't't exist, you need to do your part to grow them.

I'll throw in my personal example from 2012 when I was laid off. Senior dev, about 30 years experience at the time. A friend knew of an opening somewhere but they wanted GWT experience, I didn't have it so they wouldn't talk to me. 6 weeks later they were still looking. Like I couldn't learn GWT in six weeks? If they hired any decent dev after a good general screening and gave him the docs they could self-learn GWT i…

The risk is that they hire someone who doesn't know GWT and six weeks later (and six months later) they still don't know it.

The ability to do self directed learning of a new skill / technology is something that is difficult to find (a lot of developers that I know don't know how to learn a new version of Java or framework and are still writing code exactly as they did when they graduated college... and they could put down "Java developer - 5 years experience" and apply for senior positions.)

There are a lot of devs who appear decent with current tech, but lack the ability to learn new tech without someone hand holding them for several months.

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

#164

Post by WaitWaitWha »

I think there are several issues in this area.

Certifications are useless and sadly necessary. Certifications are substitutes or proxy to validate one's expertise in the field the cert is in. Alas, most certification organizations concentrating on how to rake in more money, not how validate someone's knowledge. Hiring managers & recruiters often mistake certification for experience versus knowledge and soft skills. (Let's not even talk about the crammers, cert cheats, etc.)

The intermediary between hiring team and candidate supposed to be recruitment or HR. As others have noted, often recruitment does not know how to properly translate the requirement, they force-insert themselves into the recruitment process. A MITM attack.

From hiring perspective, I have seen a few new trends I have not seen before.

AI generated resumes/CVs to match the job offer. I know they were AI generated because some of them will have the left-in tell-tale ChatGPT prompts, or three of four resumes near identical in structure and contents.

During video conference call, using the computer to find answers. At 4K, I can see mostly see the applicant's screen reflection in their glasses, I can hear the keys clicking, and see their eyes moving to read the answer. In one instance, jokingly I asked if they are "looking it up on ChatGPT", and the candidate responded, "I just want to make sure you get the best answer"...

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

#165

Post by milesvp »

unshavedyak wrote: post #142
surajrmal wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also not helpful when employers refuse to train and demand folks with the skills they want. If the supply of folks you want doesn't't exist, you need to do your part to grow them.

Yea this is my biggest issue. I make a point of pushing for hiring green devs in our company. A balance of green and senior. My argument to management is that we’re never hiring people for what they know, we’re hiring people to learn our problems and figure new ways to solve them.

To add another point to this, is that people at different points in their career are interested in different problems. A chore that a senior dev might be an exciting opportunity for a junior. Similarly a daunting task for a junior might might be just the right difficulty for a senior. It is super important to make sure you have mixed experience teams just to help keep morale up, and not stall out on any given set of tasks.

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

#166

Post by SantalBlush »

mbrumlow wrote: post #28

Employers don’t want job seekers, they want people who can do the job. What I am finding of late is most people are woefully under prepared and under skilled. In the other hand everybody has a degree and wants six figures because of it. The job market is tight, but not fucked. When tight it does not have the stomach to employee warm bodies. The fix is lowerred expectations from job seekers and the long term fix is sc…

So you want universities to act as your vocational training program for free? No thanks. If you want to make demands about college curriculum, you can start paying up. Until then, universities owe employers nothing.

Employers have already shifted enough of their job training costs onto universities and their unwitting students. The free ride is over.

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

#167

Post by giantg2 »

coldpie wrote: post #130
toomuchtodo wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cha…

"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."

Cold applying should be the most fair and introduce the least bias. My entire life has been cold applying.

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

#168

Post by frenchman_in_ny »

Unemployed for over a year here. Somewhat of a different job sector vs most here (leveraged finance structuring / investment banking). Have gone both through networking & have applied to over 1,000 LinkedIn jobs, have looked at adjacent industries, etc. Most employers don't even bother to reply to job applications these days... I'm not even sure how to fix it - on either end - but it's depressing as hell.

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

#169

Post by jongjong »

banannaise wrote: post #63
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 happens when the perceived skills of the workforce don't match the perceived needs of employers, so there is both unemployment and difficulty hiring. A lot of engineers will tell you that companies are often expecting both too much (precise types of experience) and the wrong things (leetcode-type challenges, unnecessarily specific knowledge...), which leads them to pass over perfectly qualifie…

Some of those interview questions have ridiculously short time constraints. You need to be perfectly rested and well practiced in order to finish the exercises in time. Some of these tests seem to select for cheaters because only cheaters who either knew the questions ahead of time or who used AI to solve the problem could finish them in time.

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

#170

Post by sage76 »

PaulRobinson wrote: post #91
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 it has been observed [1] that a lot of people turning up to coding interviews don't know much about coding. I'm sure in the ML sector right now, it's hell. Seven figure salaries are going to get some optimistic over-reachers desperate to try and get in the door and BS their way through the first few months. My own experience: I had a CEO and board member of the startup I was CTO'ing push a dev my way. "Brilli…

> We're going to have to be smart and solve this ourselves by reading papers and experimenting and trying things out. How would you do that?

By reading papers and experimenting and trying things out? Throw in a few books for good measure?

Why are you answering the question you are asking yourself?

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