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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

#191

Post by lapcat »

dukeyukey wrote: post #157
lapcat wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some will find a job before they finish you interview process. "one quality candidate might be perfect, because then the hiring process can go very fast" > Some (many?) will ask for more than you can offer. This seems to ignore my point 1 about listing salary/compensation on the job posting.

"Can" go fast. Usually it won't. And in most cases, you can't revamp the whole hiring process, and mostly need to work with what you've got.

> Usually it won't.

But that's the employer's own fault. I was offering suggestions to employers.

> And in most cases, you can't revamp the whole hiring process

In most cases, they should revamp their whole hiring process. The point of this HN submission is that employers can't find employees, and that's also the point of my original comment. "We can't change anything about hiring" is why you can't find employees. It's a poor excuse.

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

#192

Post by kjkjadksj »

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…

It would be better to see how many hours they’ve played something like starcraft 2 for logical thinking and working under pressure

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

#193

Post by alephnerd »

giantg2 wrote: post #177
shagie wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pu…

The people I have meet who were slower to learn things generally had factors that could be overcome. Burnout is a huge one. If I'm being told to learn this new tech every 3-6 months and not given enough time to become an expert in the thing I previously learned, then why should I put in the effort? Its not a building block in my career. This is how it is for me (plus a disability). It never benefits me, so where's th…

> Burnout is a huge one

Of course, but companies have deadlines to hit and features to release.

It absolutely sucks on the applicant's end, but we can't spend a year helping a new hire work through burnout when most companies are in a fairly competitive market with extremely demanding customers AND much more competitive vendors.

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

#194

Post by jongjong »

The market is just retarded. I think it's because many of the people who work for big tech companies aren't smart enough. If you're less skilled than them, you won't get the job because they can recognize idiocy. If you're smarter than them, you also won't get the job because they will feel threatened. They don't want to hire more competition for themselves.

You have to have almost exactly the same skill level as them to make the cut and you have to have a certain submissive personality. That's probably partly why age discrimination is rampant; older people are threatening.

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

#195

Post by [deleted] »

jongjong wrote: post #169
banannaise wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

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

#196

Post by danaris »

teeray wrote: post #32
Apreche wrote: post #5

What works is companies not demanding that their employee be the square peg that fits their square hole. The square peg doesn’t exist. You’re going to have to hire someone who doesn’t already have the specific skills you need and invest in training them and educating them. The interview process is just to evaluate if they are capable of succeeding in that process. Yes, it means companies have to take risk. It’s bette…

> It’s better than the risk of trying to carry on long term short-staffed Companies don’t feel that way. They feel they can just ramp up the workload on existing employees “until we can hire more.” What are they going to do, leave? Where do they think they’re going to go? They’ll be met with the same situation at another company, except they’ll be on the other side of the table this time. If there are companies with…

This is the (well, yet another) result of going for decades with such weak labor protections.

If the answer to "What are they going to do?" is "strike", or "leave and take a massive severance payout because that's what their union negotiated in the contract that specifies you can't overwork them by more than X amount", then the company no longer has that abusive option on the table. They have to hire someone to fill that role.

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

#197

Post by giantg2 »

alephnerd wrote: post #193
giantg2 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people I have meet who were slower to learn things generally had factors that could be overcome. Burnout is a huge one. If I'm being told to learn this new tech every 3-6 months and not given enough time to become an expert in the thing I previously learned, then why should I put in the effort? Its not a building block in my career. This is how it is for me (plus a disability). It never benefits me, so where's th…

> Burnout is a huge one Of course, but companies have deadlines to hit and features to release. It absolutely sucks on the applicant's end, but we can't spend a year helping a new hire work through burnout when most companies are in a fairly competitive market with extremely demanding customers AND much more competitive vendors.

"Of course, but companies have deadlines to hit and features to release."

I mean, they're allowed to be shortsighted if they want. Burn through people and spend time and money hiring replacements.

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

#198

Post by pdimitar »

sokoloff wrote: post #174
danaris wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My observation has been that the causality is the other way around: the pointless mindgames of employers trying to find "the best" people via interviews led to job-seekers finding ways to game a system that was rigged against them. However, regardless of "who started it" in this round, ultimately, it is unquestionably a situation we can lay at the feed of industry, which abandoned decades ago the practice of actually…

That tracks reasonably well. We have a fair amount of success at hiring college grads, which we obviously have to train to professional proficiency. We have some success stories, but much longer search times and far more interviews per start when we hire for experience-required roles.

What's your interview process?

As an applicant senior dev, I found a small take-home + a discussion over my solution + just chatting in general has worked best. Chill atmosphere and not going by a checklist helped a lot as well, to both sides.

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

#199

Post by avmich »

cjbgkagh wrote: post #190
avmich wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we have similar tests for companies, some formalized employment-worthiness?

I think previous work history is currently most used as a substitute. As in the hiring company assumes the previous companies have acted as a gatekeeper. Given the amount of money involved it would be difficult to maintain a formalization / certification process that would be both trusted and resistant to corruption.

No, I mean just like companies would like to see a sort of IQ test results for applicants, I'd assume applicants would like to see a sort of employment-worthiness test for the companies. Previous work history here could be the history of that particular aspiring company of hiring people and people leaving the company.

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

#200

Post by BriggyDwiggs42 »

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…

Job seekers’ expectations are hardly sky high my man. People need to pay the debts they accrued to get through the filters that you put up, and they need to put food on the table. They don’t have any alternative.
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