We advertised for a junior developer role in April and got almost ~1700 applications in a week. we gave up after reviewing around 100.
Discussion: Job seekers can't find a job and Employers can't find an employees
31–40 of 381 posts
Re: Discussion: Job seekers can't find a job and Employers can't find an employees
#32What 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 money, no employees, and the urgent desire to hire them, that breaks this equilibrium. The overworked employees jump ship to the startup, the incumbents become more desperate and finally relent.
Re: Discussion: Job seekers can't find a job and Employers can't find an employees
#33It'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.
Re: Discussion: Job seekers can't find a job and Employers can't find an employees
#34As someone who does a ton interviews and is usually the one who gives the technical thumbs up on hiring decisions in my group, I've summed it up as Joel Spolsky famously did a long time ago... "smart and gets things done"
I just need someone who can learn stuff and has shown technical competence at some point in their career (even new grads). It's definitely harder as a new grad because hey, you have no experience. But show me how you've done something technical in school or an internship. Or have gone above and beyond in a class project. For my more experienced roles, I need to see some passion for what you're doing in addition to knowing what you're talking about. I don't do whiteboards or coding interviews. I don't ask those stupid interview questions either. I don't need the best of the best of the best. But I have been pretty successful for what I've been looking for and the quality of the coworkers I've been a part of hiring has been great from my perspective.
Re: Discussion: Job seekers can't find a job and Employers can't find an employees
#35Companies want “the best of the best”. I’m not talking about faang. Any tech company out there believes they can only succeed by hiring the best only.
It’s unrealistic. But I don’t see the paradox (companies say they “can’t find talent “ but what they mean is that they can’t find top talent according to some dubious tests).
On top of that, if you have years of experience in, let’s say Go or Python, but the company is only looking for Java or Kotlin devs, you’re out of the question. Ridiculous.
Re: Discussion: Job seekers can't find a job and Employers can't find an employees
#36Juniors keep jumping ship to better offers as soon as they graduate to mid-level and become useful. Eventually employers have caught on, and now skip step 1.
Because employers have incentivized this behavior by not paying employees what employees know they'll get when they've attained the skills and experience they need.
Re: Discussion: Job seekers can't find a job and Employers can't find an employees
#37You forgot the middlemen: recruiters.
I have yet to find more than 2 or 3 recruiters who actually know the space that they're working in, don't make unrealistic demands, and have basic empathy for the job seeker.
As an example of this, I was messaged by a recruiter last week asking if I was interested in a potential position, and when I asked him about the position, he asked if I was willing to send over not only my portfolio (I'm a UX designer), but also do some free work on top of that. Nothing about the actual responsibilities, nothing about location, nothing about salary. I responded to him, asked a few questions of my own, and he ghosted me.
Re: Discussion: Job seekers can't find a job and Employers can't find an employees
#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 can end up wasting everyone's time when there's a mismatch in expectations. "Competetive salary" is BS and often a lie. (This might also be why you're getting fewer quality applicants than desired.)
2) The posting focuses too much or even exclusively on arbitrary "qualifications" that the employer mistakenly believes are necessary but ends up relaxing anyway in many cases. Instead, the posting should describe in as much detail as possible the actual job, what the employee is to do, and then the qualifications will implicitly follow from that.
Re: Discussion: Job seekers can't find a job and Employers can't find an employees
#39At my company we have no issues hiring 50 remote Indian nationals who all have the exact same Java based resume, but we will spend a full quarter interviewing for a senior web developer (non Indian)
Re: Discussion: Job seekers can't find a job and Employers can't find an employees
#40Juniors keep jumping ship to better offers as soon as they graduate to mid-level and become useful. Eventually employers have caught on, and now skip step 1.
This is sort of like trying to wipe out all the smaller-than-3cm fry, so that you can succeed in catching only the biggest fish in your net. It's so illogical and maliciously counterproductive I fear you may be correct.