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We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage

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Re: We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage

#51

Post by BonesJustice »

raghava wrote: post #19
Aloha wrote: post #3

I broadly agree with the basic point this guy is making, we have an issue where the HR gatekeepers (who don't have the knowledge to make accurate technical assessments) are effectively searching for a perfect match, rather than someone who could do the job well. Don't put box tickers in charge of a critical function unless you want every thing they touch to be turned into an exercise in box ticking.

> HR gatekeepers (who don't have the knowledge to make accurate technical assessments) are effectively searching for a perfect match, rather than someone who could do the job well. IMO, that's just a symptom. The real problem is that the hiring managers/engineers find the job of "recruitment" beneath them. All of us know the recruiter might not really understand the difference between "java", "scripting" and "javascr…

One of the best interview experiences I had was with a firm where nearly everyone participates in the hiring process. I don’t know any details beyond what I experienced as a candidate, but they interview tons of people, and everyone who makes it all the way through ends up interacting with at least a handful of would-be peers, managers, and a C-level officer.

I imagine that everyone is expected to dedicate a significant chunk of their time to the recruiting process. I don’t see how else they could pull it off. I suspect the arrangement is something like “everyone must dedicate one day every (other?) week to recruitment efforts.”

Moreover, they had a fixed set of well-thought-out questions and exercises. For programmers, you write code in an actual IDE with one of their programmers sitting beside you. You can bounce ideas off them, you can consult the interwebs (as you might in real life), etc. The questions and programming challenges were relevant, and reasonable.

It was an extremely well oiled machine, and it showed.

Re: We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage

#52

Post by flyinglizard »

no1youknowz wrote: post #27
jobthrowaway420 wrote: post #9

Made my first ever HN throwaway account to respond to this. I have been running a successful business, but it's not "tech". I want to get back into the software industry. I didn't have a software business idea, so I explored some tech company jobs. I am well-qualified at the VP/Director level for startups and even larger companies. I did go so far as to do an on-site interview for one company. I have verifiable proof…

If no equity was available, but profit sharing was? i.e if you brought in X million you get a % of that. Would you have taken the position? I'm starting a company, but want to retain 100% ownership. I don't want to give equity as I don't want to lose control. Been there, done that. I'd much rather go down the road of profit sharing based on the results.

Equity and control are two different things. Board seats, voting rights, stock classes etc are all tools at your disposal to create the corporate structure. Furthermore, with control you can allocate yourself options as part of your compensation, which undo some of the dilution.

You certainly don't want to retain 100% ownership. You need partners who treat this business as their own and share your burden. I think cofounders are vastly overrated, while hiring key personnel and granting them significant options is not emphasised enough.

Re: We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage

#54

Post by povertyworld »

mr_cyborg wrote: post #2

One of the things that always surprised me at a previous company was seeing the H1B hiring notices posted for easily-trainable positions. I have nothing against people coming to work in the United States, but I thought those visas were specifically for roles where the skills weren’t available. In this case, by making the skills super specific, like that Home Depot sales portal in this article, they made them rare.

The other possibility is that they are going to hire internally, but for some legal reasons they have to make a public job post. Requiring some super specific thing like "Home Depot sales portal" sounds like a tipoff that this is going to be an internal hire. The place I currently work is like that. The decision makers already know who they want to give the job to before it's even posted, but they still make three other poor bastards come in and go through the interview process even though they have no chance. The interviewees will no doubt end up second guessing every answer, handshake, etc. when really it was just never going to happen. To be extra obnoxious the job listing is left up for months after it's filled.

Re: We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage

#55

Post by lordnacho »

cheschire wrote: post #33
raghava wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> HR gatekeepers (who don't have the knowledge to make accurate technical assessments) are effectively searching for a perfect match, rather than someone who could do the job well. IMO, that's just a symptom. The real problem is that the hiring managers/engineers find the job of "recruitment" beneath them. All of us know the recruiter might not really understand the difference between "java", "scripting" and "javascr…

Have you ever had to sift through 300 resumes for an open position? Did you ever have to do it multiple times in a quarter? If you have time to do that, and do it well, and still hit your numbers, congrats.

I've done that, and during peak hiring periods it does get a bit intense, but I think it's essential it's done by a coder, not an HR person. It's also something to give your day a bit of variety. And the big plus is you get to decide who you want to work with.

Re: We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage

#56

Post by robertAngst »

Aloha wrote: post #18
burtonator wrote: post #5

I had a recruiter call me a year ago with what sounded like a really amazing offer. Working for a well funded startup on a problem in which I happen to be a domain expert. They're aren't many expects in my field with my background and skill set and they said the right things to get me to interview (compensation won't be a concern). Anyway... Went in for 4-5 interviews. Took me about 10 hours in total to interview wit…

Yeah, I see this all the time too, they offer 50-60% of market rate and wonder why they get no takers.

I imagine the people that would accept that are 'lifers'.

Where they get comfy, rationalize that they know their job, and the company never has to spend more than 98k on this person for the next 35 years.

Weirdly enough, it seems like Fortune 500 pays best for the brightest and they have them working on high level concepts and paying suppliers to perform the nitty gritty engineering.

I don't quite understand the rationale behind this hiring phenomenon.

Re: We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage

#57

Post by toomuchtodo »

loteck wrote: post #40

As an employee, it is valuable to me that my company will not hire someone who doesn't think our business does something important ("get over yourselves, you're not curing cancer"), or who thinks the right way to ask business decision questions is to ask if "you're morons", or who has a problem with the company asking very basic probing questions, such as confirming you've thought through the challenge of changing fr…

Very few businesses actually matter, despite your opinion of the business. If your argument is you only want to work with other suckers (who “care” about the business over comp and tangible compensation), I suppose that’s an opinion that could be held. Is that a rational opinion to hold?

I don’t come to work because I care about your business, I care because you pay me. I’d like to work with others who have the same rational outlook, not with a cult.

Re: We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage

#58

Post by pault »

no1youknowz wrote: post #27
jobthrowaway420 wrote: post #9

Made my first ever HN throwaway account to respond to this. I have been running a successful business, but it's not "tech". I want to get back into the software industry. I didn't have a software business idea, so I explored some tech company jobs. I am well-qualified at the VP/Director level for startups and even larger companies. I did go so far as to do an on-site interview for one company. I have verifiable proof…

If no equity was available, but profit sharing was? i.e if you brought in X million you get a % of that. Would you have taken the position? I'm starting a company, but want to retain 100% ownership. I don't want to give equity as I don't want to lose control. Been there, done that. I'd much rather go down the road of profit sharing based on the results.

Revenue, maybe. Profit? I don't have any control over how you define profit, and you have an enormous amount of control over how you manage your revenue. Additionally, even a unicorn is going to stay in the red for years. Unless you have some financing structure that is radically different from typical startups and don't plan to reinvest in the business, profit sharing makes no sense.

Re: We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage

#59

Post by lordnacho »

samkater wrote: post #29
Aloha wrote: post #3

I broadly agree with the basic point this guy is making, we have an issue where the HR gatekeepers (who don't have the knowledge to make accurate technical assessments) are effectively searching for a perfect match, rather than someone who could do the job well. Don't put box tickers in charge of a critical function unless you want every thing they touch to be turned into an exercise in box ticking.

On the flip side, I had the pleasure of working with a fantastic HR recruiter at my previous company. He would do a ton of legwork to ensure applicants had the basic level of skills and, frankly, common sense. For one position we were hiring, every single applicant he forwarded to us we interviewed and wanted to hire. There is a common thread here that great tech skills are under appreciated or often missed by HR, bu…

> every single applicant he forwarded to us we interviewed and wanted to hire

But doesn't that support what the article says? It suggests he applies a filter with very few false positives, which generally can only be done at the expense of a lot of false negatives.

Re: We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage

#60

Post by pascalxus »

But HR isn't the only problem. In my experience having worked for a company that hired heavily for several years, it was the engineers who lacked the talent necessary to conduct proper interviews. Great candidates were being rejected by the truck load. Us engineers, we're great at engineering but many of the junior and mid-level ones don't have much experience interviewing people and usually no training whatsoever. So interviewers tend to ask different questions with every candidate (whatever they feel like it that day), then make some decision based on a random feeling they get. There's not much objectivity. There's not much thought that goes into the questions. Most engineers think intervewing is a game of "how to stump the candidate".

As an inteviewer, you're job is not to stump the candidate. Your job is to figure out how well they can do the job. The questions you come up with should reflect the actual job, and the actual tasks that will be assigned (that's where you should draw your questions/inspiration from), rather than some random data structures question you remember from college or some random questions you found on a google search.

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