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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

#71

Post by mattrp »

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.

1000% agree. Drives me nuts when they demand experience in xyz. Xyz = some SaaS or library that no one uses but would literally take anyone with a pulse an afternoon to become competent.

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

#72

Post by wheelerwj »

this is a big trend in business, startups, and HR right now (and growing for the last 10 years+). Don't rush to hire a good candidate, put time into the perfect candidate.

Good or bad, i think its debatable. but most of the experience and "meta" these days is to wait for a great candidate.

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

#73

Post by [deleted] »

loteck wrote: post #69
toomuchtodo wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Successful businesses support the livelihoods of all of the families that depend on that business's continued success, including employees and clients. All such businesses matter very much to those people, regardless of their industry.

[deleted]

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

#74

Post by areyouseriousxx »

mattnewport wrote: post #65
areyouseriousxx wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it strange, as software developers, that we discuss the effects on automation all the time, but no one seems to understand that automation has made searching for new employees incredibly inexpensive and efficient compared to the past. So in technical roles there are a lot of companies that are always hiring. Recruiters work for free until they find you someone and placing job listings online is so inexpensive…

> Anyway... Went in for 4-5 interviews. Took me about 10 hours in total to interview with them. The experience of the poster you are responding to doesn't seem to align with the situation you are describing. Sure posting an online job ad is pretty cheap. The rest of the hiring process, not so much.

Believe it or not, those interviews usually aren't that expensive. You probably have a mix of managers, which spend all their time in meetings anyway, and engineers, which are paid salary so they typically end up putting in a couple extra hours when they fall behind due to interviewing.

Sure it isn't free, but remember, this person had made it all the way to the end of the process. The determination was made that they represented such a large gain, for the low salary they were paying, that it was worth the risk of that small cost to get an employee at a 30% reduction in salary.

If you are going to save 30% of $140k, that means you will save $42k. It would take a lot of interviews to make up that gap.

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

#75

Post by autokad »

areyouseriousxx wrote: post #43
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…

I find it strange, as software developers, that we discuss the effects on automation all the time, but no one seems to understand that automation has made searching for new employees incredibly inexpensive and efficient compared to the past. So in technical roles there are a lot of companies that are always hiring. Recruiters work for free until they find you someone and placing job listings online is so inexpensive…

those are some good points, I been wondering if they are doing things like that myself.

I also wonder how much of it is also #1 data gathering, #2 advertisement, and #3 slightly counter to what you are saying - bad tools/people using said tools.

for point one, I can learn a lot on what microsoft is doing by pulling resumes from microsoft workers, even more if I interview them. you can quickly glean direction, head count, tech stack, etc.

for point two, tech companies especially have to remain relevant in the news. Imagine if you post positions for great ML shiny positions, that gets seen by tens of thousands of people for 0 cost. "Did you see that great posting at company X? wow they have an impressive Y team"

point 3, I have seen recruiters get thousands of resumes for a position they posted on the web, really want to hire someone, but instead send people through the hiring loops because of direct contacts. Its like they search for skills, the resumes on the website dont get searched well so they assume there are no matches. its baffling to me this happens given the tools you mentioned

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

#76

Post by ivanbakel »

mavelikara wrote: post #35
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…

Orthogonal to the point of your anecdote, but this: > They're aren't many expects in my field with my background and skill set contradicts the title of the submitted post.

It seems to me that they're not contradictory. A "talent shortage" would be if, when you consider all roles requiring some particular qualification or experience, there aren't enough people to fill them.

If there aren't many people that meet the requirement, but there are at least as many as jobs that need to hire them, then there's no shortage - that small number could even be too many, if some of those people are overqualified for the jobs they end up doing.

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

#77

Post by HelloNurse »

There's an obvious distortion that makes bad recruiters overrepresented: good positions in good companies tend to be filled immediately, typically through personal contacts and headhunters without posting ads, while mediocre positions require a serious recruitment effort (with mediocre recruiters, mediocre job postings and mediocre candidates) and really unreasonable morons need to shout very long and very loudly to select suckers.

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

#78

Post by pault »

vetelphon wrote: post #22

I had an interview with a company working in the ML space. There is a semi-difficult problem that their particular industry needs a solution for so I spent a couple hours in the hotel the night before writing up a solution for it. I was doing an interview with their head of ML and brought this subject up in general without mentioning that I had already solved it. His immediate response was: "that's impossible." And i…

Please tell me you went to work for a competitor and ate their lunch. That would be so satisfying.

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

#79

Post by [deleted] »

robertAngst wrote: post #56
Aloha wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 rati…

[deleted]

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

#80

Post by areyouseriousxx »

Game_Ender wrote: post #67
areyouseriousxx wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it strange, as software developers, that we discuss the effects on automation all the time, but no one seems to understand that automation has made searching for new employees incredibly inexpensive and efficient compared to the past. So in technical roles there are a lot of companies that are always hiring. Recruiters work for free until they find you someone and placing job listings online is so inexpensive…

Interviews take 2-3 man days from a company per candidate you end up doing a full onsight interview. That is on the order of $1000’s per interview, and you generally have to do several per role. Then for high demand roles even the best will take several months to ramp up which costs a large fraction, say 25-50% of their total compensation. So replacing a dev can cost you in total $100k+ at least. That is not really c…

The current data we have about hiring practices seem to disagree with you. So either, this process is not as expensive as you think it is, or companies believe it is less expensive than it actually is.

Either way, the effect on hiring is the same.

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