MORE OBSERVATIONS:
Employers don’t want to provide any training for new hires — or even any time for candidates to get up to speed. A 2011 Accenture survey found that only 21% of U.S. employees had received any employer-provided formal training in the past five years. Does it make sense to keep vacancies unfilled for months to avoid having to give new hires with less-than-perfect skills time to get up to speed?
Employers further complicated the hiring process by piling on more and more job requirements, expecting that in a down market a perfect candidate will turn up if they just keep looking.
One job seeker I interviewed in my own research described her experience trying to land “one post that has gone unfilled for nearly a year, asking the candidate to not only be the human resources expert but the marketing, publishing, project manager, accounting and finance expert. When I asked the employer if it was difficult to fill the position, the response was ‘yes but we want the right fit.’”
Or blend of all three.
THIS, IA M AWARE OF:
most employers now use software to handle job applications, adding rigidity to the process that screens out all but the theoretically perfect candidate. Most systems, for example, now ask potential applicants what wage they are seeking — and toss out those who put down a figure higher than the employer wants. That’s hardly a skill problem. Meanwhile, applicants are typically assessed almost entirely on prior experience and credentials, and a failure to meet any one of the requirements leads to elimination.
THIS, I AM AWARE OF:
most employers now use software to handle job applications, adding rigidity to the process that screens out all but the theoretically perfect candidate. Most systems, for example, now ask potential applicants what wage they are seeking — and toss out those who put down a figure higher than the employer wants. That’s hardly a skill problem. Meanwhile, applicants are typically assessed almost entirely on prior experience and credentials, and a failure to meet any one of the requirements leads to elimination.
They want you to multitask, carrying several job titles but only paying you for one job, and sometimes below market wage for a degreed professional in that position.
Some of the expectations are unrealistic both in terms of manpower it takes to get something done and the time for completion. Schedules are ever being brought into tighter deadlines (which inevitably slip because of outside forces, like a third party software vendor coming in with the product 4 months late).
Staff have to be treated with some respect and understanding or else the department will fail. While the hiring screening process may be tight, I’ve been in several working situations were people were promoted to management without any training or skills for the job.
The only thing worse then training an employee and having them leave, is not training them and having them stay.
I enjoy these stories due to the recent relevance in my life.
I lost my job back in November 2011 and was unemployed for 6 months. I was interviewed for 39 different positions over the course of those 6 months and landed in a great job.
In IT, there’s a HUGE problem with “skillset relevance.” In most companies where I’ve worked, the high-level engineers had no certifications or degrees in relevant fields (myself included), but they had decades of experience in the field.
When I was attending college from 98-02 as a computer science student, we were pretty much promised jobs netting us $70K-$90K out the gate. While I graduated with a degree in English, I had 10 years of IT experience at graduation. I found that MOST IT jobs, esp. in programming, would start you in the neighborhood of $40K-$50K, obviously depending on the company. Local, smaller companies just don’t have the budget to pay you the salary your professor promised you.
Next, as operating systems, programming languages, hardware platforms, and mobile technologies mature, so does the need for training on newer technologies. I applied for jobs in 2004 and had minimal experience with servers. I had an old desktop I used to run Linux and Windows Server 2000. When I interviewed for the job I eventually I got, I had no idea that Microsoft had a Server 2003 operating system. The fact that I had expertise in documentation and experience with at least some sort of server operating system, I got the job.
Most college graduates have very specific, razor-thin knowledgebases that groom them for a very specific, razor-thin job. The more you diversify your skillsets, the more apt you are to find jobs that you’d enjoy. When I interviewed for IT positions recently, I was always one of the finalists due to the fact that less than 5% of IT professionals do documentation, let alone LIKE it. I transformed my hobby love for computers and my educational credentials in the written language into a job that allows me to do both.
My advice to job seekers: diversify. You spent your whole life building houses or highways? What others activities do you enjoy? You like fishing? How about applying to a local dock builder or wharf?
The problem going forward is that so many kids have lost the knack for hobbies. Social media has become a hobby, but it’s nothing more than a way for those of us with other hobbies to mine data on you. The upcoming generations are going to have problems with skills as they become more enmeshed and interested in each others’ lives and less interested in their own interests, hobbies, and dreams.
First, and axiom on product development:
Better, faster, cheaper. Pick any two.
Now, an observation:
Employers want all three.