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re-post of my earlier post: >I'm not sure why companies over-list [job requirements]. It's not companies, it's the individuals. Consider this: in a corporate

by dexen 8y ago

re-post of my earlier post: >I'm not sure why companies over-list [job requirements]. It's not companies, it's the individuals. Consider this: in a corporate environment, a person that is responsible for hiring but that is not a stakeholder in the success of any particular project, is incentivized to prove that: - she or he made an effort ("I've posted N ads on top ten websites") - she or he didn't cause any particularly bad hires The first incentive favors cookie-cutter hiring requirement lists and ads, in the "nobody ever gets fired for buying IBM" sense. Copy-paste an ad from a different project, adjust a few minor points, file it away. The second incentive favors over-specifying requirements, in the hopes that no particularly bad hire will be made and then blamed on the requirements / ad author. Suppose for a second a hiring manager or HR specialist were told by project stakeholders "certification X and skill Y are requirements", but figured out they aren't actually key to success - perhaps learning on the job would work out just fine in this case. So our brave hiring manager or HR specialist puts the certification and the skill in the "nice to have" section instead. Now suppose a candidate hired without the certification or skill ended up disappointing and underachieving. The manager or HR specialist would shoulder the blame for not filtering the hires well enough. Thus they play it safe and over-specify. It doesn't help that there's a persistent, lingering narrative[1] in the press that pretty much all the skilled specialists are in high demand and in very short supply on the job market. This provides a cover for anybody who failed to attract candidates due to over-specified requirements - "the specialists are in short supply anyway". Source: having been doing guerilla-style hiring with carefully redacted ads for a long while, with repeatably good results. -- [1] the narrative seems mostly created by the prospective employers in hopes of driving the worker supply up, and thus prevailing wages down

__s 8y ago
Really well put from the corporate perspective I'll give a perspective from a small company: boss is doing hiring, asks what tech we use, try to explain that I don't care if they know React, if they've used Vue/Angular/FooBar4Ui2038, good enough. Then some explanation that we should put specific tech to attract people with that specifically, & we can select for people who have tangent experience. In the end we hired some guy with experience with Ruby on Rails (we don't use any Ruby, PHP/C#/Nodejs)
- dexen 8y ago
  Thanks for the anecdote, your company sounds like a pretty cool place to live given its openness to learn at work. >from the corporate perspective Aside of a brief stint at 15k-large corporation years ago, my customers tend to be small & medium sized businesses (10...100 employees). They seem to suffer from the "corporate-like" cookie-cutter hiring practices just as well.
bryanrasmussen 8y ago
It's been my experience that the worst hires are fakers who for whatever reasons do not consider themselves able to point to real capabilities, therefore they tailor their resumes to say they have done all of that stuff you are asking for and maybe a bunch more stuff. The ones who won't - perhaps because they respect their personal qualifications enough to expect that they will get hired somewhere just might decide not to apply for the job, and perhaps it's these folks you actually want to hire.
- dexen 8y ago
  >they respect their personal qualifications enough to expect that they will get hired somewhere just might decide not to apply for the job From my experience people judge the company both by the hard facts, and also by the feel (impression, emotions) the first contact conveys - usually an ad, or word-of-mouth information. Potential employees will skip over word-of-mouth offers and ads that don't convey the kind of workplace they imagine themselves at. While we may abhor stereotypes, there's often a kernel of truth to them; different professions attract predominantly different characters. The first contact better be tailored to either the prevailing character - or perhaps to the long tail, depending on the current state of jobs marketplace. Point in case, first contact for sales associate ought to be much different - literally "make mad money, meet demanding sales targets, enjoy strong coffee & fast growth!" than for a highly skilled production worker - "good morning, consider joining team of experienced people like yourself; we offer efficient organization, well-supplied workspace and regular working hours, discounted meals and parking space.".

by dexen 8y ago

__s 8y ago

Really well put from the corporate perspective I'll give a perspective from a small company: boss is doing hiring, asks what tech we use, try to explain that I don't care if they know React, if they've used Vue/Angular/FooBar4Ui2038, good enough. Then some explanation that we should put specific tech to attract people with that specifically, & we can select for people who have tangent experience. In the end we hired some guy with experience with Ruby on Rails (we don't use any Ruby, PHP/C#/Nodejs)

dexen 8y ago
Thanks for the anecdote, your company sounds like a pretty cool place to live given its openness to learn at work. >from the corporate perspective Aside of a brief stint at 15k-large corporation years ago, my customers tend to be small & medium sized businesses (10...100 employees). They seem to suffer from the "corporate-like" cookie-cutter hiring practices just as well.

bryanrasmussen 8y ago

It's been my experience that the worst hires are fakers who for whatever reasons do not consider themselves able to point to real capabilities, therefore they tailor their resumes to say they have done all of that stuff you are asking for and maybe a bunch more stuff. The ones who won't - perhaps because they respect their personal qualifications enough to expect that they will get hired somewhere just might decide not to apply for the job, and perhaps it's these folks you actually want to hire.

dexen 8y ago
>they respect their personal qualifications enough to expect that they will get hired somewhere just might decide not to apply for the job From my experience people judge the company both by the hard facts, and also by the feel (impression, emotions) the first contact conveys - usually an ad, or word-of-mouth information. Potential employees will skip over word-of-mouth offers and ads that don't convey the kind of workplace they imagine themselves at. While we may abhor stereotypes, there's often a kernel of truth to them; different professions attract predominantly different characters. The first contact better be tailored to either the prevailing character - or perhaps to the long tail, depending on the current state of jobs marketplace. Point in case, first contact for sales associate ought to be much different - literally "make mad money, meet demanding sales targets, enjoy strong coffee & fast growth!" than for a highly skilled production worker - "good morning, consider joining team of experienced people like yourself; we offer efficient organization, well-supplied workspace and regular working hours, discounted meals and parking space.".