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But unfortunately it's for a "good" [1] reason, most companies use recruitment agencies to find their employees, and most recruitment agencies are about as tech

But unfortunately it's for a "good" [1] reason, most companies use recruitment agencies to find their employees, and most recruitment agencies are about as technically capable as my nan. They don't know how to judge the capabilities of an applicant, that is the real issue here, if recruiters were able to competently tell the difference between someone who was capable of doing the job, but had no proven track record, and someone with a proven and documented history in that position, then this wouldn't even be a requirement. Rather than using legislation to attack the companies, it's about time someone started a decent technology literate recruitment agency. [1] In their eyes

Peroni 14y ago
I have to disagree. Our job board only hosts direct employer vacancies. We don't allow any recruitment agency listings and yet most of the jobs posted on our board have that stipulation in the spec so it's certainly not the fault of agency recruiters (for a change). it's about time someone started a decent technology literate recruitment agency There are a few of those floating around London and ultimately they make little to no difference. The main issue I'm highlighting in the post is the fact that the vast majority of people/companies have no idea that stipulating X number of years experience is detrimental for a number of reasons.
- shanelja 14y ago
  Well surely you are in an advantageous position to do something about this? There are adverts on your website which have these minimum requirements on them [1] - why not match against this criteria and pop up a little warning about the supposed illegality of the situation or "This practice is highly detrimental to ..." It seems to me like if any company is in a position to start a trend here, yours is a pretty good place to start. [1] http://www.hackerjobs.co.uk/jobs/2013/3/25/dxi-limited-php-developer-position http://www.hackerjobs.co.uk/jobs/2013/3/25/dxi-limited-php-d...
  - Peroni 14y ago
    Fair point. We're releasing a bunch of new features in the next few weeks and 'job spec guidelines' are one that we're working on. A reference point for people posting new roles. I'm sure there's more we can do so I'll give it some thought.
    - shanelja 14y ago
      How about a points rating system, for instance, the actual experience is a pretty big one, so that would be worth the most, but if the person has less time, but experience with individual parts of the stack they could "earn their application" like such: Object - value experience - 50 CSS3 - 10 Photoshop - 10 Go - 10 And so forth, so instead of it being a blanket ban and saying "it's 2 years experience or feck off" you could be saying "we normally only accept applications with a minimum of two years experience, but make exceptions for talented applications with experience in the following technologies, please tick any which apply. Then you let the company know that while they don't meet the minimum requirements for length of employment, they did score over the points threshold for "alternative" applicants. Just an idea :)
      - jiggy2011 14y ago
        The problem with these scales is deciding what is a 10 and what is a 1. I've seen people put these on their CVs , what they tend to do is put the language they are most comfortable with as a 9 and then scale everything else according to that.

Peroni 14y ago

I have to disagree. Our job board only hosts direct employer vacancies. We don't allow any recruitment agency listings and yet most of the jobs posted on our board have that stipulation in the spec so it's certainly not the fault of agency recruiters (for a change). it's about time someone started a decent technology literate recruitment agency There are a few of those floating around London and ultimately they make little to no difference. The main issue I'm highlighting in the post is the fact that the vast majority of people/companies have no idea that stipulating X number of years experience is detrimental for a number of reasons.

shanelja 14y ago
Well surely you are in an advantageous position to do something about this? There are adverts on your website which have these minimum requirements on them [1] - why not match against this criteria and pop up a little warning about the supposed illegality of the situation or "This practice is highly detrimental to ..." It seems to me like if any company is in a position to start a trend here, yours is a pretty good place to start. [1] http://www.hackerjobs.co.uk/jobs/2013/3/25/dxi-limited-php-developer-position http://www.hackerjobs.co.uk/jobs/2013/3/25/dxi-limited-php-d...
- Peroni 14y ago
  Fair point. We're releasing a bunch of new features in the next few weeks and 'job spec guidelines' are one that we're working on. A reference point for people posting new roles. I'm sure there's more we can do so I'll give it some thought.
  - shanelja 14y ago
    How about a points rating system, for instance, the actual experience is a pretty big one, so that would be worth the most, but if the person has less time, but experience with individual parts of the stack they could "earn their application" like such: Object - value experience - 50 CSS3 - 10 Photoshop - 10 Go - 10 And so forth, so instead of it being a blanket ban and saying "it's 2 years experience or feck off" you could be saying "we normally only accept applications with a minimum of two years experience, but make exceptions for talented applications with experience in the following technologies, please tick any which apply. Then you let the company know that while they don't meet the minimum requirements for length of employment, they did score over the points threshold for "alternative" applicants. Just an idea :)
    - jiggy2011 14y ago
      The problem with these scales is deciding what is a 10 and what is a 1. I've seen people put these on their CVs , what they tend to do is put the language they are most comfortable with as a 9 and then scale everything else according to that.