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Wednesday, May 20th

The Job Market - the selectivity


The other thing about the job market today is how selective many people are being. So many of the postings list all these years required for every little detail. It seems reminiscent of just after the bubble - lets require 5 years experience for something that has only existed for 3 years...

Other positions, they want someone with 7-10 years of experience, at least 8 in X, 5 in Y and Z, and on and on... Basically, we want the person who used to be doing this job back, or someone doing the exact same thing for someone else. What is especially frustrating is to be close to the requirements, but you know an HR person is just filtering you right out of the running - even though it is something you easily could do. Other positions want 10+ years of embedded programming for a basic programming position - but let's be real - I did embedded programming 10 years ago, and I could do it now - but the stuff I did 10 years ago isn't especially critical to being able to get the job done today. For a senior level architect position, sure - but not for actual coding.

After all, this isn't like 10-15 years ago, where learning a new language, or field required going out to buy a book, buy a compilor, take a training class, and so on. So much of what is done today you may as well have a browser window open for searches right next to the editor window - I'm not going to try and remember every detail and difference between C shell, Korn shell, PHP, Perl, etc. - I'm going to look up specifics when I need them. I can program in any of them, I just have to lookup occasional details the first time I use them that month. Now I'm not saying someone with no experience can learn J2EE multi-tier concurrency issues that way, but anybody with a fair bit of experience, who matches more than half the requirements, can probably do the job - just with a couple of months worth of learning curve.

What's really frustrating is to see jobs that you know you could do stay open month after month. For several of them - I know I could have started that job when I first saw it (or interviewed for it sad ), and be fully up to speed by now, yet the position is still listed as open. The company has gone without anyone doing the job, and people are going without jobs...

Of course, some of these might be more phantom than real jobs. Perhaps the hiring manager would rather keep the requisition open, so that it could be cut if more cuts are needed, rather than someone they know, or because having the excuse of not having the right people gets you out of certain deadlines, or they just don't have the time to spend on interviewing (which means they won't get help, and won't get ahead). Whatever reason is behind some of these, it is frustrating to see them.

Oh well, can't do much about any of this...
dgc03052 on 05.20.09 @ 11:00 PM EST [link] [No Comments]


The Job Market - the process


Currently, I am stuck with the joys of job hunting. I have some part-time work, but not enough to get by on.

The interesting thing is how differently various companies behave.

Some companies are very automated - you get an email when you create an account with them (some that include your password - very bad style), an email for each job you apply to, emails if jobs are added that meet search criteria, and so on. They seem very professional, yet dealing with them generally seems like you are just sending information to /dev/null. You generally are successful in dealing with them, except for what counts - actually getting a job. I definitely like the ones that run searches for you, even though without having your resume delivered by someone who knows you, they are still generally a waste of time.

A very few companies actually do things "right". For example, I saw an opening with Expressor on LinkedIn. It seemed like a good fit so I applied. I got the immediate response email about my application (from LinkedIn). A couple of weeks later, I got the Thank you for applying, we have chosen to pursue other candidates email. While of course I don't like that - this was an email from a real person's email address (not that I tried to get any other communications), and it appears to have been sent when the job posting was removed.

In comparison, there are some of the large company sites. Sometimes you see multiple jobs, with identical descriptions. Clearly, if the descriptions are identical and fit, then they are all an equal fit - but I have no way of knowing if this is just multiple positions in the same group, or actually different positions. If its the same hiring manager then it is silly, and possibly annoying, to submit to each of them, but if its different hiring managers then I should... You hope the system will remove duplicates, but what about the adage of including custom cover letters - if the job ID is different, then there are different cover letters, so which one will they get?

From some of the same large companies, they seem to have a policy of putting a removal date on all openings. This means that for some of the jobs, they end up reposting them, which is another match for your search criteria, so you should send in another application. However, if this is still the same hiring manager - there really is no point.

I guess the biggest pain about the big companies is that there is no real feedback - it would take so little for them to send an email that the job you applied for has now been closed, yet without it, you don't have any idea if you still have a chance or not.


dgc03052 on 05.20.09 @ 10:06 PM EST [link] [No Comments]