In my opinion, it is pretty easy to hire if you pay fairly and treat people with respect.<p>But I do get a lot of job offer emails that go straight to Trash:<p>- recruiters with an exciting opportunity but they don't mention the technologies or the compensation<p>- companies that want 10+ years of experience at $36k annually<p>- job board spam that just wants me to create an account inside their system<p>- mandatory "play coding game XY" to apply<p>Every company who makes one of those mistakes will feel like hiring is difficult, but it's mainly because they are doing it wrongly. When it's about firing employees, everyone is happy to use the free market as an excuse. But when it's about hiring employees, nobody seems to get the hint that the free market is telling them to stop being cheapskates ^_^
> When working with one employer in a city that is not known as a tech hub, Dyba felt that she had to chip away, carefully, at the company’s insistence for on-site workers; one position had been open for six months. Dyba started showing the hiring manager the credentials for someone she’d found, but omitted a crucial detail. If the employer was interested, then and only then did she reveal that the talent was based in Florida or Boston. “I had to kind of say, ‘Listen, it’s costing more money right now for us to keep this job open than it would be for you to send someone a laptop and coach your leadership team differently about how to manage remotely,’” she said. She believes the hiring manager raised the issue with the chief executive; slowly, someone with decision-making power came around, and Dyba was able to start filling positions. When the pandemic ebbs and local workers are back in that office, 15 to 20 percent of its work force will be remote. The market rather than Dyba changed the company’s workplace culture — a market of empowered technology workers who could pick and choose their employers, who could take or leave any job they wanted and were forcing a shift.
Nothing new in the article for anyone working in tech. A few funny things nevertheless: the recruiter thinks it’s unreasonable if candidates want to know the salaries right away before investing time in the hiring process. Also quite amusing is that the article never once mentions the idea that a job offer could compete by offering generous compensation, they mentions fancy snacks in the on-site office as a way to convince candidates to join a company, so it’s really no surprise that they can’t hire. Later they mention salaries going up by 10percent in some regions and think this is much, all while not realizing that consumer prices increase as well as inflation will eat those 10%.
For a business world supposedly in love with the concept of “free market”, it amazes me that management cannot figure out why they aren’t filling spots.<p>Some combination of: pay is too low, working conditions are not desirable, problem domain is not interesting, and required applicant skills and experience are too rigid.
I used to get one recruitment email a week. Now I get two a day.<p>The problem is that they’re all crap. They’re always recruiters who just try to herd me like livestock. And they never have any useful answers.<p>So maybe you have a really good job I’d be great at and you’re prepared to pay me properly. I won’t ever know because you’re using one of the worst mediums of communication.
I got a feeling the underlying problem is that companies are so picky. That leads to workers needing to do multiple applications while searching for jobs.<p>So while e.g. a position has 30 applicants, each applicant has applied to 30 positions.<p>It gives the impression of it being hard to hire, since the applicant might pick another company during the talks.<p>The solution for the company would be to give an offer directly, after a interview. No long recruiting processes.
Companies that use recruiting agencies are doing it wrong. It’s that simple. Hiring the right people is super important. It is not something you should outsource to recruiting agencies. Give it the proper attention, budget, and training that’s required to be successful at it. Measure outcomes and improve the process step by step to become world class.
How can you write an entire article about how hiring is difficult in some field, and only mention salary in a short parenthetical with no concrete numbers? (“salaries have risen in some cities by as much as 10 percent”)