Employment in America: WTF is going on?

159 点作者 blahedo超过 11 年前

30 条评论

tokenadult超过 11 年前

The point of the blog post is that employers need to learn how to do hiring and not expect to outsource hiring to companies that get rich off of productive companies being clueless about hiring. That sounds like good advice. As a data point, one of my all-time most-liked comments here on HN[1] is my FAQ about company hiring procedures. Yes, people who run companies that innovate and make new products and services still have to learn the timeless facts about how to hire good workers. There is no substitute for the head of the company having a firm, reality-based idea about how to add workers to the team.Successful hiring is an outgrowth of successful management. Know what you are looking for in new workers--not just what they should be able to do the day they are hired, but what they will grow into as your company grows. Be clear about the difference between hiring clones of yourself whom you'd like to have as friends and a diverse workforce full of smart people who get things done.As my FAQ says, use work-sample tests for all your hiring. Don't trust educational credentials, but rather verify. Use legally safe means to find out who is smart and can learn more on the job. (References and expanded details on these points are available at the link.)[1] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4613543" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4613543</a>

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pontifier超过 11 年前

I'll tell you what's going on. It's a nightmare to hire someone. All the reporting requirements, all the paperwork involved, all the taxes and insurance requirements.I certainly don't want to actually hire anyone unless I absolutely have to, and even then I will get "independent contractors" or use temps if i can first.

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rprospero超过 11 年前

So much of modern hiring seems like C. S. Lewis's comments about searching for your keys under the street lamp. There's a talent shortage, since everyone in the light has been hired. There's massive under underemployment, since everyone in the shadows can't get hired.There's a few dozen billions to be made by the person that fixes the problem. I wish I could comprehend the scale of the problem - it'd be nice to be that person.

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nbouscal超过 11 年前

There is a reason the term is "talent shortage", not "labor shortage". Yes, there are tons of unemployed people. A vanishingly small proportion of those people can actually fill the jobs that people are hiring for. Hence: talent shortage.Yes, hiring unexperienced people and training them is an option, but you can't do that for your entire engineering team. Hiring new grads isn't a problem, hiring people senior enough to make those new grads productive is.In short, not only is this post an advertisement, it's not even an accurate one. The talent gap is a significant problem, and it's only going to get worse if we don't acknowledge it.

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jerrya超过 11 年前

I enjoy Nick's work, but I am not sure how applicable it is to many software jobs:<pre><code> People must stop begging for jobs It’s time for people to stop thinking about jobs, and high time to start thinking about how — and where — they can create profit. If I run a company, I’ll hire you to do work that pays off more than what I pay you to do it. Today, virtually no employer knows whether hiring a person will pay off. That’s why you need to know how to walk into a manager’s office and demonstrate, hands down, how you will contribute profit to the manager’s business. That’s right: Be smarter than the manager about his own business. Stop begging for jobs. Start offering profit. Because if you can’t do that, you have no business applying for any job, in any company. </code></pre> I haven't seen too many software development positions in large companies where you can walk into a manager's office and demonstrate you are smarter about the manager's own business than he is.<pre><code> I know more about your specialized domain than you? I know more about design for your specialized domain than you or your designers? I know more about the algorithms developed in your specialized industry than your engineers? I know more about database design used in your proprietary application? I know more about the customers for your specialized domain and their needs than you do? </code></pre> And I'm supposed to be able to claim that for any software development company I interview with regardless of industry?I enjoy working in software, and I think I am pretty good at it, but one aspect I enjoy is that moving from company to company I learn about new domains, new industries, new algorithms, etc.

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keithwarren超过 11 年前

Is it just me or did I just read 8 paragraphs or blather pretending not to be an advertisement for some book?I think he said that HR departments suck at hiring because they outsource to tech companies who use keyword searches.I could be wrong, but I think the problem is a bit more complex than that.

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codegeek超过 11 年前

"Employers don’t do their own hiring, and that’s the #1 problem. Employers have outsourced their competitive edge — recruiting and hiring — to third parties whose heads are so far up The Database Butt that this little consortium should be investigated by Congress."This. Personally, I completely and absolutely blame the employers for this mess that they have "talent shortage". I am amazed with the whole recruiting ecosystem if there is such thing here. People are the most important assets of a company and giving this responsibility to a third party (read vendors/recruiters/agencies) just does not work. But again, most companies do not really bother about this. Until we stop calling people as "resources" and "head counts", this broken recruiting model will never change.These "vendor databases" that he is talking about is a major irritation. I still get emails from some random recruiting firm where I might have sent my Resume as a fresh desperate undergrad 10+ years ago. This needs to stop.

maerF0x0超过 11 年前

IMO many companies do not hire "underqualified" people (ie people who do not exactly match the job description) because they're afraid to hire, train and lose employees. They fail to account for the opportunity cost of lost profits due to "waiting longer" for the right hire. I'd rather have a profitable employee after 1-3 months of training than to search for 6 months .

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dubfan超过 11 年前

> Taleo, Kenexa, LinkedIn, Monster.com, CareerBuilder, and their diasporaThat's not what "diaspora" means.

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jacques_chester超过 11 年前

A lot of this rhymes with online dating, and for similar reasons. Asymmetric information, skewed ratios, the paradox of choice ... very similar dynamics.

Matt_Mickiewicz超过 11 年前

Some great quotes in there..."Job descriptions heavily larded with keywords make it virtually impossible to find good candidates. But every day that an impossible job requisition remains unfilled, the employment system vendors make more money while companies keep advertising for the perfect hires."... I'm a big believer that the market will shift to "pay for results", not "pay for subscription access to an aggregated database that you have to hire 4 people full-time just to sift through"."...employers believe they save money when they leave jobs vacant, because their accounting systems track the cost of having workers on the payroll — but cannot track the cost of leaving work undone."

salemh超过 11 年前

There is no business plan in any applicant tracking system, no profit in a job posting, no future in federal employment metrics, no solution in HR departments, and no answers in databases or algorithms.Meh, not really the problem. Every company realizes there is a buyers market (sans Technical) for every position, and can interview 20+ people for a help desk role.No training is available because, what is the ROI? I know several companies (this is SLC) who don't train even for automated testing. After the testing, the employees find a better job.Symptom or syndrome? Symptom is employee skills > company re: new job, vs higher position in company (or, in better English, training leads to employees finding better companies, vs staying with a current company and building that company.)There is no loyalty amongst most companies for training or career development, as the ROI is not there (under utilization, a fallacy of implementation).Should your company be based on ROI metrics per-project, and per-resource? Do you call your employees resources?Utah (which has a large influx of Silicon companies trying to find cheap labor (typically they do) at lower cost of living thus for salary (typically they do) can look at 20+ candidates with marginal requirements met (experience/projects), but, it is a buyers market. Its not panacea like Silicon Valley, and SLC is rated very high for business, tangentially, you should be able to find top talent for top dollar.Talent shortage, there is not, but training / development there is, and no company wants to take that on, because companies realize loyalty exists at a quarter-quarter statement (worse with a PE firm), so how do employee's progress? Change jobs every 2-3 years for a 10k+ raise.I realize I am ranting, but skill matching to a position is broken, and no automated ATS system will fix a resume/pubic facing publication./end: The "problem" at a symptom level is companies holding out for "best of best" when they probably do not need such candidates, and could train for such. Given, a SharePoint admin at $20 / hr (case study), they found it, after I placed them, and they left after six months when they realized their skill set warranted a $20k raise.Companies can under pay undergrads and mid-level candidates (who are not ivy/target/"rock star guru beer whatever") and do so, only to find a high turn-over rate.Fix turn-over rate? Or just keep filing the desperate mid-esque level folks who just need work and would fulfill Senior level demands of work fulfillment?/ranting

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a3n超过 11 年前

"3.9 million jobs are vacant, thanks to the empty promises of algorithms. If the U.S. Congress wants a solution, it should launch an investigation into the workings of America’s employment system infrastructure, which is controlled by a handful of companies."Oh please, no. Anything Congress touches risks dying like a baby between two pit bulls.

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Zigurd超过 11 年前

There are too many perverse incentives to trust job descriptions and supposedly open positions. H1-B visas, political advantages from complaining about a "training gap," etc.Maybe job postings should be bonded. Put up $20k per position and forfeit it if you have not filled the position in X months.

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Symmetry超过 11 年前

Is any of the stuff he mentions different from how it was pre-2008?In one sense the reason we still have unemployment is simple - we never had a classical recovery from the recession, we just had a return to normal growth. If you look at almost any historical recession you'll see a spike in unemployment, a dive into negative GDP growth, and a dive in inflation. Then, during the recovery you'll see a spike in GDP growth, a spike in inflation, and the employment level recovering to what it was pre-crash. This recession didn't have peaks in growth and inflation, just a return to normal. If you just looked at the GDP and inflation charts (or a combined NGDP chart) you'd expect that we'd still be having high but falling unemployment right now.And I could get into a big, long discussion of why this happened involving IOR, and the Fed relying on indicators that are always months out of date, and zero bounds, and certain coughdallascough Fed regional bank presidents being idiots. But whether or not there are supply side problems contributing to high unemployment in the US now, the demand side indicators show we should be having high unemployment now so there's no need to go "WTF".

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batemanesque超过 11 年前

"Stop begging for jobs" is an approach that requires a level of privilege most people don't possess

Aloisius超过 11 年前

Many places with large numbers of job openings also have very low local unemployment (the Bay Area for instance). We like to report on numbers at the national level, but worker mobility is at a 40 year low [1]. That certainly isn't helping anything.[1] - <a href="http://www.census.gov/prod/2012pubs/p20-567.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.census.gov/prod/2012pubs/p20-567.pdf</a>

lumens超过 11 年前

The hiring system we live with today–resumes, jobs descriptions, recruiters, HR interviews, and the rest–is massively antiquated. In the past 50 years only distribution has improved.A communications gap exists: resumes don't speak to candidates' wants and desires, and job descriptions don't accurately depict a day in the life on the job. Today, recruiters, both internal and external, work to overcome this communications deficit. However, their presence and business models introduce agency problems.My company, Mighty Spring, is an effort to bridge this communication gap in a scalable way, putting candidates and employers in direct contact. We provide candidates a platform to be transparent about their interests and needs without risk (utilizing anonymity), and help employers communicate the finer points of their jobs better than the walls of text they produce today.This is Mighty Spring (<a href="https://www.mightyspring.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.mightyspring.com</a>) — the easiest way to find new opportunities with startups.

memracom超过 11 年前

There was a time when a company would hire you if you showed that you were smart, able to solve problems, and had some years of experience working in some other companies. They did NOT expect you to already know the job. Employers were willing to work with employees, to guide them, train them, build them into what was needed.

natmaster超过 11 年前

More like people are not learning the right skills to be useful. Economic restructuring used to happen much more slowly but with the advancement in technology these days it happens significantly more rapidly.

programminggeek超过 11 年前

Just spitballin' here, but it seems to be that a lot of it comes down to the terrible incentive programs in place at the most successful companies. First of all, the shareholder is not always right and short term self interest does not make for long term good decision making.So, if the people at each level are basically just angling for their own short term self interest, be it a promotion or a raise/bonus/performance incentive, they will do what they must to hit whatever those incentives are, even if they harm the long term health of the business.In short, instead of investing profits, companies are scaling back to look good and hit their profitability or stock price targets. It's short sighted and will end up hurting a lot of companies in the middle to long term because they are inevitably cutting plenty of good people along with those who are less good at what they do.I really don't think that the goal of business should be to hire a ton of people for the sake of hiring people. A business exists to make a profit, but sustaining profitability requires great people, great operations, great products, great sales/marketing, and great service. When a company stops investing in those things, they get worse. When entire industries/countries do this, it doesn't take long for some upstart to take the lead.

Aloha超过 11 年前

The automatic matching BS is why my resume is chock full of bullshit with a skills matrix. I would rather they look at my overall experience and try to match me to a relevant job.

gnu8超过 11 年前

This is an ad.

wil421超过 11 年前

Does this post not concern tech jobs. I recently graduated from a smaller local college and had no problem getting interviews or offers. In fact almost every job I applied for called me back within a day to do an interview. None of them outsourced their hiring either.

jheriko超过 11 年前

"Recent phenomenon is cause of ancient problem"Give me a break. there are a lot of interesting points and valuable insights. I won't say there isn't a real problem there, but the core message is wrong IMO.Comfortable people make far too little effort to find work. Talk to job seekers about how far they will go for a job... this is why I will always have one. People seem to think they are somehow entitled to a convenient job on their doorstep.

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auctiontheory超过 11 年前

Nick's (first) book is hands down the best resource on job-hunting and interviewing I have ever found.

dawidw超过 11 年前

Not everyone is complaining...<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UREepszk7I&feature=player_embedded" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UREepszk7I&feature=player_em...</a>

AsymetricCom超过 11 年前

Sorry, employment data is classified for national security reasons.

craigyk超过 11 年前

AMEN

ffrryuu超过 11 年前

LinkedIn is great :)

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