House of Eratosthenes

As the depressed economy lurches along an uneven bottom, I have been trying to selectively upgrade key areas of our team with new talent to get ready for the eventual recovery.

We are training our existing staff in technologies that will progressively reduce our operating costs, but I had been expecting to find experienced workers to speed up the familiarization and assimilation process.

It’s not happening.

Not only am I not finding the people I need, some of the few that I have recruited aren’t sticking around for very long. This is troubling.

Whenever we’ve looked to hire new staff — in good times or bad — we’ve been deluged by resumes of people who did not seem to have read the requirements. It’s as though someone is running a search-and-match engine that uses any vague similarity between what we need and what a candidate claims to have done.

Our own scanning technology eliminates a lot of these resumes. (I have never liked automatic filtering much, so we look at some of the automatic rejections to make sure we aren’t missing a hidden gem.) But we still waste a lot of time screening candidates by phone and in interviews.
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So, two questions: Where are all the good people? And why are we seeing so much turnover in a supposedly poor job market?

I’ve been looking at these issues for a few months now, and I’m starting to see some patterns, if not answers, in our data.

First, a lot of people are going freelance. I can rent them, but not hire them. They don’t seem to care about (or maybe believe in) “corporate” benefits such as health insurance or 401(k) plans or even performance bonuses. If they have a hot skill, they are willing to roll the dice on being able to keep busy even in bad times.

I have employed several people who work this way. The arrangements can be mutually beneficial, but the complexity of managing a work force that’s less “loyal” (and less accountable) taxes our managers and systems — and may not be sustainable in the long term.

Second, a lot of the skills we need are scarce, and the people who have them — and have jobs — seem reluctant to move, even for more money. Other employers I have talked to see the same thing and most are willing to match an offer to keep the skills in-house.

Third, those who are willing to move keep on doing so. Even if I find someone who will quit to join us, he or she is probably going to do the same if another offer comes along.

It’s as if the available population is dividing into three groups: independent, static and mobile. I really haven’t seen this before — especially not in the three past recessions I have had to manage through — and it’s causing us to rethink some of our resourcing strategies.

When you’ve built an operating model that depends on ready access to skilled technologists and the skills aren’t there, problems loom. We’ll need to get ahead of these challenges quickly if we are to build an organization that’s ready to grow when the recovery arrives.

Well, whaddya think? Can you manage to shed a tear?

My own reaction: Well, he seems to be appropriately inquisitive, but he can’t cover up the nagging sensation he obviously has that maybe he’s overlooking something. And I think he is. We have a lot of technology employers, and recruiters as well, wondering how it is that the “talent” is so hard to find. And yet at the same time we have a lot of “workers” in the force looking for a place, wondering if they’re in the right field, or if it’s time to move on to something different altogether.

We got both of those problems. Something’s obviously busted.

Check out the comments, though. They’re loaded up with input from the folks on the other side of the table. They say they are probably the qualified folks for which the boss has been looking, but many of them have had to move on, get into real estate, go get law degrees, whatever. Not much sympathy. A goodly chunk of venom.

Quit IT because of this stupidity at 8-15-09 @ 10:52 am EST, speaks for me in a comment that was much more civil than most:

Here’s why you can’t find people

1) We need these 15 skills, you only have 14, not qualified.
2) That 15th skill is an obscure 30 year old loader program that no one uses or has hear of anymore
3) We will not train or have you learn that 15th skill, we need people who “hit the ground running”
4) Your experience is in C sharpe, but we need C pound sign!
5) No security clearance, no job, no exceptions.
6) H1B’s work alot cheaper because they have no mortgage and did not go to college so have no student loans.
7) Your resume says SQL but our resume scanner is looking for sequel.
The problems are with the idiots doing the recruiting, the great people are right in front of your noses.

My story is one of gradually migrating into IT from software engineering, and then because of the same frustration these folks found, going back to software engineering. Isn’t software engineering part of IT? If you think that’s so, then I guess I ultimately prevailed and managed to make a living again, after making a months-long pursuit out of something that should’ve been a routine job search. If engineering and IT are different things, then it would have to be said I hit a career-ending cul de sac as many others did, and fortunately fell back on some skills I developed many years earlier.

It really doesn’t matter though. There’s a horrible problem churning away deep under the surface that affects those who seek the talent, as well as those who have the talent and are seeking the work.

People whose job it is to get the talent-demanders in touch with the talent-suppliers, are woefully underqualified. I remember talking to one who was asking if I had such-and-such training. I just came out and asked her: I’ve been doing exactly the work your client needs and I’ve got positive references to show for it, and yet nobody asks if I did a good job at it, they ask about my training. What kind of training do you recruiters have? Frankly, that seems to be more the issue here.

She agreed.

I think the CIO hit the nail on the head halfway through his tragedy. “Our own scanning technology eliminates a lot of these resumes. (I have never liked automatic filtering much, so we look at some of the automatic rejections to make sure we aren’t missing a hidden gem.) But we still waste a lot of time screening candidates by phone and in interviews.” Here’s the problem that’s causing grief on both sides: If 50 resumes is a manageable number but 500 is not, then anything that knocks out 90% is a “good” filtering system. Be it a keyword search, be it the “wrong” answer to a written interview question, be it…anything that doesn’t land you at the wrong end of a discrimination suit. Just get the number down, and don’t worry about how.

The boss knows about this. He looks at some of the automatic rejections to make sure they aren’t missing a hidden gem. But when he’s sanity-checking a process to carve an impossible number down into a smaller, possible number…this just amounts to a partial backpedaling against a rejection process that he knows doesn’t work. He’s figured out the automatic filtering has failed to win over his confidence, so he’s implementing only 99% of it.

The problem isn’t that nobody’s qualified to do the work. The problem is that nobody’s qualified to figure out who’s qualified to do the work.

Meanwhile — the IT profession is not just staffed with kids who are looking for something to do during the summer, and know something about rebooting servers. These are adults who are still paying off student loans, putting down payments on houses, having kids of their own, putting together college funds for those kids…all that good stuff. They need to make a living.

If, every single time it becomes necessary to land another gig, after all the training and all the experience and answering all the questions right, it’s a matter of hoping the ball lands on black-seventeen…there comes a time you have ask yourself the hard question: Is this making a living? And so the promising field of car insurance beckons, or maybe it’s time to chase that other dream of opening a smokehouse restaurant. Then we get more weeping and wailing from CIOs who can’t find the talent. Perhaps they got rid of the talent themselves, and didn’t realize it at the time.

I’ve never seen an HR department who knew anything about hiring IT people. All they can do is go by checklists and lists of “certifications”. The end result is they almost always hire bozos.
- pdwalker | 08/10/2009 @ 09:08
I’ve never even met a human resources department, OR a recruiting firm, who would argue with you about that Paul (except the part about hiring bozos, maybe). Of course they’re as enamored of their ability to find “the perfect candidate” as any other firm or individual who does something, and presents himself to the market based on this ability to do something — we’re the best of the best! Bar none!

But in the end, you’ve bulls-eyed it. They follow checklists and instructions…which come from…the client. So they find “the perfect candidate” the same way Netflix sends you “the perfect movie.” The decision came from the client, who in all likelihood doesn’t understand he has all the responsibility of making sure this thing works out. What the recruiter did “excellently” was follow instructions.

Having re-read the CIO’s lament one more time, I have new thoughts as I retread this phrase “hit the ground running.” That is the problem, I believe. The typical IT application, with each unit of complexity representing a constant measure of time taken for the new guy to become proficient in maintaining it, consists of 60% software/hardware products and 40% customized configuration. I suspect the most successful technical hiring was done by the bosses who realized early on that “hit the ground running” is a myth. The stories of disaster are told by the ones who still believe in this unicorn, and fail to realize their truly “qualified candidate” is the candidate who is qualified to sit down and do the figuring-outing…over a period of weeks…or months. They’re looking for the professional who can show competence as he does this. And they don’t know that’s what they’re trying to find.

The search they have engaged is for a clone of the guy who just quit, or got killed, or won the lottery, or retired. They want things to be as if that never happened. They want to avoid feeling the effects of the transition, and they think if they word the requirements correctly they can avoid this hardship. Naturally, when they fail to avoid the living-of-life, it’s the fault of the other guy for not reading the requirements. You want the perfect requirements document? Grab a napkin; write down the name of the guy who’s leaving. That’s your perfect requirements document. That’s how you avoid your transition hardships. No other requirements document will do, not for the goal you have in mind.
- mkfreeberg | 08/10/2009 @ 09:33
My favorite line: “It’s as though someone is running a search-and-match engine that uses any vague similarity between what we need and what a candidate claims to have done.”

Ya think?
- rob | 08/10/2009 @ 09:59
The best thing that ever happened to me in this space is when we (the company) let the entire staffing/recruiting/HR (save for the payroll types) go in the great dot-bomb downsizing of 2001. All further hiring (i.e., replacing those who left… if any) was left to the hiring manager. In my particular case (and that of all other hiring managers) I placed the ads, worked the networks, sorted through the resumes, and did all the interviewing. And got exactly what I wanted.

In my previous life with the Big-Ass IT company I only hired internal transfers… people with proven experience and track records. I was pretty danged lucky throughout my civilian career when it came to hiring, come to think on it. My military career, too… but that was a different ball o’ wax and even though you “took what you got” we had the BEST motivation tools in the world… i.e., “my way… or Leavenworth.” You’d be surprised at how well that worked. 😉

Sympathy for this CIO, though? Not much. He doesn’t sound like the sorta guy I’d wanna work for. I don’t care much for whiners.
- bpenni | 08/10/2009 @ 12:32
I should have added I hired DBAs and UNIX sysadmins, just to be clear. No developers… at the Little Company.
- bpenni | 08/10/2009 @ 12:36
He forgot to mention that he wanted the new hire to work for 60% of the cost of living. even those of us without degrees have skills (and expenses) and might like to do well, perhaps even eat.
- Tom The Impaler | 08/11/2009 @ 00:24
I spent more than a decade in IT (programmer, data analyst) and was able to switch jobs when needed by backdooring/going around HR. HR departments are staffed, by and large, with pencil pushing, word matching monkeys. You could essentially get a trained seal to do their job by honking on a horn when they see two words that look alike. To avoid falling into their traps of stupidity, I would always talk directly with the hiring manager and demonstrate my skills to them. I never failed to get hired and I never failed to get a pay increase, which really helped when I moved back into engineering, because my salary requirements were higher than the norm for my current position, which I got by talking directly to the hiring manager BEFORE we sent the paperwork through HR. Turns out that I didn’t have lots of those buzzword skillsets listed on the HR checklist, but I had lots of other transferable skills and experience and could sell myself in an interview. My soon to be new boss told HR to let the resume pass through and to set up an official interview.

I teach IT classes part-time at a local university and my students routinely complain about the problems that you listed above. My reply is to tell them that job “mandatory” job requirements are an HR wish list and don’t always, or even usually, represent reality. Find a way to speak directly to the person(s) with whom you’d be working and sell them on what you actually have. If they like you, they’ll find a way to make HR go pound sand.
- Physics Geek | 08/12/2009 @ 08:53
Physics Geek: good advice.

mkfreeberg: “hit the ground running” – yeah, another keep “fail” point. We want someone perfect who has all the skills (like 20 years+ java development experience *snicker*) and needs absolutely no training.

employees are just “resources” after all, to be plug and played into their respective roles.
- pdwalker | 08/12/2009 @ 10:33

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The Missing IT TalentMonday, August 10th, 2009

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Monday, August 10th, 2009