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Comment by cryoshon | Hacker News Reader

"“I know I am a creative person who can do many of these jobs, but I think employers have these expectations that an applicant must bring a mid-level professional’s work experience and technical skills — even though it’s only an entry-level job,”"

High expectations from employers for not enough pay. No willingness to train people to spec, instead expecting everyone to be ready to go out of the box. It's easy to forget that people are messy, and not machines.

EDIT: I beat this drum all of the time on HN... you will never have enough "technical skills" or "in demand skills" or "communications skills" to cheat your way out of the ability for someone to turn you down for the unicorn (who, ideally, will then be underemployed in the position) they're looking for.

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Yep, I'm an excellent programmer but I still don't fit the mold for a lot of the postings I see (not that I'm looking since I run my own business).

They are either insanely broad or insanely specific, which I think is insanely short sighted since you will either get liars or narrow your search down to those with only the exact skills you are looking for while missing candidates with more generally applicable skills.

If/when I get around to hiring my job post is going to look something like (off the cuff),

"Web developer wanted, experience equal to a couple of years building production systems any of the following a plus SQL, JS (any framework), PHP (any framework), Python (any framework), broad understanding of how the internet/web works, Linux experience (any distro)"

I'm not going to exclude an incredible candidate because they don't have experience of FooJSFrameworkOfTheWeek.js v9.1.2.11.2, if I have to go through 5-10 times as many CV's so what, a little bit of my time now will save me a shitload of time down the line by hiring the wrong person.

> They are either insanely broad or insanely specific, which I think is insanely short sighted since you will either get liars or narrow your search down to those with only the exact skills you are looking for while missing candidates with more generally applicable skills.

I'm starting to think that the reason the available candidate pool is viewed as being so poor is that the only people making it though the resume screening stage are the true unicorns and the bald-faced liars.

Edit: forgot a word.

Isn't your proposed job posting "insanely broad"?

In a different way.

Job postings are either broad in the sense they want a unicorn (massive often unachievable in reality skillset).

Must be able to debug kernel drivers, write ruby, be CCNA certified and a qualified first aider.

The kind of posting where you know they actually need two sometimes three people and are trying to get one.

> "No willingness to train people to spec"

Absolutely 100% this. There has been an unsettling trend for employers not wanting to invest in their employees. This includes training as well as compensation. Now employers in general expect colleges / university to adapt their degrees into job preparation programs and do all the training for them.

In some ways I can understand that employers are much more reluctant to spend money on developing employees as programs such as pensions that used to create a long term relationship between the employee and employer no longer tend to exist.

> In some ways I can understand that employers are much more reluctant to spend money on developing employees as programs such as pensions that used to create a long term relationship between the employee and employer no longer tend to exist.

1) Just provide tuition assistance with a payback period if an employee spends less than X years at the company.

2) Similarly, provide bonuses after X years for positions you need to train for.

Its not hard to get people to stick around 5+ years if you pay well and aren't toxic culturally with a 10% bonus every X years. My boss basically prices me out of the market every year so there isn't even a point in looking for a job.

I think the real problem is the CEO/CTO/etc in large companies are focused on what I can do this quarter/year that will make me look good. They aren't focused on X years down the road.

>"“I know I am a creative person who can do many of these jobs, but I think employers have these expectations that an applicant must bring a mid-level professional’s work experience and technical skills — even though it’s only an entry-level job,”"

For someone to have this position, they have to explain what changed in the past few decades compared to the decades before those. What caused expectations of employers to become higher than the qualifications of the applicants? If anything, more applicants have more qualifications in terms of degrees than ever before, right?

A slowdown in economic growth. There's more people fighting over fewer jobs (Outside of tech), which lets employers be picky... And then offload their responsibilities to universities.

> If anything, more applicants have more qualifications in terms of degrees than ever before, right?

Yep, and that's the problem. College has been dumbed down over the past few decades, to accommodate the push (at least here in the US) for everyone to go to college after high school. There are more people with degrees, but on average they're less capable than the fresh graduates of 30 years ago. People today are getting bachelors degrees in animation, FFS.

This is where those who understand how to sell themselves have an edge: The convince the employer that the skills they have are sufficient, and the salary they're demanding is a fair price. (This is also why companies don't sell you their products by replying to your 'user seeks product' post with a product's 'resume'.)

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