Writer, Agilist, Elder Geek
So as noted there’s an IT Gap in my opinion at least on senior level positions, and frankly people make it worse. So now the question comes up; what do I, the handsome devil-may care Program Manager recommend for hiring. I’m glad you asked because I like to talk – plus, hey, after all that ranting I ought to do something to help you out if you’re a recruiter.
Or if you want to help out some recruiters. Remember their job is kind of a nightmare.
Here’s my advice.
OK, we all know the story, or at least those of us trying to hire people with IT skills do – there’s not enough people out there to hire! We can’t find anyone. Dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria, and those empty desks that should be filled with busy geeks.
If you haven’t heard this complaint you’re A) lucky, B) ignorant, C) a liar, or D) better at hiring than a lot of people – a whole lot of people.
For over a year I’ve been hearing that there’s some kind of IT hiring gap. This isn’t new of course, complaint about some kind of “skills gap” goes back for years in many fields. I think I’ve been hearing about this for about four years, even when unemployment was higher.
However among these claims I’d occasionally hear a dissenting voice. That there’s not a gap, or that these claims were ways to get in cheap H1B visa employees, or someone had no trouble in hiring and just thought this was BS. It made me wonder if this is for real.
Let’s face it, it’s important to know what the heck is actually going on in IT. IT is vital to the economy. It’s close to we geeks who are so tied to technology industries and areas. Some of us want a damn job and we’d like to know what’s going ob. Some of us are trying to hire people and want to know why it isn’t working. If this gap is BS then people claiming there is one are ignorant, deceptive, or both and we’ like to know.
So is there an IT Gap, where we don’t have enough people to do the IT jobs of today?
Let’s put this simply – most job postings are horribly written, boring, inaccurate, and usually are near-meaningless laundry lists of stats and years of experience. Those that aren’t too long are usually stupidly short. The end result is:
In short, job postings are lousy and they don’t get the right people.
Who’s to blame? Actually, there’s really no one to blame for this – it’s another case of the system breaking down.