New technology has changed things, the market is fast, but one fact that has worn on recruiters for awhile and gotten worse for nearly a decade is the fact that a lot of clients don’t know what the hell they want.
Look, this isn’t disrespecting people that do hiring. A lot of them think they know what they want, thy did research, they planned and budgeted carefully. Of course they’re hideously wrong, but they try.
I first became aware of this trend in 2006, when a recruiter told me how his client was looking for ten years of Java experience. If you’re any kind of IT person you’re laughing. If you’re not, let me put it simply: at that time anyone with ten years of Java experience had helped design it.
This trend of ridiculous “asks” didn’t abate really. Technology, economics, demographics, and everything else have changed things so rapidly that it’s hard for people to get an idea of what skills they need in employees. it’s hard to know what they need in the future.