The Three Ring Circus of IT Recruiting

The world of IT recruiting and IT job hunting is like a three-ring circus. Miscommunication of job requirements between technical leads, hiring managers, HR departments, and recruiters have led to an alphabet soup of job listings that don’t make sense. How many times have you seen requirements for a technology that hasn’t been around that long? A myriad of jobs listed on job boards right now are calling for a minimum of 3, 4 and 5 years of Angular. If you can’t see the problem with that, then you are probably part of the problem. Meanwhile, developers are over selling themselves trying to play catch up against the specter of unrealistic requirements. Recently, I was turned down for a job after an interview for a data migration project. The reason? Apparently, I’m too junior. Those were the exact words used. I got my first certifications in Sybase in 1994. I’d love for someone to explain that to me. This exemplifies the nature of the market right now and ultimately leads to frustration on the part of IT professionals, especially young guys, new to the market. I’ve had to explain these challenges to some of my graduates recently. That they are going to have to be thick skinned, head strong and steadfast in their job search. They are faced with having to learn how to speak technically to people who don’t speak that language at all. Those are some of the exact people who are going to be making a judgement about their qualifications and fit for jobs they are looking for. For anyone interested I’ve got some guys here who have gone through code hell. The kind of pressure that makes diamonds. They’ve learned Java, C#, MVC, JavaScript and SQL/NoSQL database development. They are working with me right now in their project phase building a real C#/ASP MVC application that interfaces with Sharepoint online through Graph. I’m sure there are many companies who have recently move to Office 365 who could use something like that. Could we just cut out the middle man and have a talk about how to get these guys hired and working? Let me hear from you.