25 years old and deep in debt

[Berkut]

Yes. There was a lot of nonsense going around the HR world in the middle of the recession about a lack of qualified candidates.

The problem is, you can make sure there are no qualified candidates just by adding more qualifications. We're drowning ourselves in them.

That is still going around, and with a whole lot of seriousness, in the tech world.  Read Hacker News or /r/cscareerquestions long enough and you hit the contradiction of there being craploads of unemployed programmers and no "qualified" candidates.

And when you look at the typical "qualification" list it is pretty obvious why. They are utterlly idiotic for the most part.

I got a troll from a job placers asking if I would be interested in a job that *required* a senior level of development expertise in JAVA to include managing other developers, along with the interest and ability to install, maintain, and configure Oracle databases and a deep understanding and interest in using.building, and managing a network of Linux machines.

Sure. I would fucking love a senior development position where I am expected to be a DBA, developer, and lets throw in fucking Linux network admin while we are at it.

The funny part is that when I pointed out how absurd the job requirement list was to the HR tech recruiting "specialist", they had no idea why this was an issue.

I don't know what was scarier - the idea that someone could put out a job search like that, or the idea that there might really be a job out there that expects one person to do all those things.

[Darth Wagtaros]

It is ridiculous.  ttrying to fill a position here last year, they had a list for a senior level network tech: masters degree in CS; 5 years management experience (for a non-management job); 5+ years technical experience; and a range of database development and programming requirements. Starting pay: 55k. 

Same when they tried to hire a programmer a few years ago.  Its OK to aim for a Supperman. But they gotta boost that pay by 2x or 3x to get it.

[DGuller]

And when you look at the typical "qualification" list it is pretty obvious why. They are utterlly idiotic for the most part.

I got a troll from a job placers asking if I would be interested in a job that *required* a senior level of development expertise in JAVA to include managing other developers, along with the interest and ability to install, maintain, and configure Oracle databases and a deep understanding and interest in using.building, and managing a network of Linux machines.

Sure. I would fucking love a senior development position where I am expected to be a DBA, developer, and lets throw in fucking Linux network admin while we are at it.

The funny part is that when I pointed out how absurd the job requirement list was to the HR tech recruiting "specialist", they had no idea why this was an issue.

I don't know what was scarier - the idea that someone could put out a job search like that, or the idea that there might really be a job out there that expects one person to do all those things.

I'm neither a DBA, developer, nor a Linux network admin, and in fact I don't even know anything about what these jobs entail, but that list of requirements doesn't strike me as unreasonable.

[Malthus]

And when you look at the typical "qualification" list it is pretty obvious why. They are utterlly idiotic for the most part.

I got a troll from a job placers asking if I would be interested in a job that *required* a senior level of development expertise in JAVA to include managing other developers, along with the interest and ability to install, maintain, and configure Oracle databases and a deep understanding and interest in using.building, and managing a network of Linux machines.

Sure. I would fucking love a senior development position where I am expected to be a DBA, developer, and lets throw in fucking Linux network admin while we are at it.

The funny part is that when I pointed out how absurd the job requirement list was to the HR tech recruiting "specialist", they had no idea why this was an issue.

I don't know what was scarier - the idea that someone could put out a job search like that, or the idea that there might really be a job out there that expects one person to do all those things.

I'm neither a DBA, developer, nor a Linux network admin, and in fact I don't even know anything about what these jobs entail, but that list of requirements doesn't strike me as unreasonable.

I assume the issue is the IT-world equivalent of: "We need a Medical Doctor who also has his Actuary designation and is a practicing trial Lawyer".

[Berkut]

Its like advertising for a job, the requirements of which are that you have years of experience designing cars and can lead a team of car designers, and also have the ability to do a brake job, change out a carbeurator, and maybe design and maintain the robots that make the cars while you are at it.

Yes, the jobs all have some relationship to one another, but they are not skills you would expect to find in one person, nor are they sets of skills one person is likely to want to do all of - if you are  senior level JAVA developer, you sure as hell aren't likely to be interested in a job that involves installing and maintaining Oracle. Or vice versa.

The problem with HR driven hiring in the technology world is that it is almost completely skills based, and those skills are often incredibly specific. Do you know STRUTS? Have you worked with some particular flavor of IDE? What, you used Eclipse? Oh, the requirement here says NetBeans. YOU FAIL! It's like saying you won't hire someone because they used some particular brand instead of some other, when the reality is that those who are good at it excel regardless of what tool they are using, because being good is not about knowing a tool.

[crazy canuck]

Berkut grew up poor.

I think a fair number of us did.  I wonder how that relates to how we ended up here?

[Jacob]

That's not really much of a protection.  Any right that can be waived to a much more powerful agent is not a right at all.

The point is that it's protected by social conventions too, because no one is waiving it. Alternately, maybe there's legislation preventing employers from requesting the information.

[Berkut]

And when you look at the typical "qualification" list it is pretty obvious why. They are utterlly idiotic for the most part.

I got a troll from a job placers asking if I would be interested in a job that *required* a senior level of development expertise in JAVA to include managing other developers, along with the interest and ability to install, maintain, and configure Oracle databases and a deep understanding and interest in using.building, and managing a network of Linux machines.

Sure. I would fucking love a senior development position where I am expected to be a DBA, developer, and lets throw in fucking Linux network admin while we are at it.

The funny part is that when I pointed out how absurd the job requirement list was to the HR tech recruiting "specialist", they had no idea why this was an issue.

I don't know what was scarier - the idea that someone could put out a job search like that, or the idea that there might really be a job out there that expects one person to do all those things.

I'm neither a DBA, developer, nor a Linux network admin, and in fact I don't even know anything about what these jobs entail, but that list of requirements doesn't strike me as unreasonable.

I assume the issue is the IT-world equivalent of: "We need a Medical Doctor who also has his Actuary designation and is a practicing trial Lawyer".

A medical doctor example would be "We need a senior vascular surgeon with extensive experience in the realm of anestheseology and a firm grounding in emergency room nursing principles who is willing to maintain our in house pharmacy".

Sure...it is all medical stuff...

[frunk]

I got a troll from a job placers asking if I would be interested in a job that *required* a senior level of development expertise in JAVA to include managing other developers, along with the interest and ability to install, maintain, and configure Oracle databases and a deep understanding and interest in using.building, and managing a network of Linux machines.

There are people who are fully qualified and capable of doing all of these things, but there's only 24 hours in a day and sometimes they have to sleep.  I suppose they could be hoping for the "half-assed at everything" approach.

[Berkut]

I got a troll from a job placers asking if I would be interested in a job that *required* a senior level of development expertise in JAVA to include managing other developers, along with the interest and ability to install, maintain, and configure Oracle databases and a deep understanding and interest in using.building, and managing a network of Linux machines.

There are people who are fully qualified and capable of doing all of these things, but there's only 24 hours in a day and sometimes they have to sleep.  I suppose they could be hoping for the "half-assed at everything" approach.

No doubt there are - someone, for example, who has done exactly that job. But it is stupid to make that your requirements for a new applicant.

Rather, you need to define what the core skillset that is needed, then hire the best person who has THAT skill set. Secondary skills might be nice, but are not going to define whether or not the hire is successful, and just serves to constrain the pool, because the people doing the initial screening often don't even know what it all means.

[Caliga]

The particular example you give strikes me as one written by HR or a staffing agency as opposed to the IT folks themselves, yeah.

[Berkut]

The particular example you give strikes me as one written by HR or a staffing agency as opposed to the IT folks themselves, yeah.

I think the problem is one of communication a lot of times.

Some technical manager needs a new guy for whatever.

HR is tasked with writing up the job posting, so they ask tech manager what he needs.

Tech manager spends about 46 seconds thinking about all the various jobs the last guy did, jots them all down, throws in a few more that he would like the new guy to have (and why not? All things are possible!) and shoots it off to HR.

They are clueless, because if they had a brain or a clue they wouldn't be in HR, so they just throw all those "requirements" into the job posting, and post it. Voila! Done!

WTF? WHY AREN"T THERE ANY QUALIFIED PEOPLE FOR THIS JOB? ZOMG!

[DGuller]

The particular example you give strikes me as one written by HR or a staffing agency as opposed to the IT folks themselves, yeah.

You would know.

[mongers]

@Berk
That seems entirely possible.  Actually, take a look at the below (heavily edited) real email from my company to an agency:

Can you see what might be a problem here when the agency tries to turn this into a job description based on the question asked?

Cal not nearly enough, one line of googling reveals your employer. 

To be safe maybe you should edit/redact the post ? 

[DGuller]

What we have here is an employment of "if all 5 conditions are satisfied" logic where "if 3 out of 5 conditions are satisfied" logic is more appropriate.  To be fair, the former is a much simpler statement to evaluate, and simple logic appeals to simple people.