Why is hiring hard?
It feels like every hiring manager complains that hiring is hard. This even seems true at FAANG, and the “start ups” like lyft, and uber. — let’s ask a couple questions, about why hiring is hard: 1. Is the work not fulfilling? 2. Are you paying a competitive salary? 3. Are the benefits bad? 4. Are the perks bad? 5. Are you in a bad location? So, to the managers that are having trouble hiring, why don’t you fix these things?
Shortage of talented people
1. Yes. 2. Yes. 3. No. 4. No. 5. No. What else you got?
Because there is a vast difference between what employers consider hireable vs what kind of people they really want on the job. Most managers want people who will passionately jump on issues, solve any problem on time and build solutions that get the job done. How do they vet people for above attributes? By asking for some wildcard matching problem on a whiteboard in 30 mins. If this doesn't ring a logical disconnect, you are the same as the managers struggling to hire. There's also a wide gap between what management thinks is sufficient pay for shitty hours vs what that person can command in the market with better hours
Yeah, I’ve always wondered why companies don’t pay more if they can’t hire? There seems to be a cognitive dissonance? Like, in a market with demand that outstrips supply, shouldn’t capitalism fix it?
Capitalism does fix it. Most companies not willing to Shell out market rates struggle to hire and be competitive. Their products suck and slowly start losing market share and customers. Imagine if Oracle and IBM actually had a culture of paying top of market for the best talent (engineering and others), do you really think aws would've been a thing? We're talking IBM here. They used to be Google at one point. Nope. Amazon paid for the best, hired the best and became market leaders. If Amazon stops paying the best (cost in salary and in wlb and in ethics), others willing to pay for the best will come ahead with something new. Capitalism does fix it but rest assured that the worst large public employers have a lot more mistakes to make before they shut down completely.
Hiring is hard because the interview process sucks
No? I can guarantee you that good people are not bothered by interviews - they pass them in any format. The problem is that it's difficult to find good people and even if you find them, it's difficult to get them hired, because they have multiple offers.
You’d be surprised how bad some peoples interviews are.
In short, companies are picky and thrifty
Hiring is hard because there are more jobs than qualified candidates, full stop. If you immediately quadrupled your pay and offered every perk imaginable you'd of course be able to hire away from FANG, but you'd just shift the problem somewhere else. There just aren't enough qualified candidates.
Maybe the definition of ‘qualified candidates’ needs a rethink?
The definition of qualified candidates is constantly rethought. No matter how you define it, there aren't enough of them. We aren't making this up. It's not a conspiracy
How are managers supposed to fix bad location?
Advocating for remote, moving the office location to upper management
Because a surprisingly large number of managers who need to hire suck and are idiots, perhaps?
Yeah, it's always management's fault
Hiring is hard because there are more open positions than strong candidates. And more weak candidates than open positions.
Nicely put!
It’s all about money. No pay no play