What tech skills are sought, and currently missing?
Submitted by matt on Mon, 04/07/2008 - 2:12pm.
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Looking through the job opportunities section, I see many software, hardware, and IT jobs.
From a staffing / recruiting perspective, what are the qualifications that are most elusive which are preventing you from filling your job openings? I'm asking this question relative to the Central Texas tech job market.
Note that I'm not speaking about what jobs are hot, but rather what specific tech skills are hot because (a) many employers want candidates who possess them, and (b) you can't find them in Central Texas candidates. This dilemma may be causing you to look elsewhere in the country for candidates.
P.S. Although I'm directing this question to recruiters / staffing folks, anyone can answer if they have some observations.
Don't everyone chime in all at once now... :)
Well, I've got my own theories... but I've been waiting to hear what other people have to say...
Perhaps like the old adage that silence means acceptance or agreement, in this case silence means there is no shortage or no skill that is hard to find in Austin?
Do I hear crickets chirping?
I guess companies and recruiters aren't having any problems finding candidates. Great news for Austin!
No, I think what it means is they don't know what they want. They post a list of skills and responsibilties, and when they get resumes in they call some in for interviews, and for some reason or another they are not a good fit. So they start over.
I literally have applied for the same jobs more than once because for some reason they didn't like my resume and decided to pass, then cooked up another job description for the same job, hoping to get a different set of resumes.
I've seen that sort of thing happen too. I can understand the idea of starting over if things aren't going right rather than as I've seen in some cases having the same job posting for months and months and months... but still, at what point after you do a couple of iterations with different requirements and you still can't find that elusive "perfect" fit, do you start asking what the problem is. And is there some kind of ego thing that keeps people from seeing that maybe it isn't the candidate pool that is the problem? Seems like it is easier to slag on everyone out there being stupid or the schools not turning out enough grads, or the government not allowing enough cheap imports while ignoring that there are thousands of skilled and experienced people who are unemployed or underemployed.
I've have been working for WinCE driver developers in Austin with little luck. We finally hired a couple of guys that had Linux and firmware experience and figure we can grow them into WinCE gurus over time.
I am new to door64 however, I've been searching for web developers with ajax experience for some time now. We will only hire local - that is the good thing - yet it is taking a long time to find someone with this skill. Any suggestions?
Would you consider someone with Javascript, DHTML, CSS and XML experience on their resume but not AJAX?
Unfortunately no. We are looking for someone with Ajax.
You do realize that they are the same thing?
AJAX is just a buzzword coined to describe using Javascript to manipulate XML data and perform DHTML/CSS effects... AJAX stands for Asynchronous Javascript and XML.
I say this just because this is the kind of typical disconnect between buzzwords and reality that often plague the hiring process. Screening of candidates is often done too arbitrarily and people who would be excellent choices get overlooked.
Web developers who have the skills to do what you want are a dime a dozen in the Austin job market, but they may not actually have "AJAX" on their resumes. It isn't on my resume because I've only done it in my own non-commercial development and not "on-the-job" even though I've used all the pieces that make up AJAX individually in the past. I would guess that a lot of other people fall into the same category. And FWIW, even for those who haven't done it, any competent web developer should be able to figure AJAX out in a few hours.
After re-reading that, I should add that please don't think I'm picking on you... I'm just trying to make a point about candidates with similar and adaptable skills being excluded from consideration due to arbitrary buzzword matches. This is just one example of something that happens all the time with a lot of different technologies and skill sets.
No worries. I understand what you are saying. This is what is required at this time and so I am trying to work with it. I appreciate your thoughts tho.
Hi kstevens -- thanks for joining up. I would suggest you take a look at our skill sets area where door64 members have posted their skills and availability to use them:
http://door64.com/view/skillset_list_all
What tech skills are sought, and currently missing?
From my solution architecture vantage point the three areas I've seen activity in are:
1. Network management
a. Fault Management specific to tools (Netcool, Remedy, Infovista, etc.)
b. General performance management (which imploded from CAs purchase of Concord)
c. Anything in configuration management due to gartner articles in the last couple years.
2. Applied social networking (wiki, semantic web, etc.)
3. Dataware housing: ETL, analytics, etc.
Thanks,
Daniel
Coming from a job seeker...
What's really interesting about all this, is perhaps the list of skills needed is usually posted on the job description, and not what is actually wanted to be able to find the right person. A good case in point.
Job Posting:
... Must have MCSE... = Dude with MCSE, little experience elsewhere--> Job interview because has MCSE.
Me:
... Has experience in VMware ESX, VI3, 5+ years with all manners of windows OS....Project Management..... NO MCSE--> NO Job interview.
Granted the example is over simplified and there are some skills that must be required but putting in a posting with MUST HAVE MSCE, CCNA, Oracle, MS SQL, 6 fingers on your right hand.... and expecting to find the perfect match is difficult, especially if the resume filters are setup wrong.
I don't know about anyone else, but I'm not that impressed with most certifications... The Cisco ones are the only ones that seem to have much respect. There are too many "paper tigers" for the others I think because they are largely memorization and regurgitation type tests. By that I mean there are a lot of people who are good at cramming for and taking tests but are not necessarily very capable of retaining and/or applying and adapting that knowledge to solving real world problems.
My personal favorite question on an MCSE exam starts out something like this: "You have decided to build a MS Windows Server as a network router..." The only response I can come up with is "why the heck would I decide that?"
That is kind of like a fish deciding he really wants to compete in a bicycle race... :-)
Of course you have to look at the source. It sometimes seems like Microsoft just can't play nice with other people, let alone admit that maybe someone else's product might be better for a given purpose than theirs, even if the other product isn't really from a direct competitor and it is purpose made for the task...
The matching of skills acronyms and the real underlying terminology and skills is definitely a tricky thing. I suppose you just have to list all the buzzword terms, and then try to talk to them. However, that's no good either, because when you interview someone and they have a skill listed, but when you ask about it, they don't really know what it is, then the interview was a waste of everyone's time.
On the other hand, those doing the hiring, including recruiters, need to understand the subtle skill descriptions and what they mean, and also help their clients refine their resumes to include those key terms when honestly applicable. That's hard to do, especially for newer skill sets. Take for example: "has '.Net experience'". Thats very vague indeed! So you have listed on your resume that you've done COM, DCOM, C# assemblies, sockets, etc., but you don't have .Net listed. Yeah, you get tossed, unless the person knows the real meanings under the skill set.
Regarding certifications, I take them for what they are worth: like looking at education on a resume. It helps to have the knowledge, but what is more important IMO, is the real-world experience and how that experience may apply to a specific position. While some certifications may help and look good on business cards, it's how you use the industry information to acheive reseults that's more important.
I don't think a large portion of recruiters will ever have the time or inclination to really develop an understanding of the technologies behind the acronyms sufficient to do more than buzzword match. Of course there are the exceptions, notably recruiters who have a technical background, however, as we are all aware, the buzzwords shift so quickly it is difficult enough for people firmly in the trenches to keep up let alone anyone else.
In the hiring I have done, I have looked at resumes as sort of a personality profile and career trend indicator rather than trying to check off the job posting requirements. I'm looking for a can-do attitude and ability to jump into unfamiliar surroundings and adapt. I'll take "spunk" over a litany of direct experience any day.
I've adopted my hiring attitude partly because I, myself, fit that description; I can jump in and learn any technology or business model. The other reason is that I am frequently trying to hire somebody with skills that I don't understand. If I limited my interviews to people with precisely the right checklist of skills, I'd never fill the job.
In my opinion, hiring managers need to understand that no matter who they hire, that person is going to produce almost nothing of high value for a couple of weeks, whether they fit the checklist or not.
I wish that more hiring managers believed that people with a can-do attitude can jump in and learn and adapt rather than having to have already done everything before. Unfortunately that seems to be the exception rather than the rule these days. As part of sharing how I came to use the name "software janitor" it comes from a sort of pattern I've seen in my career. Most of the time when I've started a new job it has been to replace people who have left for various reasons (quit, fired or consultants being replaced, etc) and I have had to quickly pick up the pieces of often extensive code bases and start making fixes and improvements within a few days. In some cases that wasn't that hard, but I've had to sort out huge piles of steaming code or twisty little mazes of "job security code" on more than one occasion. Numerous times I've had to learn a new language on the fly (for example Tcl/Tk or Python) because the code I had to fix was all or partially written in it. I've also worked in several different industries and had to pick up the business rules, background and terminology along the way. It has been much more rare that I've ever been given the chance to start with a clean slate to build something although I've done that too. Perhaps I get dinged for having quiet confidence after 20+ years rather than just spunk. It just seems like these days in a cookie cutter world those that don't fit the mold get left out in the cold.