Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Snippet: Job Requirements

Why does every job require so many prior years of experience? How does anyone get into any sort of career? I’ve been told that employers often ask for more than they really require, but that’s incredibly stupid. If you ask for someone with 5 years of experience and you hire someone who has no experience, you not only hired someone who has no experience, you hired someone who can’t even follow directions. I don’t want to work for a company that would do something so dumb.

2 comments:

  1. 4 reasons.

    1. With the economy in the toilet, there really are experienced people available, so why not look for them?

    2. By adding false extra requirements, businesses have an excuse to demand concessions. ("We're giving you this job even though you don't have 5 years of experience doing X, so your starting salary will be lowered accordingly.")

    3. Adding extra requirements provides a way to cull the applications if there are a lot of them. 200 resumes, but only 10 of them have experience with X.

    4. Since Human Resources departments are essentially useless, they are constantly searching for ways to prove their "value". Ask anyone who has tried to hire people in a medium-to-large corporation, and they will tell you that HR just loves to tack on extra requirements, usually for things HR knows nothing about. (Say, for example, requiring .NET programming experience for a job opening doing web design. The HR people won't be able to explain why, and probably have only the vaguest notion of what .NET is, but they know that .NET is computer stuff, so it must be good to require it.)

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    Replies
    1. Oh, and to expand on #4: usually this results in eliminating the actually-qualified applicants in favor of people who are incompetent but willing to lie. "Yeah, sure, I have 5 years of experience with .NET. Back in 2000 I used it to build an Access database on my Mac."

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