
The Talent Shortage Myth and Why HR Should Get Out of the Hiring Business - vellum
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/businessdesk/2013/04/ask-the-headhunter-the-talent.html
======
confluence
Reminds me of a comment I had a while ago regarding HR below. Some context -
the company had been having problems with hiring good people and was trying to
figure out what the problem was - because they never had the problem in the
past. So they figured it was related to the HR department and they tested it
as below:

\---

I can't remember which company this story was from (I think it was Lotus
Software).

Basically the HR team of a multi-billion dollar startup were given the
anonymised resumes of the first 10-20 founding team members.

HR rejected them all. Not one founding team member was accepted even for a
short interview.

Tells you something about HR doesn't it?

\---

Source: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4699673>

Same problem as found here: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5470941>

~~~
gnosis
This anecdote might seem incredible to much of the HN community, who look upon
successful founders as some sort of demigods.

But could it be conceivable that they're really nothing special?

Perhaps HR was right after all.

~~~
kalterstern
_But could it be conceivable that they're really nothing special?_

Affable but averagely talented guys with a few rich pals, most of them.

------
rizzom5000
I find it disturbing that Ask the Recruiter tacitly assumes that 12 million
unemployed versus 3.7 million vacant jobs implies there isn't a talent
shortage.

If we have 3.7 million job openings for rocket scientists and 12 million
unemployed brain surgeons, then surely we have a talent shortage, no?

~~~
joshAg
This might be a purely semantic argument, but I'd say in the example you
provided, you have a skill shortage, not a talent shortage. If you provided
training, I'm sure you could find enough brain-surgeons willing to train to be
rocket scientists. Of course, that would require you to pay for their training
and allow for months of lower productivity while they come up to speed, but
that's still a better situation than 3.7 million openings and 0 unemployed.

~~~
lessnonymous
The problem isn't filling the rocket scientist shortage with brain surgeon
retrains. It's finding the unemployed shelf stacker who's really just 6 months
of good training from being you rocket scientist. Otherwise you're just
creating a shortage of brain surgeons.

It's VERY hard to find quality developers. I agree with the article that HR is
a huge problem, but I'm a hiring manager and I still don't see a great deal of
quality.

While it's not as extreme as shifting industry, I recently took the advice
from a few HN threads I'd spoken up on and while I'm looking for a PHP
developer, I didn't insist that PHP be one of the languages you already know.

Did that work? No. I still didn't get an influx of quality applicants.

I also said in the ad that I was more interested in a cover letter than a
resume that shows where you've worked or gone to school, and I'm interested in
your Stack Overflow or HN profile. In other words: I'd love to hire a
hobbyist.

But none of the 5% of this country's unemployed applied.

~~~
NkVczPkybiXICG
It might also be that you're looking for a PHP developer. Quality people tend
to stay away from PHP.

~~~
lessnonymous
Unfortunately, I suspect you're correct.

------
tokenadult
I generally agree with the suggestion that the line managers who know the work
rather than whatever HR department a company has should have the lead role in
hiring. The supposed rationale for an HR department is that hiring and firing
are hemmed in by various laws that not everyone understands, and a capable HR
person can prevent a company from doing something illegal that exposes the
company to a lawsuit or criminal penalties. But most of the time, HR
departments really keep companies from hiring capable workers.

Definitely learn the law, and don't do anything illegal, but help managers
learn how to develop work-sample tests for hiring,

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5227923>

and make sure that the main focus of hiring is getting each job done right by
new hires who have a capacity to grow into more responsible positions in the
company over the next few years.

~~~
RougeFemme
I think HR can be useful at "managing" the talent once the hiring is complete,
but agree that their involvement in the actual hiring process should be
limited to compliance issues. HR can also be good at helping to identify the
roots of any turnover issues. Line managers may be too close to the problem
and/or too busy tending to the business to be useful in that area.

------
nasalgoat
I'm sorry, but the talent shortage is a real thing.

We don't have any HR filtering in place - resumes come directly to managers -
but we still have a really difficult time filling our open positions.

~~~
jjtheblunt
If you're in California, it's because no American from outside California
improves her/his economic outlook by coming to California, where cost of
living is easily several times higher than in many other thriving parts of the
country.

~~~
scarmig
Moving to California from the East Coast nearly doubled my salary. Cost of
living went up, but by around a factor of 15-20%.

Of course, since lots of people are really fucking rich in the Bay Area, it's
easy to get caught in the conspicuous consumption game (the biggest part of
which is probably housing and location). But if you can avoid that, moving to
California can easily mean a whole lot more money, even with taxes + cost of
living.

~~~
toomuchtodo
I'm an infrastructure guy. I interviewed with a fairly well known startup in
Mountain View. I was making $120K in Chicago, and was offered $110K to move to
Mountain View/San Jose.

In what world is that an intelligent choice, when you can make $ITMONIES
somewhere where the cost of living isn't going to eat you alive.

~~~
lern_too_spel
$110k plus equity, right? If you got an offer from an established public
company, the salary portion of the compensation package would likely be much
higher.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Very little equity. Not worth the salary differential.

------
walshemj
Good article a while ago I was at a meeting to discuss the grading / job role
system at BT for the Systems engineering division (where 90% of the techies
are)

It was a disaster as my colleague commented the only thing they decided was
the grade of the hr person who fetches the coffee and biscuits at the
Industrial relations meetings with the union.

HR does have a role in making sure the rules are followed though this should
be delivered as training to the actual line managers.

------
rayiner
I do think there is a talent shortage, but I also think tech companies could
learn a few things from other industries that have figured out how to recruit
at scale. E.g. at my company hiring is not done by HR. A recruiting department
handles the planning and logistics, but evaluations are done by lawyers. A
potential recruit will be evaluated by associates at say a cocktail reception,
interviewed by an associate or sometimes a partner in a screening interview,
interviewed by several associates and partners at a callback, and will be
hired or not based on the judgment of a hiring committee of partners. At no
point does a candidate answer to someone who hasn't been in exactly that same
seat before (even the recruiting people are often lawyers who left active
practice). As I understand it, finance, consulting, and accounting work the
same way, even in huge organizations.

The downside of this is that it's very time-consuming, and very expensive. But
you get what you pay for.

~~~
tptacek
I'm not sure I've ever known of a tech company that had a centralized HR
department making hiring decisions. Mind you, I've _worked for_ tech companies
that had HR departments that thought they had a say in hiring, but that was a
self-serving delusion on their part.

I think the tech industry, like most industries, does do hiring by having
domain experts evaluate candidates. That's why hoary old books like "What
Color Is Your Parachute" focus so intently on getting you to identify the real
hiring managers at companies.

I definitely don't think the tech industry does hiring _well_. I think that's
one of the huge, open, lucrative "meta-problems" in the tech industry.

~~~
rayiner
One place I worked had HR do screening interviews. It was like a resume-grep,
except in person. They asked me if I knew SQL. I said no, other than the
briefest exposure in class. Ultimately got hired anyway, but never came close
to working on any SQL. I'm not sure we even had any SQL running anywhere in
the company at the time.

------
bennyg
Yep. A buddy of mine and a DAMN good Android developer (and overall highly
intelligent man) is not getting hired on at my job (a CS research arm of the
University) because HR can't accept the fact he doesn't have a Bachelors. He's
literally 2 months away from it, and his contract with Tek Systems is up in a
couple weeks. It's absolutely fucking stupid.

~~~
toomuchtodo
He in the Chicago area by chance? We're hiring, and need an Android developer.
We don't care about education whatsoever, just if you can do the job.

