

Ask HN: What's your opinion abour ridiculous job descriptions these days? - Cardeck1

I don&#x27;t know about you guys but I am disgusted by job descriptions posted by companies in the last few years, especially Internships and Entry-level jobs. I ignored the subject for some time now but too many complain about it nowadays.<p>How is it possible to ask for hundreds of years of experience + being fluent in 10 languages for a damn Entry-Level job. Now, of course I am exaggerating but you get my point. How can we give students a chance to prove themselves if they can&#x27;t even &quot;join the game&quot;.<p>I have friends searching for a job for weeks now, yet they always hit the same wall, super extra experience and a bunch of superman responsabilities for just an internship...So basically you can&#x27;t even start learning or getting experience and I am not even mentioning senior positions where you need 20 years of experience ( half life) to get the job done.<p>Now I am asking you: Is this how it should be?Is this the trend now?Which company has the hardest entry requirements? Thanks.
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mathattack
I'll name 4 possible explanations of many. I'm not listing these to justify
any behavior, just to explain what I've seen.

1) If the company has someone in particular in mind that they want to sponsor
for a visa, they need to prove they couldn't find someone local, so they
tailor an unattainable or excessively tight job description. This is real, and
happens very frequently.

2) Many companies discredit experience gained elsewhere. "2 years with us is
worth 5 years anywhere else." So they set the bar high.

3) HR reps get burned by letting unqualified people through. If they can't
understand themselves if someone knows Python, but they know the last 3
peoples with 5 years experienced got crushed in the interview, then they ask
for 10 years.

4) Most firms know that employee referrals are the highest percentage shot for
good hires of both technical and cultural fit. As such, the external barrier
is much higher than the internal barrier. At my current and prior employer, I
could get anyone an interview for an open position by dropping their resume
off at HR. It didn't matter if they fit the credentials as long as I vouched
for them. This helps them avoid point 3, because if the interview doesn't go
well, they're off the hook.

We can talk about the injustice of this, but there is a simple answer. If
there is a place that you want to work, make a friend there. Or make a friend
who has a friend there.

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hcho
It's an arms race.

I see a lot of CVs and the fact is most people exaggerate their skills in
their CVs. In turn companies exaggerate their needs in their job descriptions.

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atticusberg
Software can be kind of a "fake it till you make it" industry, and when you're
starting out, a big part of that is embellishing your resume. You shouldn't
put anything on there that you really know nothing about, but if you can talk
about it at least a little bit, its often better to include than to not.

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duiker101
I don't think this is how it should be, mostly because it's stupid and will
backfire. If you want only Ninjas, super developers or those crazy things,
expecially if you are not willing to pay for what you ask, you will soon find
that it's extremely hard to fill those positions and you will miss people that
might be still developing their skills but in future will be brilliant
developers. I was lucky enough to get hired from a great company that is not
ashamed of picking up "new" developers and grow them. This turned out to be a
great strategy and I think that in my case worked out amazingly for both of
us!

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ginter
Even if/when the actual requirements aren't too outlandish, the description is
just as ridiculous. I read one on here just the other day that was seeking a
RoR force of nature - someone who could move mountains, etc.

Who writes this crap?

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Cardeck1
That is hilarious:))How can you take a company like that seriously?

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codecrusade
The worst is ads which say Job requirement for X requires Y or more years of
experience doing X.

I mean WTF!

