Hiring Disparity
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Most everyone in IT is aware of this but I think that few have really sat down to think about it. In normal fields (doctor, lawyer, accountant, receptionist, salesperson, teacher, factory worker, manager, etc.) you have a decent idea about how and where you can work. Hiring practices are relatively uniform. You might not get every job that you want, but you know your chances for that job ahead of time pretty reliably. You know what jobs are long shots, you know what jobs are certainties and you know which ones are grey areas. You know your pay within a few percentages. You really "know" a lot going into a process.
IT is nothing like that. Pay scales can vary by 300% or more from what is expected (that's in both directions.) And a slam dunk hire at Google or Amazon might struggle to get placed at a nobody company with a fraction of those companies' needs. The best person in any part of the field might find themselves unable to even get a phone screening from more than 50% of companies. Hiring is effectively random! There is no means of predicting if you will be granted an interview, let alone made an offer or what you might be offered as compensation.
How is IT hiring so bad that there is zero predictability? More importantly, what can we do to fix it?
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It is amazingly large in IT, especially in the US, I feel. There is no reliable way to get specific work like most fields can do. A resume that is ideal for "Windows Admin" at one shop and gets you hired the same day will often be unable to get you an interview at another shop looking for the same position at a similar pay scale.
Part of the issue is a huge disparity in job titles and expectations. For shop A an admin scripts all day, for shop B they never scripts and they don't even know what PowerShell is. You don't find two pediatricians where one knows medicine and the other doesn't.
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I think one of the biggest issues is the fact that all job titles are just strange and do not mean the same thing company to company.
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@Minion-Queen said:
I think one of the biggest issues is the fact that all job titles are just strange and do not mean the same thing company to company.
Actually few of the titles are strange, but the use of specific titles for general roles causes major issues.
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IT in general doesn't normally fit into nice neat little boxes (my doctors say the same about medicine - Patients don't fit into the EMR boxes there's to much randomness, etc but I digress).
Yeah the title thing is definitely something that has little to no consistency. Additionally that so much of the business pool are stuck in the old school ways of thinking that without a degree you're unemployable. I've heard Scott say that in IT you don't want to work for a company that requires a degree - and I'm not sure I agree with that. The reason they require one might have nothing to do with the IT department, and everything to do with a terrible at their job HR department. Though I suppose blame could be laid upon the top ranking IT personal in the company - they (IT) should be telling HR the requirements, not HR just randomly deciding what the requirements are.
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@scottalanmiller said:
For shop A an admin scripts all day, for shop B they never scripts and they don't even know what PowerShell is. You don't find two pediatricians where one knows medicine and the other doesn't.
Maybe, but adoption of modern technology varies greatly in other professions too. I know management accountants that still completely rely on print-outs of journals and calculators, but other ones who wouldn't dream of doing that any more and spend their days writing SQL queries. The former is a bit like your Windows admin who doesn't use PowerShell.
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I can agree with a lot of what @scottalanmiller is saying. I think the issue really comes down to the lack of consistency in establishing credentials. With doctors, lawyers, and accountants, for example, there are actual requirements. Certain levels of college completed, certain number of years in the field, accreditation such as the BAR exam or the CPA exam, etc. IT doesn't really have that. People may have college degrees, but those are generally not worth much, especially IT ones. A person may have certs, which help some, but the value of certs range all over the map, from practically worthless ones, like the A+, to ones that seem to hold more weight, like a VCP. Also, you could have two people who both have the exact same credentials and while one may be totally worthless but good at passing tests, the other may really know their stuff. I think the poor hiring process is due to the lack of consistent standards, and that is not an easy problem to define a solution for.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
@scottalanmiller said:
For shop A an admin scripts all day, for shop B they never scripts and they don't even know what PowerShell is. You don't find two pediatricians where one knows medicine and the other doesn't.
Maybe, but adoption of modern technology varies greatly in other professions too. I know management accountants that still completely rely on print-outs of journals and calculators, but other ones who wouldn't dream of doing that any more and spend their days writing SQL queries. The former is a bit like your Windows admin who doesn't use PowerShell.
Only sort of. In one case, it is a way of doing their job. In the other, it is the job itself. Not entirely, but partially. As a management accountant, a working SQL script isn't their ultimate deliverable. But for a Windows Admin, it often is.
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@Dashrender said:
I've heard Scott say that in IT you don't want to work for a company that requires a degree - and I'm not sure I agree with that. The reason they require one might have nothing to do with the IT department, and everything to do with a terrible at their job HR department. Though I suppose blame could be laid upon the top ranking IT personal in the company - they (IT) should be telling HR the requirements, not HR just randomly deciding what the requirements are.
At the end of the day, the company management and culture must answer for their decisions. HR speaks for management. HR is not the final decision maker. If HR requires a degree and cares more about that than hiring the best people for the company, then the CEO is allowing that to be the culture of the company - that politics and paper mean more than doing a good job.
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Additionally on the small business side, IT jobs are often significantly under paid for the work (in my opinion). An IT person is not the same as a receptionist - yet many small businesses think of IT workers as commodity employees and treat them as such, yet they wonder why they have issues.
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@Dashrender said:
Additionally on the small business side, IT jobs are often significantly under paid for the work (in my opinion). An IT person is not the same as a receptionist - yet many small businesses think of IT workers as commodity employees and treat them as such, yet they wonder why they have issues.
Yeah, either in terms of not keeping good employees, or getting stuck with bad employees.
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@Dashrender said:
Additionally on the small business side, IT jobs are often significantly under paid for the work (in my opinion). An IT person is not the same as a receptionist - yet many small businesses think of IT workers as commodity employees and treat them as such, yet they wonder why they have issues.
Part of the problem is IT people willing to work for those wages.
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When you're out of a job, it doesn't seem like you have much choice.
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@Dashrender said:
When you're out of a job, it doesn't seem like you have much choice.
But other fields do not have this problem. Something makes IT pros willing to work at a fraction the rate of other fields and experience. Being out of a job cannot be the primary factor as few fields are so short of staff as IT.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
When you're out of a job, it doesn't seem like you have much choice.
But other fields do not have this problem. Something makes IT pros willing to work at a fraction the rate of other fields and experience. Being out of a job cannot be the primary factor as few fields are so short of staff as IT.
Yes but not everyone is in a position to move to a different region. Some areas have very few jobs period.
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@thanksaj said:
Yes but not everyone is in a position to move to a different region. Some areas have very few jobs period.
Then they need to accept low pay or choose a different career field as IT is one that demands mobility outside of very large metro areas. The decision to enter IT as a field is not one that people are forced into. Moving between companies and ergo between locations is built into the system due to the massive technical ladder involved in advancing an IT career.
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That does undermine the field, though, forcing non-mobile people willing to work for a fraction of the otherwise going rate because employers see their technical staff as captives and have no incentive to pay them more.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@thanksaj said:
Yes but not everyone is in a position to move to a different region. Some areas have very few jobs period.
Then they need to accept low pay or choose a different career field as IT is one that demands mobility outside of very large metro areas. The decision to enter IT as a field is not one that people are forced into. Moving between companies and ergo between locations is built into the system due to the massive technical ladder involved in advancing an IT career.
It's not always that simple. I've known plenty of people who were willing and ready to move to another area for a better job, but because they were caring for an older parent or some other uncontrollable circumstance, they were stuck in one area. It's not as black and white as you want to make it.
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Captives?
I'm really struggling to see what is so special about the IT industry compared with other careers.
