Hiring standards are dropping

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lsaway

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I know it is getting hard to find good employees, but I have never seen such low standards. I read a (non-aviation) employment ad this morning. The only thing it listed as required skills was "must have the ability to work Saturdays".
 
With the nationwide, industrywide, employment shortage, just showing up the first day is a high criteria.

Since COVID, the employer/employee dynamic has changed a lot. I have seen it even with my crew. Before, guys would chomp at the bit for OT, even arguing over who got more. OT is part of the job when dealing with winter snow storms. Today no one wants to work one minute outside of their normal hours, even with significant pay increases.

Our previous open positions would usually result in 50-100 applicants, the last one was 12. Fortunately there was one diamond among them.
 
MacFlier said:
I see the opposite, at least in IT. You have to be a god in all areas/services for all cloud providers and have 20 years of experience doing so... Sometimes I LOL when reading these ads
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So no more recruiters hitting the college campuses like they used to do?
 
midwestpa24 said:
With the nationwide, industrywide, employment shortage, just showing up the first day is a high criteria.

Since COVID, the employer/employee dynamic has changed a lot. I have seen it even with my crew. Before, guys would chomp at the bit for OT, even arguing over who got more. OT is part of the job when dealing with winter snow storms. Today no one wants to work one minute outside of their normal hours, even with significant pay increases.

Our previous open positions would usually result in 50-100 applicants, the last one was 12. Fortunately there was one diamond among them.
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Have you had any of the youtube applicants? People around here are tired of interviewing people that say they have experience. When asked about their experience, they say they watched how to do it on youtube.
 
We have two camps in O&G manufacturing: Those employees who love OT and want as much as they can get, and those who don't want to work any OT at all. Many of the employees will work OT, but not if it's "mandatory". We also have a difficult time finding quality candidates (we're talking CNC machine operators, heat presses, light assembly laborers) when they no-show after being offered a job, or quit within 2 weeks after they get the first paycheck. Doesn't matter how much we increase the wage rate, or offer sign-on bonuses. Most of the time we just can't get people to show up, or even have reliable transportation to get themselves to work each day. Hard to lower the bar any further than we have it for some positions, as it's pretty much "don't do drugs and have a pulse".
 
lsaway said:
The only thing it listed as required skills was "must have the ability to work Saturdays".
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That could be taken as "must be available on Saturdays", or "must have the ability to work Saturdays after whatever you did on Friday night."
 
midwestpa24 said:
With the nationwide, industrywide, employment shortage, just showing up the first day is a high criteria.

Since COVID, the employer/employee dynamic has changed a lot. I have seen it even with my crew. Before, guys would chomp at the bit for OT, even arguing over who got more. OT is part of the job when dealing with winter snow storms. Today no one wants to work one minute outside of their normal hours, even with significant pay increases.

Our previous open positions would usually result in 50-100 applicants, the last one was 12. Fortunately there was one diamond among them.
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I have to admit I don’t understand that overtime issue. Everything I read or listen to says that the average American is in debt up to their eyeballs. Food cost have gone outta sight. Everything is more expensive. HAs everybody suddenly become fiscally more responsible? I have never taken overtime because I live within my means but I know where I work there are several people that would be in a world of hurt if they canceled overtime.
 
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My sister just got a CV from a college junior for an intern program she runs at the same college.

It was based on the MS Word Template

Every item from that template generally remained, so the CV was like this:

Firstname
212-555-1212
you@email.com

...the person changed the first name to be their own -- no surname, but left the default entries above for email and phone. My sister can literally NOT contact this goon back. It continued as:

Company
City
<an actual run-on description of some tasks>

leaving "Company" and "City" as the descriptors. This person had 3 "Company"s that she worked at.

A rambling custom footnote was included describing how she, if I interpreted it correctly, worked at some sort of seminary camp?

I had never seen anything like it before. Amazing. This is a 40k/yr school. I do not think this person got their buck twenty worth. And if we subsidized that tuition, then we the people got scammed hard to educate this cro-magnon.
 
schmookeeg said:
My sister just got a CV from a college junior for an intern program she runs at the same college.

It was based on the MS Word Template

Every item from that template generally remained, so the CV was like this:

Firstname
212-555-1212
you@email.com

...the person changed the first name to be their own -- no surname, but left the default entries above for email and phone. My sister can literally NOT contact this goon back. It continued as:

Company
City
<an actual run-on description of some tasks>

leaving "Company" and "City" as the descriptors. This person had 3 "Company"s that she worked at.

A rambling custom footnote was included describing how she, if I interpreted it correctly, worked at some sort of seminary camp?

I had never seen anything like it before. Amazing. This is a 40k/yr school. I do not think this person got their buck twenty worth. And if we subsidized that tuition, then we the people got scammed hard to educate this cro-magnon.
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Must’ve been someone on a football scholarship.....
 
Morgan3820 said:
I have to admit I don’t understand that overtime issue. Everything I read or listen to says that the average American is in debt up to their eyeballs. Food cost have gone outta sight. Everything is more expensive. HAs everybody suddenly become fiscally more responsible? I have never taken overtime because I live within my means but I know where I work there are several people that would be in a world of hurt if they canceled overtime.
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I think it is a symptom of the bigger problem, the lack of employees. Everything says people are moving jobs more than ever, yet I don't see many applicants and every business in town has help wanted signs and a lot have limited hours due to staffing shortages. Without getting political and getting this thread locked, did COVID remove that much of the population? The stats I see say overall death rates in the US didn't vary much due to COVID, it just shifted among categories. Where did these people go? Are they not working?

I see a lot of social media and Tiktok telling people only do the bare minimum, quiet quit, don't go above and beyond, employers are the enemy, etc. Is it a societal change driving people out of the workforce?
 
schmookeeg said:
My sister just got a CV from a college junior for an intern program she runs at the same college.

It was based on the MS Word Template

Every item from that template generally remained, so the CV was like this:

Firstname
212-555-1212
you@email.com

...the person changed the first name to be their own -- no surname, but left the default entries above for email and phone. My sister can literally NOT contact this goon back. It continued as:

Company
City
<an actual run-on description of some tasks>

leaving "Company" and "City" as the descriptors. This person had 3 "Company"s that she worked at.

A rambling custom footnote was included describing how she, if I interpreted it correctly, worked at some sort of seminary camp?

I had never seen anything like it before. Amazing. This is a 40k/yr school. I do not think this person got their buck twenty worth. And if we subsidized that tuition, then we the people got scammed hard to educate this cro-magnon.
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My wife recently sent me a resume a friend of her's sent, looking for my wife's recommendation to an employer. This is a person with at least some college education, and working in a professional office environment. It was a simple, unformatted, Word document (could have been done in Notepad), with name, contact information, and the name of her current employer. That was her resume. My wife was looking for advice on what to tell her friend without being mean.

Is it the education system? I had to learn resumes in high school, and went through several classes that dealt with it in college, including one taught by a former Fortune 100 recruiter. If you so much as missed a single space or punctuation you failed.
 
midwestpa24 said:
My wife recently sent me a resume a friend of her's sent, looking for my wife's recommendation to an employer. This is a person with at least some college education, and working in a professional office environment. It was a simple, unformatted, Word document (could have been done in Notepad), with name, contact information, and the name of her current employer. That was her resume. My wife was looking for advice on what to tell her friend without being mean.
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Can she work Saturdays?
 
There are TWO leisure classes in this country: one at the top; and one at the bottom. Employers have to compete with the position of "working for the government".

A 2013 Cato Institute study, for example, found that an unemployed single mother with two children who participated in seven common welfare pro-grams—Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF); food stamps (SNAP); Medicaid; housing assistance; Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC); energy assistance (LIHEAP); and free commodities—could take home an income higher than what she would have earned from a minimum‐wage job in 35 states, even after accounting for the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and Child Tax Credit (CTC), for which she would have been eligible, if employed. In fact, in Connecticut, Hawaii, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington, DC, welfare paid more than a $20 per hour job ($25.44 in 2022 dollars), and in five additional states it paid more than a $15 per hour job ($19.08 in 2022 dollars) job.4 As a result, someone who left welfare for work could have found themselves worse off financially.
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(Linky)
schmookeeg said:
My sister just got a CV from a college junior for an intern program she runs at the same college.

It was based on the MS Word Template. . .
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Some people still need to be able to claim they were seeking employment.
 
DJTorrente said:
There are TWO leisure classes in this country: one at the top; and one at the bottom. Employers have to compete with the position of "working for the government".


(Linky)

Some people still need to be able to claim they were seeking employment.
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I'm really trying to toe the line of the POA rules and not get this thread locked.

I know people first hand in this boat. They self sabotage their own success in order to not "lose" the benefits they are on. They only seek part-time low skill work despite being much more capable. They quit a job after getting a raise because their income would be too high. They avoid marriage or other living situations to disguise their actual household income.

I understand everyone needs a helping hand sometimes. You can end up in a situation not of your own making and need a boost. I'm not heartless. But when you sabotage your own future and potential for fear of losing benefits, that is just sad and unsustainable.
 
midwestpa24 said:
I'm really trying to toe the line of the POA rules and not get this thread locked.

I know people first hand in this boat. They self sabotage their own success in order to not "lose" the benefits they are on. They only seek part-time low skill work despite being much more capable. They quit a job after getting a raise because their income would be too high. They avoid marriage or other living situations to disguise their actual household income.

I understand everyone needs a helping hand sometimes. You can end up in a situation not of your own making and need a boost. I'm not heartless. But when you sabotage your own future and potential for fear of losing benefits, that is just sad and unsustainable.
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I’ve known people receiving all these types of aid who also worked their tails off. For cash. Strictly off the record.

I don’t know the right answer, but what we have now is not working.
 
In my world something has changed.
I don't think I've ever spent more than about 6 weeks looking for a job before.
My current job was offered to me 15 minutes after I submitted my resume on CareerBuilder and I've been there for 6 years.

My company has been slowly circling the drain for a while now. I have been looking for a job for almost a year now and I've gotten zero responses.

Not sure exactly what has changed in IT but I'm no longer a valuable resource I suppose.
 
SoonerAviator said:
We have two camps in O&G manufacturing: Those employees who love OT and want as much as they can get, and those who don't want to work any OT at all. Many of the employees will work OT, but not if it's "mandatory". We also have a difficult time finding quality candidates (we're talking CNC machine operators, heat presses, light assembly laborers) when they no-show after being offered a job, or quit within 2 weeks after they get the first paycheck. Doesn't matter how much we increase the wage rate, or offer sign-on bonuses. Most of the time we just can't get people to show up, or even have reliable transportation to get themselves to work each day. Hard to lower the bar any further than we have it for some positions, as it's pretty much "don't do drugs and have a pulse".
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OT is one of those things... Make it mandatory, and the wailing and gnashing of teeth is unbelievable. Take it away and your taking food off of their table...

I didn't save it but ran across a study of what people hated about their jobs. The top two?

1. Nothing ever changes around here....
2. Everything is always changing around here...

Seems to be real life.

marc
 
Part of it is employment is so low and mid tier and higher jobs are available. Also people leaving the laborforce due to going single income households seems to be a thing at least amongst my friend group.

Why work at retail/fast food when theres a lot more options available even for low skill sectors. Also I think people learned if you want to progress your career or salary/benefits you have to job hop. My decade of corporate servitude doing good work netted me annual 2 percent raises and more workload. I've subsequently worked 8 jobs in 7 years and each ones been a jump in pay/benefits and worklife balance.
 
SoonerAviator said:
We have two camps in O&G manufacturing: Those employees who love OT and want as much as they can get, and those who don't want to work any OT at all. Many of the employees will work OT, but not if it's "mandatory". We also have a difficult time finding quality candidates (we're talking CNC machine operators, heat presses, light assembly laborers) when they no-show after being offered a job, or quit within 2 weeks after they get the first paycheck. Doesn't matter how much we increase the wage rate, or offer sign-on bonuses. Most of the time we just can't get people to show up, or even have reliable transportation to get themselves to work each day. Hard to lower the bar any further than we have it for some positions, as it's pretty much "don't do drugs and have a pulse".
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A few years ago (pre-COVID), I was going to have to convince my team to work 'overtime' for a couple of months to get some projects out of a dumpster fire situation (not our causing - we were the cleanup crew). They do software work on salary, so not exactly 'punch in and out daily' kind of thing, but still a fairly consistent work schedule. We put together a pseudo OT pay schedule for these salaried folks to 'ease the burden' of working overtime for a stretch. I have a spread of age groups on my team - from nearing retirement to 4-5 years out of college. I called each one of them to get a feel for how this would go over. The 'older' members of my team (40+ y/o) all said "Oh.. Well.. That's nice that you'll pay something for it. I just figured it was part of the job." while the younger members of the team (25-32ish y/o) all said "It's not worth it to me to spend time away from my friends and family to work extra." I wanted to say "What family!? You live alone with your cat!" but obviously I didn't. At the same time, I have people on my team chirping about promotions and getting more responsibility and getting put into leadership roles. I dunno what the future of this workforce looks like, but it's definitely going to be 'different'.
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
In my world something has changed.
I don't think I've ever spent more than about 6 weeks looking for a job before.
My current job was offered to me 15 minutes after I submitted my resume on CareerBuilder and I've been there for 6 years.

My company has been slowly circling the drain for a while now. I have been looking for a job for almost a year now and I've gotten zero responses.

Not sure exactly what has changed in IT but I'm no longer a valuable resource I suppose.
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You should start a YouTube channel. I hear that's where the big money is these days.
 
CJones said:
You should start a YouTube channel. I hear that's where the big money is these days.
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That is what I see a fair amount of young people aspiring to be, a social media "influencer". They see $$$ by making Youtube, Tiktok, or that "other site" and think they will make millions doing nothing.
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
In my world something has changed.
I don't think I've ever spent more than about 6 weeks looking for a job before.
My current job was offered to me 15 minutes after I submitted my resume on CareerBuilder and I've been there for 6 years.

My company has been slowly circling the drain for a while now. I have been looking for a job for almost a year now and I've gotten zero responses.

Not sure exactly what has changed in IT but I'm no longer a valuable resource I suppose.
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It seems if you're not an InfoSec specialist or a full stack cloud developer, nobody wants to talk to you.
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
Not sure exactly what has changed in IT but I'm no longer a valuable resource I suppose.
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Meanwhile, we can't get qualified resumes.

Something is broken. I've heard my side and your side of the equation so many times.

I was talking about this for a couple positions we have open right now for programmers without a ton of experience. It used to be that Indian people would come to the US with a bachelors or masters from a school in India and add-on a masters or phd from a US school to add credibility beyond "some school in India that may well be just fine, but even in best case, the hiring manager has never heard of". Now, we're getting 10-20 of basically the same resume (including same template) from people that seem to be getting hired by a contract programming firms and do a handful of short term projects, then looking for their first "real" job in the states. It's been interesting to see how things changed from that standpoint.

I had a position open last winter that was much more senior and the variety of applicants was stunning. It was for team lead role with real deliverables also mixed in. Got everyone from people just graduating with a BS to people with decades of experience, but not related to what we do.

CJones said:
while the younger members of the team (25-32ish y/o) all said "It's not worth it to me to spend time away from my friends and family to work extra." I wanted to say "What family!? You live alone with your cat!" but obviously I didn't.
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Good. :)

Family means different things to different people. :) Could mean their SO. Could mean their parents. Could mean their sibs. I do have kids, but the other definitions of the word "family" absolutely also impact how much and where I work.
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
In my world something has changed.
I don't think I've ever spent more than about 6 weeks looking for a job before.
My current job was offered to me 15 minutes after I submitted my resume on CareerBuilder and I've been there for 6 years.

My company has been slowly circling the drain for a while now. I have been looking for a job for almost a year now and I've gotten zero responses.

Not sure exactly what has changed in IT but I'm no longer a valuable resource I suppose.
Click to expand...

Ageism possibly? I get substantially more responses to my "last 8 years of activity" CV than I do my "last 25 years of activity" one. Like, not even close -- and my 25yr version is no more than a sentence or two about the earlier work. It's the same CV with a third page.

I'm somewhat surprised to be tech viable at all in my 40s.
 
falconkidding said:
Part of it is employment is so low and mid tier and higher jobs are available. Also people leaving the laborforce due to going single income households seems to be a thing at least amongst my friend group.

Why work at retail/fast food when theres a lot more options available even for low skill sectors. Also I think people learned if you want to progress your career or salary/benefits you have to job hop. My decade of corporate servitude doing good work netted me annual 2 percent raises and more workload. I've subsequently worked 8 jobs in 7 years and each ones been a jump in pay/benefits and worklife balance.
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I job hopped thru 30 years of engineering in building design. Jumped every 3 to 5 years with a large boost in pay and benefits each time. What I didn't appreciate at the time was the huge benefits of all the combined knowledge and skills this provided. I leap- frogged my way to the top, passing many more educated engineers with much more experience in years than I had.

At least in my field, staying with one company for an extended period of time got you absolutely nowhere. And no company ever seemed to care that I switched jobs so often. I think they understood the benefits of learning at the different companies.
 
Working full time puts you into a rat race, you don’t have good medical coverage and your paychecks are deducted for mediocre coverage. You barely have any time off, and limited sick leave. You’re sitting in traffic or commuting daily, which is no fun, going to an office to play office politics, in most jobs you get disrespected and usually you don’t have any self fulfillment in what you do. On top of that, you likely don’t have any retirement. Even federal government jobs have reduced retirement benefits to 1% per year of service from 2%. 30% of your salary doesn’t go a long way for working 30 years, deduct medical insurance and taxes from this payment too.

People work because they have to, or to get funds to pay for what they are really interested in. Then people accept to have less and more time to do things that are important to them, hobbies, spending time with families, etc.

With Covid, getting that unemployment check for so long, getting free medical benefits that covers everything with no deductible, among the other free benefits (utilities, food, property taxes), why would you want to lose that to go back to work?

And no, I wouldn’t want to work on Saturday. I wouldn’t mind going to the office 1-2 days a week and doing 1 day at home, with unlimited PTO and sick leave. Other than that, no thank you, I’ll stay at home.
 
Who raised this generation? We did. Sure, a few of us can say “I didn’t raise mine that way”, but we can’t ALL say that.

I can’t remember anyone in the generation before me try to retire early (that was for entrepreneurs who actually just kept working anyway, and for trust fund babies). My generation is a lot about retirement and spending more time with family. That rubs off on the kids.

I’m guilty of raising this generation softer. It’s my fault. It’s some of yours too if you’ll admit it. “Purpose of life” and existentialism - that’s what happens when you’re not starving and have it all.
 
midwestpa24 said:
… Without getting political and getting this thread locked, did COVID remove that much of the population?
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No, but the labor participation rate (people employed at least part time or looking to be employed) did drop significantly enough to have shrunk the labor pool. We’re still about 0.5% below the Dec 2019 rate and have dropped by 5% since the peak around 2001 or so.

In real numbers that’s about 850,000 more folks in 2023 that not only did not have a job, but also did not want a job than in Dec of 2019.
 
DaleB said:
It seems if you're not an InfoSec specialist or a full stack cloud developer, nobody wants to talk to you.
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We have embedded dev positions open right now, along with electrical and mechanical engineering.
 
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