We recently posted a job on a major technology employment site.
From that posting we received 64 resumes.
This was a higher than usual response rate considering it was for a short term contract, but at the same time it reflects the current unemployment rate.
When we receive 64 responses for a posting, we typically do not reply to all of them.
We consider the top six or seven resumes and talk to them.
This is usually enough to get the right candidate.
In this busy world we do not have enough time for 64 conversations if we only need to have six.
This posting we decided to do something different.
We attempted to contact every person.
There had been a trend over the last few years we have seen accelerating.
We were out to gather some data.
The trend we have casually noted is that the American IT worker is becoming a scarce resource.
A few years ago, a similar job posting would receive 25 - 30% response from American IT workers.
We define the American IT worker as someone who has the following:
7%, or 3 three people.
This begs the questions or who are the other 61 and where are the other American IT workers? Who are the other 61? While we did not ask where they came from, based on the names, we came up with the following breakout of origin:
21 had not worked here at all.
The most disturbing thing to us was the quantity of people who had no idea their resume had been forwarded to us.
Apparently the trend these days is for an India-based outsourcing firm with a location in the US to sponsor the H-1B visas for their countrymen.
They scour the job listing services and blast the resume out to any post the candidate is remotely qualifies for.
We received 42 such solicitations.
In all 42 cases, the candidate was unqualified, had a resume extremely overstating their experience or a combination of the two.
These were before we had issues with the language barriers.
When 2/3rd of the replies we receive are bad matches because of a system exploiting a market less than 5% are candidates that have a chance of communicating with us to understand our business problem, we have to ask - What has happened to the American IT worker? What has happened to the American IT worker? We know part of the answer is this person has been laid off and had their job outsourced so many times, many have gone on to different industries.
The rest we cannot say.
Our anecdotal evidence only goes so far.
We cannot help but wonder if the unemployment trends are bypassing them at the moment.
Maybe companies have skinned down as far as thy can go and the good ones have jobs and are secure in them.
As a company that hires IT workers, we notice that even in a bad economy, the highly skilled, highly qualified IT worker that can see beyond the bits and bytes has become as scarce as it has ever been.
It is difficult to find that "go-to" person you can rely on not only for technical resources, but as a business source also.
We just hope more executives are seeking them out as well.
From that posting we received 64 resumes.
This was a higher than usual response rate considering it was for a short term contract, but at the same time it reflects the current unemployment rate.
When we receive 64 responses for a posting, we typically do not reply to all of them.
We consider the top six or seven resumes and talk to them.
This is usually enough to get the right candidate.
In this busy world we do not have enough time for 64 conversations if we only need to have six.
This posting we decided to do something different.
We attempted to contact every person.
There had been a trend over the last few years we have seen accelerating.
We were out to gather some data.
The trend we have casually noted is that the American IT worker is becoming a scarce resource.
A few years ago, a similar job posting would receive 25 - 30% response from American IT workers.
We define the American IT worker as someone who has the following:
- Educated in the US
- 5+ years experience working in the US
- Assimilated and familiar with US and local culture, trends and environment
- Has a family, home, children or some other tie to their community that motivates them to stay in their current location
7%, or 3 three people.
This begs the questions or who are the other 61 and where are the other American IT workers? Who are the other 61? While we did not ask where they came from, based on the names, we came up with the following breakout of origin:
- India 44 72%
- Orient 12 20%
- Eastern Europe 3 5%
- Other 2 3%
21 had not worked here at all.
The most disturbing thing to us was the quantity of people who had no idea their resume had been forwarded to us.
Apparently the trend these days is for an India-based outsourcing firm with a location in the US to sponsor the H-1B visas for their countrymen.
They scour the job listing services and blast the resume out to any post the candidate is remotely qualifies for.
We received 42 such solicitations.
In all 42 cases, the candidate was unqualified, had a resume extremely overstating their experience or a combination of the two.
These were before we had issues with the language barriers.
When 2/3rd of the replies we receive are bad matches because of a system exploiting a market less than 5% are candidates that have a chance of communicating with us to understand our business problem, we have to ask - What has happened to the American IT worker? What has happened to the American IT worker? We know part of the answer is this person has been laid off and had their job outsourced so many times, many have gone on to different industries.
The rest we cannot say.
Our anecdotal evidence only goes so far.
We cannot help but wonder if the unemployment trends are bypassing them at the moment.
Maybe companies have skinned down as far as thy can go and the good ones have jobs and are secure in them.
As a company that hires IT workers, we notice that even in a bad economy, the highly skilled, highly qualified IT worker that can see beyond the bits and bytes has become as scarce as it has ever been.
It is difficult to find that "go-to" person you can rely on not only for technical resources, but as a business source also.
We just hope more executives are seeking them out as well.
Source...