Personnel Hunger Myth or Basic Rules for Job Creation
Quite often, employers can hear about the phenomenon of “personnel shortage”. I believe that this is a myth, in the real world there is no personnel shortage. Instead, there are two real problems. Objective - the ratio between the number of vacancies and the number of candidates in the labor market. And subjective - the inability of a particular employer to find, attract and hire employees. The results of the selection of candidates can be improved if one learns how to create vacancies taking into account the rules for preparing selling texts. I wrote about the basic rules in the second part of this article.
The article contains my judgments. Evidence I do not cite. Furious comments are welcome.
My name is Igor Sheludko.
I have been an entrepreneur in software development and sales since 2000. I have a higher technical education. I began my career as a programmer, and also led small teams. About a year and a half ago, I started commercial recruiting of IT specialists - that is, not only for myself and my projects, but in favor of outside companies.
For 2018, I “closed” 17 fairly difficult vacancies for 10 employers. There were many such companies that I refused in their services for various reasons. Some of these reasons I reveal in this article.
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Usually, this refers to the difficulties of hiring specialists of the necessary qualifications on terms that are convenient for the employer. The statement “it’s not possible to hire the right people at the right conditions for the employer” contains several variables that can vary widely.
“I can't hire one” does not necessarily mean that there are no specialists on the market. Maybe there are really no specialists, and maybe the employer does not know how to find and attract them.
“Necessary specialists” - and which specialists are really needed? Do HR employers understand production needs correctly? Do production workers correctly understand their needs and do they take into account labor market opportunities?
“On conditions suitable for the employer” - what are these conditions? How do they compare with the labor market? How do these conditions relate to the wishes of the "right people"?
When they talk about the usual hunger, when people have nothing to eat, then we can see a lot of people who died of starvation. In the case of personnel hunger, we do not see a heap of corpses of enterprises. Employers adapt and get out if there is a real threat of death. That is, according to observations from the personnel shortage, this is not hunger at all, but a “slightly limited diet.” If the manager starts talking about “personnel hunger”, then the owner should urgently intervene and pay attention to what is happening in the enterprise. Most likely there everything is bad with management, and maybe even steal.
This could be the end of it, but I want to discuss two real-life problems with personnel. The objective problem is the ratio between the number of vacancies and the number of candidates on the labor market. And the subjective problem is the inability of a particular employer to find, attract and hire employees. Now more about these issues.
In general, in Russia now there is no acute problem with the availability of job offers. On average in the country we have a small unemployment. There are very unpleasant difficulties with a significant difference in wages in the capitals and regions. For most specialties in the regions, they pay frankly little, the population lives on the verge of poverty. The wage level barely covers the cost of living. For most specialties, there are fewer vacancies than candidates, and employers have someone to choose from. That is, there is no personnel shortage at all; rather, there is a probability of a traditional famine.
There are cities and regions where production is closed and clusters of qualified personnel are formed, while in the neighboring regions one can observe a shortage of such personnel. The answer to this challenge is usually the migration of the population. However, Russians are not yet accustomed to migrate for work and career, they often prefer to live in poverty, interrupting casual earnings, citing the concern for families (everything is familiar here and there, and there is uncertainty). To me personally, this motivation is incomprehensible - it is unlikely that life in poverty symbolizes concern for the family.
Employers as a whole are not yet ready to support migration either. You can meet employees relocation support programs with a rare employer. That is, instead of looking for cadres in other regions, creating attractive conditions and supporting migration, employers are more often inclined to scream about personnel shortages.
Sometimes, speaking of personnel shortages, employers recognize that there is no shortage of personnel, but “the qualifications of personnel are insufficient.” I believe that this is slyness, since other employers (those who do not whine) simply train employees, raising their qualifications. Thus, a complaint of “insufficient qualifications” is only a manifestation of the desire to save on training or relocation.
In the field of IT, the situation is now generally better than in other areas. For some specialties from the IT field, there is such a high demand for personnel that IT salaries in many regions are several times higher than the average salary. In Moscow and St. Petersburg, the average salary in IT is also higher than the average for the region, but not by times.
At the level of the problems of ordinary HR, the situation looks like this - there are simply no necessary people on the market or they want a significantly higher salary. This applies mainly to programmers and DevOps. For project managers, analysts, designers, testers and layout designers, in general, parity - you can find a sane specialist fairly quickly. Of course, not as easy as a seller in a supermarket, but noticeably simpler than a front-end developer.
In this situation, some employers whine (this is their choice), while others restructure work processes. A typical solution is the introduction of training and advanced training, internships, the structuring of tasks so that more work can be shifted to less qualified personnel. Also a good solution is to introduce the practice of remote work. A remote employee is cheaper. And the matter is not only in a smaller wage, but also in savings on renting an office, equipping a workplace. The introduction of the "remote" of course carries risks, but also carries significant benefits in the long term. And immediately expanding the geography of search employees.
Thus, in IT there is no significant problem of lack of personnel, there is a lack of readiness of management to restructure work processes.
When I receive a request for the selection of a specialist, I first of all try to find out the real reasons why an employer is unable to solve the problem of selection by himself. If there is no HR in the company, and the head of the team, project, division or even company is involved in the selection, then for me it is an ideal client and such an application can be taken to work. This does not mean that there will be no problems, as managers often suffer from a lack of connection with the real world and the labor market.
A full-time recruiter or HR is usually a redundant link that distorts information. If HR is responsible for the selection, then I go further in my research into the causes. You need to understand the attitude of HR - whether it will interfere with my work or help.
Approximately half of the requests to recruiters or recruitment agencies come from employers who have everything they need to find the employees they need. They have employees who have enough time to search and hire. They have money to pay for job postings and to purchase access to the resume databases. They are even ready to offer candidates quite market conditions. However, their selection attempts failed. I think the most likely explanation for this situation is that the employers themselves do not know how to find and attract the employees they need. This does not always mean that they do not know how to find and hire at all. Usually, problems arise only with certain positions for which there is not a large flow of people willing to work in this company. Where there is a queue of candidates - the employer copes himself, and where there are few candidates - he does not cope. A typical explanation of this situation on the part of the employer is “we are very busy and we have no time to look for ourselves” or “in open sources there are no more worthy candidates”. Very often, these excuses are not true.
So, the situation - the employer has HR and resources for searching and hiring employees, but the task is not solved on its own. Need third-party help, you need to pull the candidates out of the dark corners in which they hide from the employer.
I highlight 3 real reasons for this situation:
The first, with the second, is fixable. For this, I will further give my recommendations, with the help of which one can improve the selection efficiency. Usually, if HR is adequate, then he does not object to the direct interaction of the recruiter and the author of the request for recruitment. “Good” HR just gives way, moves to the side and everything works out for us. The company finds the right person, HR removes the problem, the recruiter earns his fee. Everyone is happy.
If there is no motivation to make efforts to select specialists, then even a recruitment agency (KA) will not be able to help. QA recruiters will find good candidates for such an employer, but in the absence of motivation, the employer of these candidates is likely to miss. In my practice, such cases have been repeatedly. Typical reasons: HR and managers forget about the interviews, do not give feedback on the agreed dates, think whether to make offers for a long time (weeks), want to see at least 20 candidates before choosing and many more reasons. Really interesting candidates manage to accept offers from other employers. This is a dead end, so if I diagnose a lack of motivation among representatives of the employer, then I simply do not work with such clients.
The reluctance to accept market conditions and adapt their offer to the situation is diagnosed quite easily and quickly. I also do not work with such employers, as the problem lies in working conditions that are inadequate to the labor market. Candidates can be found, but it is really long and difficult. The second problem - candidates often run away from such employers during the warranty period and have to look for a replacement for them at no additional charge. It turns out double work. Therefore, it is better to immediately give up.
Now we come to the problem of forming vacancies, which is quite possible to solve, both by the recruiter and by the employer independently.
First you need to recognize that hiring is an act of sale. Moreover, the employer should try to sell the candidate the opportunity to work for him. Often it is difficult for employers to accept this idea. They like the idea that a candidate should sell his professional services more than hell, and employers, as picky buyers, are eyeing, thinking, choosing. Very often the market is really oriented in this way - there are more candidates than good vacancies. But for highly sought-after and highly qualified specialists (for example, programmers), everything is completely the opposite. Those employers who accept the idea of selling their vacancies to candidates are more successful in hiring highly qualified specialists. The texts of vacancies and messages that you send to candidates should be written according to the rules of the formation of selling texts, then they reach the goal to a much greater extent.
What makes a good selling text in the sea of information that falls on people in our time? In the first place - focus on the interests of the reader. The text should immediately answer the question - why should I (the reader) waste time reading this text? And then the vacancy should answer the question - why should I work in this company? There are other mandatory questions for which the candidate wants a simple and clear answer. What do I have to do? How do I realize my potential at this job? Where can I grow and how can an employer help me with this? What payment for my work will I receive? What social guarantees will the employer give me? How are the work processes organized, what will I be responsible for and to whom? What kind of people will surround me? And so on.
In the ranking of the most annoying shortcomings of vacancies, small information content leads. Candidates are sure to want to see your range of remuneration, a description of job responsibilities, working conditions and information about the equipment of the workplace.
In the second place in the ranking of annoying factors - the narcissism of companies. Most candidates are not at all interested to read about the understanding of the prestige and position of the company in the market in the first paragraphs of the vacancy. The company name, field of activity and links to the site are enough. If your vacancy is interested, the candidate reads about you. And not only the good, but the negativity as well. It is necessary not only to drag the “selling” content from the promotional materials for the company's clients, but to recreate the materials using similar methods, but with the aim of selling not the company's products, but the opportunity to work in the company.
The next important idea that not everyone understands - you need to have the texts of vacancies, letters and proposals, decorated in several formats. Each channel of information delivery implies its own format. Very often, vacancies meet rejection and rejection due to incompatibility of the text format with the format of the channel. Your message will not be read, but instead it will be ignored or sent to the basket only because of a format mismatch. If you stupidly take a job description from the site and throw it in a personal message in the VC, then it is very likely to run into a complaint and a ban. As in the case of other advertising messages, it makes sense to test job texts (by collecting and analyzing metrics) and to refine.
There is another funny misconception that reduces the chances of finding an employee, even with the best offer. Some employers believe that if they need a good knowledge of a foreign language, then the vacancy should be written in that language. Type "our candidate will read and understand." If you do not understand - it means not ours. And then they complain that there are no responses. The solution to the problem is very simple - write vacancies in the native language of your potential candidate. And even better - write in the main language of the country of placement of the vacancy. Your candidate will understand your text, but for the beginning he should notice it, and for this, the text should catch his eye. Search tools are usually language dependent. If the candidate’s resume is in Russian and the job is in English, then the automatic assistant will most likely not drive you away. When searching manually, similar incidents can also occur. Many people, even good speakers of foreign languages, are less able to perceive appeals in a foreign language when they are in a state of relaxation. My opinion is that it is better to check the knowledge of a foreign language with a candidate in some other and more traditional way, after he has responded to a vacancy.
Thanks for attention! I wish everyone not to starve and find what they want!
The article contains my judgments. Evidence I do not cite. Furious comments are welcome.
About myself
My name is Igor Sheludko.
I have been an entrepreneur in software development and sales since 2000. I have a higher technical education. I began my career as a programmer, and also led small teams. About a year and a half ago, I started commercial recruiting of IT specialists - that is, not only for myself and my projects, but in favor of outside companies.
For 2018, I “closed” 17 fairly difficult vacancies for 10 employers. There were many such companies that I refused in their services for various reasons. Some of these reasons I reveal in this article.
')
Why is “personnel shortage” a mythical phenomenon?
Usually, this refers to the difficulties of hiring specialists of the necessary qualifications on terms that are convenient for the employer. The statement “it’s not possible to hire the right people at the right conditions for the employer” contains several variables that can vary widely.
“I can't hire one” does not necessarily mean that there are no specialists on the market. Maybe there are really no specialists, and maybe the employer does not know how to find and attract them.
“Necessary specialists” - and which specialists are really needed? Do HR employers understand production needs correctly? Do production workers correctly understand their needs and do they take into account labor market opportunities?
“On conditions suitable for the employer” - what are these conditions? How do they compare with the labor market? How do these conditions relate to the wishes of the "right people"?
When they talk about the usual hunger, when people have nothing to eat, then we can see a lot of people who died of starvation. In the case of personnel hunger, we do not see a heap of corpses of enterprises. Employers adapt and get out if there is a real threat of death. That is, according to observations from the personnel shortage, this is not hunger at all, but a “slightly limited diet.” If the manager starts talking about “personnel hunger”, then the owner should urgently intervene and pay attention to what is happening in the enterprise. Most likely there everything is bad with management, and maybe even steal.
This could be the end of it, but I want to discuss two real-life problems with personnel. The objective problem is the ratio between the number of vacancies and the number of candidates on the labor market. And the subjective problem is the inability of a particular employer to find, attract and hire employees. Now more about these issues.
Labor market - the number of vacancies and candidates
In general, in Russia now there is no acute problem with the availability of job offers. On average in the country we have a small unemployment. There are very unpleasant difficulties with a significant difference in wages in the capitals and regions. For most specialties in the regions, they pay frankly little, the population lives on the verge of poverty. The wage level barely covers the cost of living. For most specialties, there are fewer vacancies than candidates, and employers have someone to choose from. That is, there is no personnel shortage at all; rather, there is a probability of a traditional famine.
There are cities and regions where production is closed and clusters of qualified personnel are formed, while in the neighboring regions one can observe a shortage of such personnel. The answer to this challenge is usually the migration of the population. However, Russians are not yet accustomed to migrate for work and career, they often prefer to live in poverty, interrupting casual earnings, citing the concern for families (everything is familiar here and there, and there is uncertainty). To me personally, this motivation is incomprehensible - it is unlikely that life in poverty symbolizes concern for the family.
Employers as a whole are not yet ready to support migration either. You can meet employees relocation support programs with a rare employer. That is, instead of looking for cadres in other regions, creating attractive conditions and supporting migration, employers are more often inclined to scream about personnel shortages.
Sometimes, speaking of personnel shortages, employers recognize that there is no shortage of personnel, but “the qualifications of personnel are insufficient.” I believe that this is slyness, since other employers (those who do not whine) simply train employees, raising their qualifications. Thus, a complaint of “insufficient qualifications” is only a manifestation of the desire to save on training or relocation.
In the field of IT, the situation is now generally better than in other areas. For some specialties from the IT field, there is such a high demand for personnel that IT salaries in many regions are several times higher than the average salary. In Moscow and St. Petersburg, the average salary in IT is also higher than the average for the region, but not by times.
At the level of the problems of ordinary HR, the situation looks like this - there are simply no necessary people on the market or they want a significantly higher salary. This applies mainly to programmers and DevOps. For project managers, analysts, designers, testers and layout designers, in general, parity - you can find a sane specialist fairly quickly. Of course, not as easy as a seller in a supermarket, but noticeably simpler than a front-end developer.
In this situation, some employers whine (this is their choice), while others restructure work processes. A typical solution is the introduction of training and advanced training, internships, the structuring of tasks so that more work can be shifted to less qualified personnel. Also a good solution is to introduce the practice of remote work. A remote employee is cheaper. And the matter is not only in a smaller wage, but also in savings on renting an office, equipping a workplace. The introduction of the "remote" of course carries risks, but also carries significant benefits in the long term. And immediately expanding the geography of search employees.
Thus, in IT there is no significant problem of lack of personnel, there is a lack of readiness of management to restructure work processes.
Inability of employers to find, attract and hire employees
When I receive a request for the selection of a specialist, I first of all try to find out the real reasons why an employer is unable to solve the problem of selection by himself. If there is no HR in the company, and the head of the team, project, division or even company is involved in the selection, then for me it is an ideal client and such an application can be taken to work. This does not mean that there will be no problems, as managers often suffer from a lack of connection with the real world and the labor market.
A full-time recruiter or HR is usually a redundant link that distorts information. If HR is responsible for the selection, then I go further in my research into the causes. You need to understand the attitude of HR - whether it will interfere with my work or help.
Approximately half of the requests to recruiters or recruitment agencies come from employers who have everything they need to find the employees they need. They have employees who have enough time to search and hire. They have money to pay for job postings and to purchase access to the resume databases. They are even ready to offer candidates quite market conditions. However, their selection attempts failed. I think the most likely explanation for this situation is that the employers themselves do not know how to find and attract the employees they need. This does not always mean that they do not know how to find and hire at all. Usually, problems arise only with certain positions for which there is not a large flow of people willing to work in this company. Where there is a queue of candidates - the employer copes himself, and where there are few candidates - he does not cope. A typical explanation of this situation on the part of the employer is “we are very busy and we have no time to look for ourselves” or “in open sources there are no more worthy candidates”. Very often, these excuses are not true.
So, the situation - the employer has HR and resources for searching and hiring employees, but the task is not solved on its own. Need third-party help, you need to pull the candidates out of the dark corners in which they hide from the employer.
I highlight 3 real reasons for this situation:
- Lack of ability to correctly form vacancies and search tasks.
- Lack of motivation for the application of all possible efforts.
- Unwillingness to accept market conditions and adapt their offer to the situation.
The first, with the second, is fixable. For this, I will further give my recommendations, with the help of which one can improve the selection efficiency. Usually, if HR is adequate, then he does not object to the direct interaction of the recruiter and the author of the request for recruitment. “Good” HR just gives way, moves to the side and everything works out for us. The company finds the right person, HR removes the problem, the recruiter earns his fee. Everyone is happy.
If there is no motivation to make efforts to select specialists, then even a recruitment agency (KA) will not be able to help. QA recruiters will find good candidates for such an employer, but in the absence of motivation, the employer of these candidates is likely to miss. In my practice, such cases have been repeatedly. Typical reasons: HR and managers forget about the interviews, do not give feedback on the agreed dates, think whether to make offers for a long time (weeks), want to see at least 20 candidates before choosing and many more reasons. Really interesting candidates manage to accept offers from other employers. This is a dead end, so if I diagnose a lack of motivation among representatives of the employer, then I simply do not work with such clients.
The reluctance to accept market conditions and adapt their offer to the situation is diagnosed quite easily and quickly. I also do not work with such employers, as the problem lies in working conditions that are inadequate to the labor market. Candidates can be found, but it is really long and difficult. The second problem - candidates often run away from such employers during the warranty period and have to look for a replacement for them at no additional charge. It turns out double work. Therefore, it is better to immediately give up.
Now we come to the problem of forming vacancies, which is quite possible to solve, both by the recruiter and by the employer independently.
Basic rules for the formation of vacancies
First you need to recognize that hiring is an act of sale. Moreover, the employer should try to sell the candidate the opportunity to work for him. Often it is difficult for employers to accept this idea. They like the idea that a candidate should sell his professional services more than hell, and employers, as picky buyers, are eyeing, thinking, choosing. Very often the market is really oriented in this way - there are more candidates than good vacancies. But for highly sought-after and highly qualified specialists (for example, programmers), everything is completely the opposite. Those employers who accept the idea of selling their vacancies to candidates are more successful in hiring highly qualified specialists. The texts of vacancies and messages that you send to candidates should be written according to the rules of the formation of selling texts, then they reach the goal to a much greater extent.
What makes a good selling text in the sea of information that falls on people in our time? In the first place - focus on the interests of the reader. The text should immediately answer the question - why should I (the reader) waste time reading this text? And then the vacancy should answer the question - why should I work in this company? There are other mandatory questions for which the candidate wants a simple and clear answer. What do I have to do? How do I realize my potential at this job? Where can I grow and how can an employer help me with this? What payment for my work will I receive? What social guarantees will the employer give me? How are the work processes organized, what will I be responsible for and to whom? What kind of people will surround me? And so on.
In the ranking of the most annoying shortcomings of vacancies, small information content leads. Candidates are sure to want to see your range of remuneration, a description of job responsibilities, working conditions and information about the equipment of the workplace.
In the second place in the ranking of annoying factors - the narcissism of companies. Most candidates are not at all interested to read about the understanding of the prestige and position of the company in the market in the first paragraphs of the vacancy. The company name, field of activity and links to the site are enough. If your vacancy is interested, the candidate reads about you. And not only the good, but the negativity as well. It is necessary not only to drag the “selling” content from the promotional materials for the company's clients, but to recreate the materials using similar methods, but with the aim of selling not the company's products, but the opportunity to work in the company.
The next important idea that not everyone understands - you need to have the texts of vacancies, letters and proposals, decorated in several formats. Each channel of information delivery implies its own format. Very often, vacancies meet rejection and rejection due to incompatibility of the text format with the format of the channel. Your message will not be read, but instead it will be ignored or sent to the basket only because of a format mismatch. If you stupidly take a job description from the site and throw it in a personal message in the VC, then it is very likely to run into a complaint and a ban. As in the case of other advertising messages, it makes sense to test job texts (by collecting and analyzing metrics) and to refine.
There is another funny misconception that reduces the chances of finding an employee, even with the best offer. Some employers believe that if they need a good knowledge of a foreign language, then the vacancy should be written in that language. Type "our candidate will read and understand." If you do not understand - it means not ours. And then they complain that there are no responses. The solution to the problem is very simple - write vacancies in the native language of your potential candidate. And even better - write in the main language of the country of placement of the vacancy. Your candidate will understand your text, but for the beginning he should notice it, and for this, the text should catch his eye. Search tools are usually language dependent. If the candidate’s resume is in Russian and the job is in English, then the automatic assistant will most likely not drive you away. When searching manually, similar incidents can also occur. Many people, even good speakers of foreign languages, are less able to perceive appeals in a foreign language when they are in a state of relaxation. My opinion is that it is better to check the knowledge of a foreign language with a candidate in some other and more traditional way, after he has responded to a vacancy.
Thanks for attention! I wish everyone not to starve and find what they want!
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/447174/
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