Are there really too few qualified IT candidates?
Or too many catch-all job descriptions that blur several types of IT jobs into one description?
Might a law firm who only wants an IT person that worked in law, and the healthcare agency that only wants the IT person who came from healthcare be part of the problem?
Let's not forget, too, the proprietary niche software that any given industry is using --- those are "must haves" too. (And one reason employers don't want to transfer IT talent across industries.)
If those aren't bad enough, there's always the job ad that requires a specific VERSION of the software or hardware brand. So you supported HP and not DELL in your last job. In the eyes of far too many hiring managers, that means you can't be expected to figure anything whatsoever out about a DELL --- even though it, too, is a PC. Or perhaps you ran MS Server 2003 and they want 2008 (as if there is absolutely 0 percent commonality between revisions). There is a view in IT that knowledge is non-transferable. Can you imagine how fast your doctor would go out of business if the health care insurance companies refused to admit a doctor into a network who had gone to medical school before the newest crop of drugs or treatment modalities hit the market --- because it was then assumed they were lacking in "talent" (obsolete)?
There's yet another facet to the chaos in IT: By underpaying their IT staff and valuing their access to sensitive company information so little, is it any wonder that the news now carries stories each month, if not every single week, where a major corporation gets hacked? There's going to come a day, thanks to this all-eggs-in-one-digital-basket phenomena, where it will be hard to meet someone on the street who does NOT have a story to tell about an ordeal involving identity theft. One contributory factor: You can't have "continuity of security" if you're continually shoving a merry-go-round of IT personnel through your corporate doors, and contracting out anything and everything else (including overseas where consumer protection laws are nil).
Consumers, too, are bound to realize sooner or later that poor hiring practices in IT mean poor security and/or major inconveniences. Just look at the major shutdown of Continental/American Airlines computers and how it resulted in so many canceled flights. Sometimes it pays to keep a paper trail ---- but again, paper isn't recyclable and computer systems last forever, right?
In my view, there are plenty of qualified IT candidates with a shortage of realistic job descriptions. I know someone with 20 years in IT and he's routinely passed over. Ageism has something to do with not wanting the qualified candidates --- what with the stereotypical image a young, male geek. And that, in itself, is ironic because the entry-level applicant who fits the youthful geek image is the most likely to lack the broad-ranging or depth-of-experience requirements employers want.
What goes on in IT hiring wouldn't fly anywhere else. Try asking a medical doctor to know everything outside his/her specialty. Even after 8 years in med school, that's not expected. But for $15 per hour in IT you better have it ALL.
Outsourcing, too, has made HR lazy. They don't place a value on employee mentorship and they seemingly don't want their applicants to learn on the job. If you write job descriptions that exacting, who's left for you to hire but to literally steal talent from your direct competition?
When an applicant has put in 5 or more years in IT, the hiring process should involve some common sense: For one, the hiring metrics should be APTITUDE-based. How fast and how accurately can you master new skill sets? Why might that matter? For the same reason a graphic artist doesn't have to work for a bank to design a bank logo. What we have instead is the wild-wild West where normal hiring expectations don't apply in IT.
The talent shortage in IT is a perceptual issue, too. I would venture to guess that IT candidates are more likely than janitors, secretaries, nurses, teachers or the like to exaggerate or outright lie on their application to get where they are, only to "burn" their employer by failing to deliver --- reinforcing the PERCEPTION of too little talent.
Perhaps these organizations and companies ought to begin questioning their own contribution to the recruitment problem. Thinking, however, is hard. Outsourcing --- going across oceans and continents to locate cut-rate H1-B1 material --- is easier. Go figure.
Yes, it's a blunt assessment but nonetheless true: employers have a difficult time finding the IT staff they need. They do, however, obtain the IT personnel they deserve.
