Over the past decade, when it comes to human resources, the IT industry has been living in an atmosphere of doom and gloom. Many reputable organisations and individuals went on the record stating that the shortage of IT workers would reach critical proportions and severely impede economic growth. The contraction of the sector in 2001-2003 made the prophets of doom retreat for fear of being ridiculously irrelevant, as even the greenest of IT pastures, like the Bay area, were going through a severe drought.

I hear there is a shortage of IT professionals.

Personally, I think that all this shortage talk is sheer nonsense. I meet and talk to IT professionals looking in vain for a meaningful job. They share the frustration of being pigeon-holed all the time. They tell me that organisations don’t seem to be able to recognise skill and talent. They feel that they are misunderstood.

And this is where I think the real problem is - we just don’t seem to be good at recognising talent and hiring the right people. As I looked at how we go about hiring IT staff, it became apparent that the commonly used hiring practices are utterly sub-optimal. Let me illustrate my point with a couple of examples from my long list of hiring faux pas.

The Vicious Circle of Little White Lies

The first order of business is to decide what it is we are looking for in a successful candidate. In an IT professional, we would probably look for a few important traits, such as thinking abilities, technical knowledge, familiarity with the business domain, attitude and fit with the corporate environment.

As it stands, hiring IT managers seem to be obsessed with technical knowledge at the expense of everything else. I continue to be amazed how job postings for developers seem to consist of nothing but acronyms. It seems to be the going order of business to list every technology used in the organisation, be it relevant or not to the position being filled, and for good measure, add a few that might be used in the future.

I am not saying that one should not ask for knowledge of Java when hiring a Java programmer, however for the life of me, I don’t understand what “experience with TCP/IP” means. Do we want the person to know the structure of the packet header? Do we want her know the basics of networks or merely be able to get on the Internet?

What this leads to is the proliferation of inflated resumes (CVs, if you prefer). Because so much attention is paid to acronyms, a candidate stands no chance of an interview if she does not have the right ones on the resume. The vicious cycle is evident: we ask for too many technical skills (and how do we expect a candidate to be current and proficient in all of them?) – resumes overflow with acronyms – we find that such resumes do not guarantee knowledgeable candidates and ask for even more technical skills – more acronyms make it into resumes…and so on!

One can ask a perfectly reasonable question: wouldn’t an interview help to identify bogus experience? The answer to this question is – yes, of course, if this experience is probed. In reality, only a few key skills that are absolutely necessary in this position (e.g. Java skills for a Java programmer) are tested.
IT organisations today are full of people with “stretched” resumes, and most of them are doing a good job. Unethical it though most certainly is, stretching is caused and encouraged by the way we hire people. It is our fault.

Formal Education as a Selection Criterion

On February 20, 2006, the CEO of RadioShack, David Edmondson resigned over an uncovered misstatement in his resume. Apparently, Mr. Davidson claimed to have two college degrees, while he in fact had none: the college registrar had confirmed that he only completed two semesters of study. As well, the second degree had never been offered at that institution. A clearly unethical behaviour in the past on the Edmondson’s side resulted in only one reasonably possible conclusion: an able employee of eleven years, and the most senior officer, and RadioShack have parted their ways. That was the right thing to do.

The interesting question here is, why on Earth would Edmondson lie about something as easily verifiable as an academic credential? I can only think of one reason: Mr. Edmondson would not have gotten as high as he had without a formal degree. It was asked of him, and he thought of no better way than to get really creative.

Now, what is important here is that RadioShack was obviously very happy with the job David Edmondson was doing during his eleven-year tenure, although, of course, he had no formal college education. Apparently, the formal degree was not that key a requirement for the job after all.

Most IT job postings, especially those from larger organisations, ask for a formal degree, typically in the field of computer science or a related discipline. In some cases, this requirement can be justified but in many, I would submit to you, it is unnecessary. It is not the degree that we are interested in when looking for an IT professional, but for the specific skills that we require. A college degree does not guarantee good writing skills in a business analyst, nor does it give us any assurances in respect to the design abilities of a software architect.

One of the best programmers I ever knew had been a restaurant manager with no formal education past high school. One of the most able business analysts on my books, with exceptional writing skills never completed her bachelor’s degree. The point is that the knowledge can be acquired through more ways than formal education, and we simply have to recognise that. I don’t have to mention Bill Gates here, do I?

In case you are still pondering the David Edmondson case, here is the kicker. Ostensibly, he was not a very ambitious liar. He merely claimed to have degrees in theology and psychology from the Pacific Coast Baptist Bible College.

How is that relevant to the job of a CEO of RadioShack?

Pre-selection

Once the job requirements are listed, what happens next? Often, they are given to the company HR department or to a recruitment agency for pre-screening of applicants. It is really important that they do a good job and send us the best candidates possible. After all, there’s little choice in rotten apples. The question is, are these people qualified to do this job well?

More often than not, they are not, and here is why…

In general, HR professionals don’t understand the technical requirements of the position being filled. They can certainly evaluate resumes against the requirements, looking for keywords, but if the same thing is said differently in the listing than in the resume, they simply don’t have the knowledge to make the connection. Frankly, it is just too much to ask.

Large recruitment agencies are not much better, due to their highly levered structure. Even if you do a very good job explaining your requirements, preferences and points you are willing to compromise on to the agency’s account manager, she is probably not the one who evaluates the incoming resumes. Staff in that line of work is typically quite familiar with the acronyms, but not to the point of understanding the relationship and the hierarchy of technologies. IT professionals tell me that talking to recruiters is often frustrating due to this very lack of understanding, not to mention their propensity not to return phone calls and emails from candidates, even when they promise to do so.

The net result of all this is that you are not getting the type of candidate resumes you have hoped for. On the other hand, well-qualified people who may not have the appropriate letters after their names may not be selected for an interview. After this, I don’t blame you for being fearful about a looming shortage of good IT people.

But, do you still think the shortage is real?

Originally published in Projecttimes.com in April 2007