New Workforce - The Weblog of New Equities

Being interviewed by an idiot

And what you can do about it. (Via Recruiting.com)

Previously: When the idiot is the interviewee.

Keeping the lines open to talent

itzBig Blog comments on an age-old conundrum in the relationship between candidates and recruiters: "Why don't you call me anymore?"

Most of us have been there before. You know you’re right for the job, you’ve done the prep work, you’ve communicated with the recruiter every step of the way, and you even hit it off with the hiring manager. Then, as though you’ve become contagious, no one wants anything to do with you anymore.

Understandably, this leaves many candidates feeling baffled. It also goes a long way in furthering the “Us vs. Them” attitude that many candidates take on their searches. They accept the belief that recruiters and hiring managers are simply out to get them.

What happens? The post goes on to explain that it can be due to changes in the hiring company; or that they're just not ready to hire; or, more likely, another candidate walked through the door who was a better fit; or hey, maybe they're just not that into you.

But these explanations all beg the obvious question: what about basic professional courtesy? In our conversations with working consultants who deal with staffing firms, we hear the complaint all too often: "They were really hot on me, then suddenly I heard nothing from them." Recruiters and headhunters often remind candidates that the recruiter is working for the client, not the candidate and attention therefore goes to the client's priorities. If a particular client is hot on a candidate to fill an open requirement, then so is the recruiter. If the client decides to go in a different direction, or wants to pursue a different candidate the recruiter moves on. After all, time is money and who has time to handhold everyone? Nothing personal, just business, right?

It may be business, but it's a dysfunctional way of doing business that assumes the candidate (aka the "talent") has no intrinsinc worth outside of the immediate context of this particular requirement, and can be discarded like an old shoe if things don't work out. Aside from being just bad manners, it's also bad business, as the post in itzBig underscores:

We believe that this situation can be rectified. Instead of taking on the “silent treatment,” it would be effective for both recruiter and candidate to look into the resons why the company went a different way. This enables a candidate to see where they might have been lacking in experience or skills and it gives them the chance to focus on those areas. It also keeps recruiters in touch with candidates that have at least garnered the interest of employers. One missed opportunity shouldn’t bring the candidate/recruiter relationship to a close.

New Equities developed its consultant-centric staffing model precisely because of our philosophical belief that the value we bring to our clients is our relationship with the best talent. Even outstanding candidates are not going to be a fit for every requirement or project, and people who may be rejected in one context may be ideal in another. Why end that relationship prematurely? And why treat a fellow professional like a disposable component that no longer fits and has therefore outlived its usefulmess, when it takes only a few minutes to give some feedback?

As we move from a buyer's market in talent during the first half of this decade into a seller's market for what may well be the next few decades, that talent will simply refuse to do business with companies who treat them as commodities. Their first loyalty will be to themselves and their own professional development, but that loyalty will extend to the people in their network who help them further their careers.  Successful staffing firms will need to start according candidates the same priority and courtesy as they would hiring managers. True, the hiring manager may be the paying customer, but it is the consultant who is actually the "product" that is being paid for and thus cannot be taken for granted. As the Baby Boom retires and the pool of available talent shrinks, organizations who deal in providing access to talent, whether permanent or contract, will find that they ignore that reality at their own peril.

New Equities has organized itself around the concept of  "Talent Communities", targeting the specific skill sets (e.g. project managers, Java developers, business analysts) and industry expertise (banking/insurance, manufactuing, retail) important to our clients in specific geographies. Each Talent Community has a dedicated manager called a "Consultant Agent" who builds and maintain relationships with the consultants in the community and the client managers who hire that talent.

Conducting business within the New Equities framework and philsophy means taking a proactive approach to finding good people, rather than the typically reactive approach of filling a req and moving on. It means keeping community members in the loop through phone calls, emails, newsletters, events, and blogs and online discussions. It means understanding what consultants want -- what kinds of projects they prefer, what skills they want to develop, what kind of work experience they are looking for -- and finding ways to help them advance their career goals. It means working hard on behalf of consultants already on projects, getting ahead of the curve to find the next assignment before the current one winds down.

In short, it means looking at the staffing business as a network of relationships rather than a series of transactions. It is definitely more time-consuming than the traditional approach, but it results in a better fit between each consultant's capabilities and work style and the needs of a particular client or project. Viewed in conventional business terms, this equation is a no-brainer: taking the time to get the product right yields greater customer satisfaction. Ironic that so many in the "people business" seem reluctant to invest the time in getting to know the people who make or break that business. 

Great expectations

Information Week looks ahead to the 2007 IT job market.

Survey: IT pros are "job flirts"

A recent UK survey found that a large percentage of IT professionals are constantly on the lookout for the next opportunity:

The "Work in Progress: Jobseekers survey", carried out by polling firm Loudhouse Research, surveyed over 1,000 UK workers across the UK and found that nearly half (48 per cent) of workers in IT have applied for a job or registered with a recruitment agency in the past 12 months. Despite this, over two-thirds (68 per cent) reckon they will still be in the same job 12 months from now.

According to the study, IT employees are knowledgeable about what they look for in a new job and are intent on finding companies that can offer the best deal. However, money was not necessarily the main priority for job seekers.

Top factors that attract job seekers to a new company or role are interesting or challenging work (89 per cent) and friendly environment (84 per cent).

This is consistent with our own findings at New Equities, based on surveys and roundtable discussions with consultants (both those who work for us and those who don't). Getting the "best deal" is important, but the intangibles such as job satisfaction and cultural fit are also key. And - being listened to was something consultants highly valued and sought in their work environment. Not surprising, but apparently a much rarer occurrence than most of us would think.

All of this points to the looming challenges of 21st century workforce management: how to find the best talent, and how to retain that talent (and the knowledge of those workers). These are actually age-old questions, but they take on a new urgency in the IT industry, as the qualified pool of talent ages and the next generation of potential IT workers, spooked by fresh memories of the recent tech recesssion, opts for other career paths.

Company loyalty is not entirely a thing of the past, but it has to be constantly earned and the bar is set much higher than it was a decade ago. For firms that hire consultants on an ongoing basis, it means adopting a more "consultant-centric" outlook that works from a starting point of trying to understand what consultants want out of their careers and making an honest effort to deliver value in those areas.

India's IT skills gap

Think offshoring jobs to India will address the coming IT labor shortage? Think again:

Business leaders have warned that India's information technology (IT) industry is heading towards a severe shortage of highly-skilled manpower.

They say India will not be able to achieve its targeted growth rates if the issue is not tackled immediately.

Young engineers and college graduates lack necessary skills, a conference in the city of Hyderabad was told.

Software industry body Nasscom has warned that India faces a shortfall of half a million skilled workers by 2010.

More evidence pointing to the development of a strong and persistent job market for career IT professionals.

Open source Java vs .NET

With Sun finally announcing that Open Source Java will be here in 2007, ZDNet's Dana Blankenburg asks the relevant question, "Should you care?" He considers Sun's move to be purely defensive in the face of the rising star of .NET.

What do you think? Is Sun's announcement too little too late? Does .NET have the momentum? Weigh in with your thoughts in the comments below.

What makes a "great" software developer?

Rob Walling boils it down to four key personality traits that, in his view, are shared by top developers:

1. Pessimistic

The best developers anticipate headaches that other developers never think of, and do everything within their power to avoid them.

On the flip side, great developers are optimistic, even downright confident, about their overall success. They know that by being a pessimist in the short-term, their long-term success is ensured.

2. Angered by sloppy code

Someone who fixes a problem but doesn't take the time to find out what caused it is doomed to never become an expert in their field. Experience is not years on the job, it's learning to recognize a problem before it occurs, which can only be done by knowing what causes it in the first place.

3. Long term life planners

People who think many years down the road in their personal life have the gift to think down the road during development. Being able to see the impacts of present-day decisions is paramount to building great software.

4. Attention to detail

I've known smart developers who don't pay attention to detail. The result is misspelled database columns, uncommented code, projects that aren't checked into source control, software that's not unit tested, unimplemented features, and so on. All of these can be easily dealt with if you're building a Google mash-up or a five page website. But in corporate development each of these screw-ups is a death knell.

He concludes:

We know from Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering that the best programmers are up to 28 times better than the worst programmers, making them the best bargains in software. Take these four traits and go find a bargain (or better yet, make yourself into one).

These seem like good indicators to me, but I'm not a software developer. An opposing argument comes from Sam Griffith, blogging at O'Reilly OnJava:

While I think all those traits mention are good and do tend to yield developers who have attention to detail, control their distractions, etc., it is my opinion they do not necessarily equal the “best” developers! They are however some of the kind you want, but not necessarily the only kind of developer you need!

I have worked with many developers over the years who’ve come up with and coded great solutions to very complex problems, but they were not all detail oriented people. They did have bugs, their code sometimes needed re-factoring, etc. but quite often their ideas and solutions tended to be better than others; more out of the box. That made them “great”. We had plenty of other developers; we’ll call them “BTA - better than average”; all exhibiting the traits you say are “best” but they did not and probably would not have come up with solutions like the “great” developers. For example, the “great” developers tended to be more widely read in software engineering than any other team member, thus contributing a pointer to a solution or algorithm that no one else knew about. The “great” developers contributed things that the traits you mention don’t and can’t account for!

He cites, by way of example, "Great People with Issues" including Einstein, Van Gogh, and Thomas Edison.

As a practical matter, it strikes me that whatever the merits of the "great" developer, someone exhibiting the traits of the "BTA" developer is more likely to get hired. And the reality is that organizations need both: the out-of-the-box thinkers who can truly innovate, and the meticulous architects, designers and develoeprs who can transform those innovations into an end-result that is viable and maintainable over the long term.

Hot summer, hot IT job market

Information Week reports that the job market is heating up for tech pros: "Tech Worker Survey Shows Happy Days are Here Again".

"It's hot out there right now for tech pros," says Kevin Knaul a Hudson VP. Fueling the confidence of tech pros is heavy demand by employers. "There is definitely more demand than supply right now," he says. "It's a struggle to keep up," he says.

Especially hot are those with skills in Web services, .Net, Java and ERP. "All the major ERP vendors are updating their products this year," driving the need for those pros, says Knaul.

Recall that only a short time ago, the IT industry was singing the blues. Now a new dynamic has taken over:

Boosting tech worker confidence was optimism about personal finances—despite rising summer fuel costs—as well as a high level of job satisfaction. The number of employees who rated their finances as excellent or good rose 4 points in July to 56%. There was also a 7 point increase to 49% in the number of workers who indicated their financial situation was improving. Seventy four percent of tech workers said they were happy with their jobs in July, up from 71% in June.

Of course, from the perspective of a hiring manager, this is yet another confirmation of the coming IT labor shortage that has been predicted since 2003, and that will only deepen as workforce undergoes major demographic shifts.

Scariest IT job ever

InfoWorld has one engineer's account of an IT job from hell.

Update: Infoworld has now pulled the story due to concerns that some of the writer's assertions could not be verified. If you're curious as to what was in the story, check out some of the related blog posts listed under "Who's blogging" at the bottom of the page.

2006 IT spending on the rise

Information Week looks at projected IT spending.

In the most recent Tech Trends tracking study released on Friday, AMR Research Inc. reveals 76 percent of the 200 U.S. executives participating in the survey plan to increase IT spending this year. The average budget is expected to increase by 19.5 percent, up from 5.9 percent in 2005.

The news is especially good for IT consultants and contractors:

Spending is up for hardware, software and outsourcing and services, but not as much for staff. "Companies are reluctant to commit to full-time staff," Scavo said. "It doesn't mean they are not hiring. It just means more money is going toward outsourcing and contractors."