Talent hiring

I am a big fan of Eric Lippert and his blog. If you don't know about him already, you could go to his About me page. Although he usually writes about stuff that I barely know about (VBScript, JScript, C# among others), I have a deep interest in his writings. Even his non-technical write-ups make up for interesting reading.

He recently wrote about attracting talent into an organisation. I am going to discuss about it a bit here in next few paragraphs. Essentially he wrote about things that make a job posting unattractive/attractive to a prospective job-seeker.

Things that make a job posting un-attractive:

1. Technology vomit/alphabet soup
EIGRP, SOA, HSRP, OMG, BBQ, WTF....Vinay Khosla from Fashion would cringe "Spare me the horror!". I can't recall the number of times where I have been annoyed at the spit of these alphabets!

2. Over-emphasis on specific existing knowledge Vs. ability to learn new
"Imagination is more important than intelligence", said Einstein and with good reason. Ability to grasp things quickly and effectively is more important than cramming it up. Intellect minus experience catches up with experience minus intellect pretty fast.

3. Full of jargon / too few specifics
"A worldwide leader, A premier IT service provider, Fortune 500 company seeks ...." oh gimme a break. I would like to see, clearly, what are we talking about here and not in cryptographs please.

4. Asking for things that ought to be assumed
I recently came across an advertisement by a 'leading provider of IT services' for a Developer/ Lead. It stated that "the candidate must be able to do coding". How's that!

5. No indication of work environment
Do they have fresh beans or stale powder? As a rule most of the job postings don't give any insight about the work culture of a company.


Things that make a job posting attractive

1. Challenging work
Work is challenging, requires innovation. A ex-colleague mentioned that the most challenging work he did during the whole day was to "sort out which bus he had to take back home". Needless to say how much he abhorred office. Also, being involved in design process is a huge encouragement.

2. Work life balance
Many of us, including me, wouldn't like to spend their weekends at office - not for any dole of $s. I have already turned down job offers that required me to work in shifts. The job should allow opportunities to pursue their own interests. If you are real good, stretching after office hours won't be necessary (unless you're cleaning up someone else's mess)

3. Chance to work with industry leaders
When you work with the best in business, some of it rubs off onto you. Working with leaders is a big incentive. I, for one, would forgo couple percentage of hike for a prospect of working with a leader in the technology.

Having said that, the above factors are not really important in Indian job market. Indian IT industry is relatively raw and inexperienced. There is a huge amount of young engineers being churned out every year. There is no dearth of software developers around. However, I believe that over a period of time, as the current crop matures into 10-15+ years things are bound to change. Till then, IT companies can get away with their shitty ads :)