[mads_quist]

Who of you have ever been on the hiring side? I will tell you that it is frustrating in the very same way at it is for applicants.

How can you tell as a recruiter if a resume is good? People can put anything on it. Did I work with SAP 20 years ago? Yes, for two weeks! And I can simply put that on my CV. Candidates do that with every piece of technology.

Ok, how to test this then, that they actually master the technology?

Real interview of 2h with maybe a coding challenge. "This does not respect my time and anyway I cannot code under stress" will some people complain.

OK, then maybe some automated offline/online task? "Why do I need to solve some algorithmic nonsense without ever speaking to a person? They don't respect me as a person"

Hm ok, then maybe a real interview in house. But with how many candidates when I get 100+ applications for a position. I CANNOT talk to all of them...

So in the end it's again statistics... Filter out those where the probability is high that they are fast learners and dedicated. What is a good indicator of this? Well, high school and uni grades....

[lovich]

I’ve been on the hiring side. It is hard but everywhere I’ve worked I’ve felt like it’s just been a fear reaction on the company’s side about possibly spending a dollar on a bad hire.

I had one position I was hiring for, for over a year where I just straight up told my manager that I didn’t care to interview anyone anymore until he was ok with them.

The process at every single place I’ve worked at was built to find a reason _not_ to hire someone because we might find the perfect candidate next week

[gwbas1c]

(Depending on company culture) There is a lot of risk in making a bad hire, because in many companies it's very hard to fire someone for poor performance or being difficult to work with. In those situations, it's safer to leave a position vacant instead of making a bad hire.

One workaround is to hire contractors, or contract-to-hire. It does put risk on candidates who are leaving other jobs, though. (I won't contract-to-hire when I'm leaving a job, but I will if I'm unemployed.)

[carlosjobim]

How come a company who does X and already have employees doing X can't find new hires?

I'm sincerely wondering. So if you have 50 people on the payroll to do "SAP", where did they come from? A school? A course? Didn't they have coursemates to reach out to for more workers? Don't people and companies have networks? How can things deteriorate to the level that you have to put out ads for total strangers to apply?