Today, on a more serious note.

Anybody who has been searching for a job in Slovenia lately knows, that there is really a lot of job offers currently on the market. Employers are complaining that they cannot find the right people to fill their open positions and so on. That is especially true in engineering professions, where there was probably a lack of quality employees to some extent even before the economic growth. If you want to combine engineering with sales knowledge, the situation is even worse.

From my experience, observing my classmates, there is really not many electrical engineers who were searching for a job for a long time, even in times of general economic crisis, when most of our generation graduated. So, you can probably imagine, that it doesn’t really take a long time to find a job now, in times of prosperity and economic growth.

But, this is not really what I wanted to say in this blog post. What I’ve had the privilege to notice, when I was in process of interviewing for different positions this year was, that employers seem to forget that there is already a lack of potential employees, but are still trying to convince you that you should persuade them to hire you (the standard question of: “Why should we hire you?” – Because you literally don’t have anyone else interviewing maybe?). Maybe the right question, which employers should be asking themselves would be: “What can we actually offer to the candidate?”, aside from regular payment, which is really not what I’d mention in the job ad, as it gives a weird impression that that is not something completely normal, but a benefit. Those times are for now fortunately over and job seekers actually have the advantage now. The advantage of a choice and most of them are aware of this. A serious job seeker will probably not even apply to this kind of job ad, at least not an experienced one, because “regular payment” is a code word for: “The paycheck will probably suck”. And seeing this, he/she will move on to the next ad.

I will not even go into other interesting interview questions and comments I’ve gotten while searching for a job (in general asking a 30-year-old why they applied to their chosen Faculty seems a bit passé). But I’ll say this, it really is no wonder some of the advertised positions stay open as long as they do. I sometimes wonder if people conducting the interviews are actually trying to hire somebody or just screwing with people for fun. Some HR managers are bordering on harassment – I cried at the end of one of the interviews for an hour. Suffice to say, I will not recommend the company to my friends who are searching for a job.

Employers also regularly seem to forget that there are some questions which they are not allowed to ask by law. I won’t even count how many stories I’ve heard this year or lived through about those kind of questions – “Do you have a family?” “Are you planning on having kids?”. Women in their 30’s, who don’t have kids, usually don’t have them for all sort of different reasons, which are first, private and second -none of your fucking business. We all get that you are trying to plan ahead, but seriously?! Due to our aging population etc. etc. somebody will probably have to have kids and take the maternity leave, and apparently not every woman will have a kid in her 20’s, so, give us a break maybe? I also cannot really count how many times this year I’ve seen job ads being reposted, while qualified women who applied didn’t even get an invite to the interview.

Many employers are also forgetting that people actually have to survive with their paycheck. Like, a whole month, not just a week or two. Also, a qualified job-seeker who invested money and time into education will probably not work for free. Sorry. Some offers that are currently on the market are frankly insulting. I’d say at this point that just maybe, conducting 4 rounds of interviews with a psychologist present and additional IQ testing may not be appropriate and the right way to go for junior positions that are drastically underpaid in the end. You are wasting the candidates time and money but above all your time and money. I won’t go into what this kind of procedure says about your abilities to judge the person in front of you and what kind of impression this leaves with the job seeker about your company culture. It is good to be thorough, but some things are just over the top.

So, before you complain that you cannot find a qualified employee, maybe re-think your hiring strategy or your HR manager. Why? I am 100% sure that at least 2 HR managers didn’t even open my CV before conducting the interview. At least 1 job posting misrepresented the offered position and basically wasted time for both sides. 1 HR manager took 1 week to call me with a new date of the interview when I said I cannot make it on the date they had in mind originally. I could go on for a while. While I am sure CEOs would have something to say about the job market and job-seekers today, they should also know that job-seekers could tell them a story or two about their HR practices. They could also tell them why so many young, educated people decide to move out of Slovenia.

Of course, fortunately, it is not like this everywhere. Like there are good candidates, there are also great companies, which do things professionally, respectfully and even take a modern approach to hiring, by for example testing your skills during the interview. Or, telling you that the most important thing for them is, that you’ll fit into the company and its teams and be able to integrate socially. That you can learn the rest. But they are far in between, probably on both sides (employers and employees). When that magic happens you can really be positively surprised and thankful for the experience, no matter the outcome and no matter which side of the table you are sitting on.

So, the next time you complain there is no-one you could hire, maybe go through your practices again, update your interview questions, think about what you can offer to gain the best employees. Ask yourself if you are biased when hiring. A relationship works both ways. The best employees will not work where they don’t feel appreciated and respected, where they feel underpaid or replaceable in the next 5 minutes. And the employer often shows his take on these topics during the interview already. Also, nowadays information circles around quite fast. The engineering community is not that big. People know people. If you are not treating your employees well, it is bound to reflect on your future hiring success. If you are, and the candidate is not the right fit but he/she got a good impression of your company, there is a good chance he/she will recommend you or recommend somebody to you.

Just something to think about…