The hunger hunger myth or the basic rules for job creation

Quite often, from employers you can hear about such a thing as "staff shortages." I believe that this is a myth, in the real world there is no personnel shortage. Instead, there are two real problems. Objective - the ratio between the number of vacancies and the number of candidates in the labor market. And subjective - the inability of a particular employer to find, attract and hire employees. The results of the selection of candidates can be improved if you learn how to create vacancies taking into account the rules for the preparation of selling texts. I wrote about the basic rules in the second part of this article.

The article contains my value judgments. I do not give evidence. Furious comments are welcome.

About myself

My name is Igor Sheludko.
I have been an entrepreneur in the field of software development and sales since 2000. I have a higher technical education. I started my career as a programmer, also led small teams. About a year and a half ago, I started commercial recruiting of IT-specialists - that is, not only for myself and my projects, but in favor of outside companies.

In 2018, I “closed” 17 rather complex vacancies for 10 employers. There were many such companies that I refused my services for various reasons. Some of these reasons I reveal in this article.

Why is “personnel hunger” a mythical phenomenon?

Usually, this means the difficulties of hiring specialists of the right qualifications on conditions convenient for the employer. The statement “it is not possible to hire the right specialists on conditions suitable for the employer” contains several variables that can vary widely.

“Can’t get hired” does not necessarily mean that there are no specialists on the market. Maybe there really are no specialists, or maybe the employer does not know how to find and attract them.
“The right specialists” - and which specialists are really needed? Do employer HR understand production needs correctly? Do production workers correctly understand their needs and take labor market opportunities into account?

“On conditions suitable for the employer” - what are these conditions? How do they relate to the labor market? How do these conditions relate to the wishes of the “right specialists”?

When people talk about ordinary hunger, when people have nothing to eat, then we can see many people who died of hunger. In the case of personnel shortages, we do not see a bunch of corpses of enterprises. Employers adapt and get out if there is a real threat of death. That is, according to observations from the staff shortage, this is not hunger at all, but a "slightly limited diet". If the manager begins to talk about “staff shortages”, then the owner should immediately intervene and pay attention to what is happening at the enterprise. Most likely there everything is bad with the management, and maybe even steal.

This could be finished, but I want to discuss two really existing problems with the staff. An objective problem is the ratio between the number of vacancies and the number of candidates in the labor market. And the subjective problem is the inability of a particular employer to find, attract and employ employees. Now more about these issues.

Labor market - the number of vacancies and candidates

In general, in Russia now there is no acute problem with the availability of job offers. On average, we have small unemployment in the country. There are very unpleasant difficulties with a significant difference in wages in capitals and regions. For most specialties in the regions, they pay frankly little; the population lives on the verge of poverty. The wage level barely covers the cost of living. For most professions, there are fewer vacancies than candidates, and employers have plenty to choose from. That is, there is no cadre hunger at all; rather, there is a possibility of a traditional hunger.

There are cities and regions where production closes and clusters of qualified personnel are formed, while in neighboring regions a shortage of such personnel can be observed. The answer to this challenge is usually population migration. However, the Russians are not yet accustomed to migrating for work and career, often prefer to live in poverty, interrupted by casual earnings, motivating this by caring for their families (everything is familiar and close by, and there is the unknown). Personally, this motivation is incomprehensible to me - life in poverty is unlikely to symbolize caring for the family.

Employers in general, too, are not yet ready to support migration. At a rare employer, one can find employee relocation support programs. That is, instead of looking for personnel in other regions, creating attractive conditions and supporting migration, employers are more likely to whine about staff shortages.

Sometimes, speaking of personnel shortages, employers admit that there is no shortage of personnel, but "the qualifications of personnel are insufficient." I believe that this is cunning, as other employers (those who do not ache) simply train employees to improve their qualifications. Thus, a complaint about “insufficient qualifications” is only a manifestation of a desire to save on training or relocation.

In the field of IT, the situation is now generally much better than in other areas. For some specialties from the IT sector, there is such a high demand for staff that the salaries in IT in many regions are many times higher than the average salary. In Moscow and St. Petersburg, the average salary in IT is also higher than the regional average, but not at times.

At the level of problems of ordinary HR, the situation looks like this - there simply aren’t the right people on the market or they want a significantly higher salary. This applies mainly to programmers and DevOps. For project managers, analysts, designers, testers, and layout designers in general, parity - a sane specialist can be found quite quickly. Of course, it’s not as easy as a seller in a supermarket, but much easier than a front-end developer.

In this situation, some employers whine (this is their choice), while others are restructuring work processes. A typical solution is the introduction of training and advanced training, internships, and the structuring of tasks so that more work can be shifted to less qualified personnel. Also a good solution is to introduce the practice of remote work. A remote employee is cheaper. And the point is not only in the lower amount of labor remuneration, but also in saving on renting an office, equipping a workplace. The introduction of udalenka certainly carries risks, but also carries significant benefits in the long run. And immediately expanding the geography of the search for employees.

Thus, in IT there is no significant problem of a lack of personnel, there is a reluctance of management to reconstruct work processes.

Inability of employers to find, attract and hire employees

When I receive a request for the selection of a specialist, I first try to find out the real reasons - why the employer is not able to independently solve the selection problem. If the company does not have HR, and the head of the team, project, department or even the company is engaged in the selection, then for me it is an ideal client and such an application can be taken into work. This does not mean that there will be no problems, since leaders often suffer from a lack of communication with the real world and the labor market.

A full-time recruiter or HR is usually an extra transmission link that distorts information. If HR is responsible for the selection, then I will go further in my study of the causes. You need to understand the attitude of HR - whether it will interfere with my work or help.

Approximately half of the requests to recruiters or recruitment agencies come from employers who have everything they need to independently find the employees they need. They have employees who have enough time to search and hire. They have money to pay for publication of vacancies and purchase access to resume databases. They are even ready to offer candidates quite market conditions. However, their selection attempts are unsuccessful. I consider the most likely explanation for this situation - the employers themselves are not able to find and attract the employees they need. This does not always mean that they do not know how to find and hire. Usually problems arise only with some positions for which there is not a large flow of people who want to work in this company. Where there is a line of candidates - the employer manages himself, and where there are few candidates, he himself cannot cope. A typical explanation of this situation on the part of the employer is “we are very busy and we have no time to look for ourselves” or “there are no more worthy candidates in open sources”. Very often, these excuses are not true.

So, the situation is that the employer has HR and resources for finding and hiring employees, but the task is not solved on its own. Need outside help, you need to get the candidates out of the dark corners in which they hide from the employer.

I highlight 3 real reasons for this situation:

1. Lack of ability to correctly form vacancies and search tasks.
2. Lack of motivation to apply all possible efforts.
3. Unwillingness to accept market conditions and adapt their offer to the situation.

The first, in the presence of the second, is fixable. To do this, I will further give my recommendations with which you can increase the efficiency of the selection. Usually, if HR is adequate, then he does not mind the direct interaction of the recruiter and the author of the selection request. A “good” HR simply gives way, leaves aside and everything works out for us. The company finds the right person, HR removes the problem, the recruiter earns his fee. Everyone is happy.

If there is no motivation to make efforts to select specialists, then even a personnel agency (SC) will not be able to help. CA recruiters will find good candidates for such an employer, but in the absence of motivation, the employer of these candidates will most likely miss. In my practice, such cases have happened repeatedly. Typical reasons: HR and managers forget about interviews, do not give feedback on time, think for a long time (weeks) whether to make offers, want to see at least 20 candidates before choosing and many more reasons. Really interesting candidates manage to accept offers from other employers. This is a dead end, so if I diagnose a lack of motivation among the representatives of the employer, then I simply do not work with such clients.

Reluctance to accept market conditions and adapt your offer to the situation is diagnosed quite simply and quickly. I also do not work with such employers, as the problem lies in the working conditions inadequate to the labor market. You can find candidates, but it's really long and hard. The second problem is that candidates often run away from such employers during the warranty period and they have to look for a replacement at no extra charge. It turns out double work. Therefore, it is better to immediately refuse.

Now we turn to the problem of vacancy formation, which is quite possible to solve, both by the recruiter and by the employer.

The basic rules for the formation of vacancies

First you need to recognize that hiring is an act of sale. Moreover, the employer must try to sell the candidate the opportunity to work with him. It is often difficult for employers to accept this idea. They like the idea that the candidate should sell his professional services, go out of his way, and employers, as picky buyers, look closely, think, choose. Very often the market is really oriented in this way - there are more candidates than good vacancies. But for sought-after and highly qualified specialists (for example, programmers), the opposite is true. Those employers who accept the idea of ​​the need to sell their vacancies to candidates are more successful in hiring highly skilled professionals. Texts of vacancies and messages,

What makes a good selling text in a sea of ​​information that strikes people today? First of all, an emphasis on the interests of the reader. The text should immediately give an answer to the question - why should I (the reader) spend time reading this text? And then the vacancy should answer the question - why should I work in this company? There are other mandatory questions that the candidate wants to get a simple and clear answer. What will I have to do? How do I realize my potential at this job? Where can I grow and how will the employer help me with this? What payment will I receive for my work? What social guarantees will the employer give me? How are work processes organized, for which I will be responsible and to whom? What kind of people will surround me? Etc.

In the ranking of the most annoying shortcomings of vacancies, low information content leads. Candidates are sure to see your pay range, job descriptions, working conditions, and information about workplace equipment.

In second place in the ranking of annoying factors is the narcissism of companies. Most candidates are not at all interested in reading about understanding the prestige and position of the company in the market in the first paragraphs of the vacancy. The company name, field of activity and links to the site are quite enough. If your vacancy is interesting, the candidate will read about you. Moreover, not only the good, but also the negative will look. It’s necessary not just to drag “selling” content from advertising materials for the company's customers, but to recreate materials using similar methods, but with the goal of selling not the company's products, but the opportunity to work in the company.

The next important idea that not everyone understands is that you need to have texts of vacancies, letters, and offers, drawn up in several formats. Each information delivery channel has its own format. Very often, vacancies are rejected and rejected because the text format does not match the channel format. Your message will not be read, but instead it will be ignored or sent to the basket only because of a format mismatch. If you stupidly take the job description from the site and throw it in a personal message in VK, then it is very likely to run into a complaint and a ban. As in the case of other advertising messages, it makes sense to test the vacancy texts (collecting and analyzing metrics) and refine them.

There is another funny misconception that reduces the chances of finding an employee even with a good offer. Some employers believe that if they require a good knowledge of a foreign language, then a vacancy needs to be written in that language. Type "our candidate will read and understand." If you don’t understand, it’s not ours. And then they complain that there are no responses. The solution to the problem is very simple - write vacancies in the native language of your potential candidate. Better yet, write in the primary language of the country in which the vacancy is posted. Your candidate will understand your text, but first he needs to notice it, and for this, the text must catch his eye. Search tools are usually language dependent. If the candidate’s resume is in Russian and the vacancy is in English, then the automatic assistant will most likely not get you down. When manually searching, similar incidents can also happen. Many people, even those who speak good foreign languages, however, hardly perceive appeals in a foreign language when they are in a state of relaxation. My opinion is that it is better to check the candidate’s knowledge of a foreign language in some other and more traditional way after he answers the vacancy.

Thanks for attention! I wish everyone not to starve and find what they want!