Have you found it harder to hire in a down market?

Question

Several responses to "What can my company offer to attract junior- to mid-level software engineers?" were something like "in this market, all you need to offer is a job."

But my experience has been that good people still have a lot of choices. A friend of mine, someone I'd work with again in a heartbeat, was laid off two weeks ago. As of yesterday he had several offers. When I heard that, I figured maybe it was just in my location (SF/Silicon Valley). Then I read a blog post saying that it's generally harder to hire in a down market - essentially that the number of good people is fairly constant, but the "noise" has increased, making hiring harder.

So I want to know from SO folks:

If you're looking, have you had more or less trouble getting interviews in the last year?

If you're hiring, have you had a harder or easier time since the market went south?

EDIT: If you're reading Stack Overflow, I'm counting you in the talented group. I'm not job seeking - just curious to hear your experiences, as this is the worst market I've seen since I graduated from college ~10 years ago.

Answer 1

Looking for work, I've noticed people are looking for more experience with the technologies they are targetting. I think the people hiring think they are being more selective... But when you ask for someone with 3+ years of ASP.NET experience, it seems to me you're asking for a slow learner. :P

Answer 2

I'm looking, and it's hard to get interviews.

Answer 3

Definitely finding it harder to hire in the current market. I think there is an influx of mediocre talent which is making it harder to find the truly talented people out there.

The companies that have the real talent are holding on to it.

Answer 4

It's true you get a higher noise factor in a down market but also you have good people who are looking for work through no fault of their own. In an up market these people would already be employed.

So this is a glass is half-full/empty kind of thing.

There are less job ads. That's a good thing (for you).

Where I am it's getting hard but there are factors beyond on any downturn in play. Through a series of consolidations Java work has all but dried up where I am (meaning most companies who were doing Java have been bought up and the new owner is .Net or the dev work moved out of state). Overall job ads are definitely down.

In larger cities there may still be a significant number of job ads but there is a significantly larger pool of candidates too. In big cities you always have this volume problem. Employers typically employ recruiters to filter out the noise. Thing is recruiters are about the worst at filtering CVs. They don't (generally) understand technology so they look for acronyms.

This isn't helped by the practices used, such as PSLs (preferred supplier lists) so you're only getting to a subsection of the candidate pool and quotas (eg a company will have 5 recruiters on their PSL and each can submit 2 candidates). In many markets--London is a classic example of this--you get some very dodgy practices by recruiters as a result of this. In some cases candidates will think they've been put forward for a job but actually haven't.

My advice? Do recruitment yourself if you're in a large market. The volume might be higher but you will have a better chance of seeing the right CVs.

Answer 5

Working at a startup in Silicon Valley (www.ooyala.com), we've generally found it hard to find good people in the current market, for a lot of the other reasons people have mentioned.

However, we've also found it hard to entice good people away from their current jobs, particularly when they've got something that's relatively secure. There generally seems to be an attitude of "I'm going to wait and sit this one out - no sense in taking any risks right now." It's something I definitely understand, but it's definitely made recruiting harder.

Answer 6

We're hiring and see a lot of mediocre specialists - most likely they were subject to staff reduction when their companies started experiencing problems. We see much less really qualified specialists compared to previous years - most likely both the specialists are conservative in changing jobs and their employers are conservative about changing qualified people.

Answer 7

It's terrible out here! I get cold calls more or less everyday from recruitment consultants that have found my résumé online. They tell me about a position, I say yes please, do put me forward, and then hear nothing back! :s

When I follow up with the consultants in question they say they have had no feedback from the recruiting company whatsoever, on nearly every candidate that they suggest. It's definitely a buyers market right now!