Quite often, you can hear from employers about such a phenomenon as “staff shortage”. 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 form vacancies, taking into account the rules for preparing selling texts. I wrote about the basic rules in the second part of this article.
The article contains my value judgments. I don't provide proof. Furious comments are welcome.
About Me
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 and also managed small teams. About a year and a half ago, I took up commercial recruiting of IT specialists - that is, not only for myself and my projects, but for the benefit of outside companies.
In 2018, I “closed” 17 rather difficult vacancies for 10 employers. There were many such companies to which I refused my services for various reasons. Some of these reasons I reveal in this article.
Why is “staff shortage” a mythical phenomenon?
This is usually understood as the difficulty of hiring specialists of the required qualifications on terms that are convenient for the employer. The statement “you can’t hire the right people at the right conditions for the employer” contains several variables that can vary widely.
“Unable to hire” 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.
"Needed specialists" - and what specialists are really needed? Do the employer's HR understand the needs of production? Do production workers understand their needs correctly and take into account the possibilities of the labor market?
“On conditions suitable for the employer” - what are these conditions? How do they relate to the labor market? How do these conditions correlate with the wishes of the “necessary specialists”?
When people talk about ordinary hunger, when people have nothing to eat, we can see a lot of people dying of hunger. In the case of personnel shortages, we do not see a heap of corpses of enterprises. Employers adapt and get out if there is a real threat of death. That is, according to observations from the personnel shortage, this is not a hunger at all, but a “slightly limited diet”. If a manager starts talking about a “staff shortage”, then the owner should urgently intervene and pay attention to what is happening at the enterprise. Most likely everything is bad with management there, and maybe even steal.
This could be the end of it, but I want to discuss two real problems with personnel. The 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 hire employees. Now more about these problems.
The labor market - the number of vacancies and candidates
In general, there is no acute problem with the availability of job offers in Russia now. On average, we have a small unemployment in the country. There are very unpleasant difficulties with a significant difference in wages in the capitals and regions. For most specialties in the regions, they pay frankly little, the population lives on the verge of poverty. The level of wages barely covers the living wage. For most specialties, there are fewer vacancies than candidates and employers have plenty to choose from. That is, there is no personnel shortage at all; rather, there is a possibility of a traditional hunger.
There are cities and regions where production facilities are closed and clusters of qualified personnel are formed, while in neighboring regions one can observe a shortage of such personnel. The response to such a challenge is usually population migration. However, Russians are not yet accustomed to migrating for the sake of work and career, they often prefer to live in poverty, doing odd jobs, motivating this by caring for their families (everything is familiar and nearby, but there is the unknown). Personally, this motivation is incomprehensible to me - it is unlikely that life in poverty symbolizes caring for the family.
Employers in general are also not yet ready to support migration. A rare employer can find programs to support the relocation of employees. That is, instead of looking for personnel in other regions, creating attractive conditions and supporting migration, employers are more likely to whine about the shortage of personnel.
Sometimes, speaking of a shortage of personnel, employers admit that there is no shortage of personnel, but "the qualifications of personnel are insufficient." I think that this is cunning, since other employers (those who do not whine) simply train employees, improving their skills. Thus, a complaint about “insufficient qualifications” is just a manifestation of a desire to save money on training or relocation.
In the IT sector, the situation is now generally noticeably better than in other areas. For some specialties in the IT field, there is such a high demand for personnel that salaries in IT in many regions are several times higher than the average salary. In Moscow and St. Petersburg, the average salary in IT is also higher than the average for the region, but not by several times.
At the level of the problems of ordinary HR, the situation looks like this - there are simply no necessary people on the market or they want a significantly higher salary. This applies mainly to programmers and DevOps. There is parity in terms of project managers, analysts, designers, testers and layout designers in general - you can find a sane specialist fairly quickly. Certainly not as easy as a salesperson in a supermarket, but noticeably easier than a front-end developer.
In this situation, some employers whine (it's their choice), while others rebuild work processes. A typical solution is to introduce training and development, internships, structuring tasks so that more work can be shifted to less qualified personnel. Also a good solution is the introduction of the practice of remote work. A remote employee is cheaper. And the point is not only in the lower wages, but also in savings on office rent, workplace equipment. The introduction of “remote work” certainly carries risks, but also carries significant benefits in the long term. And immediately expands the geography of the search for employees.
Thus, in IT there is no significant problem of lack of personnel, there is a lack of readiness of management to rebuild work processes.
The inability of employers to find, attract and hire employees
When I receive a request for the selection of a specialist, the first thing I try to find out is the real reasons why the employer is unable to independently solve the selection problem. If there is no HR in the company, and the head of the team, project, division or even the company is engaged in the selection, then for me this is an ideal client and such an application can be taken to work. This does not mean that there will be no problems, as managers often suffer from a lack of connection 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 recruiting, then I go further in my study of the causes. I 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 do search and recruitment. They have money to pay for job postings and buy access to resume databases. They are even ready to offer candidates quite market conditions. However, their recruitment attempts are unsuccessful. I think the most likely explanation for this situation is that employers themselves do not know how to find and attract the employees they need. This does not always mean that they do not know how to find and hire at all. 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 queue of candidates, the employer manages on his own, and where there are few candidates, he does not cope. A typical employer’s explanation for this situation is “we are very busy and we have no time to search 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. We need third-party help, we need to get candidates out of the dark corners in which they hide from the employer.
I highlight 3 real reasons for this situation:
- Lack of ability to correctly form vacancies and search tasks.
- Lack of motivation to make every possible effort.
- Unwillingness to accept market conditions and adapt your 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 selection. Usually, if HR is adequate, then he does not mind the direct interaction of the recruiter and the author of the recruitment request. “Good” HR simply gives way, steps aside, and everything works out for us. The company finds the right person, HR relieves itself of the problem, the recruiter earns his fee. Everyone is happy.
If there is no motivation to make efforts to select specialists, then even a recruitment agency (KA) will not be able to help. KA recruiters will find good candidates for such an employer, but in the absence of motivation, the employer will most likely miss these candidates. In my practice, such cases have happened repeatedly. Typical reasons: HR and managers forget about interviews, do not give feedback within the agreed time frame, think for a long time (weeks) whether to make offers, want to look at at least 20 candidates before choosing, and many more reasons. Really interesting candidates have time to accept offers from other employers. This is a dead end, so if I diagnose a lack of motivation among employer representatives, then I simply don’t work with such clients.
The unwillingness to accept market conditions and adapt your offer to the situation is diagnosed quite simply and quickly. I do not work with such employers either, as the problem lies in working conditions that are inadequate to the labor market. Candidates can be found, but it is really long and difficult. The second problem is that candidates often run away from such employers during the warranty period and have to find a replacement for them at no additional charge. It turns out double work. Therefore, it is better to refuse immediately.
Now let's move on to the problem of creating vacancies, which is quite possible to solve both by the recruiter and by the employer on their own.
Basic rules for the formation of vacancies
First, we need to recognize that hiring is an act of selling. 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 prefer the idea that the candidate should sell their professional services, go out of their way, and employers, like picky buyers, are looking, thinking, choosing. Very often the market is really oriented in this way - there are more candidates than good vacancies. But for in-demand and highly qualified specialists (for example, programmers), everything is quite the opposite. Those employers who accept the idea of having to sell their job to candidates are more successful in hiring high-quality specialists. Texts of vacancies and messages that you send to candidates should be written according to the rules for the formation of selling texts, then they achieve the goal to a much greater extent.
What makes a good sales copy stand out in the sea of information that is bombarding people these days? First of all, the focus is on the interests of the reader. The text should immediately give an answer to the question - why should I (the reader) waste time reading this text? And then the vacancy should answer the question - why should I work in this particular company? There are other mandatory questions that the candidate wants a simple and clear answer to. What will I have to do? How do I fulfill my potential in this job? Where can I grow and how can an employer help me with this? How much will I receive for my work? What social guarantees will my employer give me? How are work processes organized, what will I be responsible for and to whom? What kind of people will surround me? And so on.
In the ranking of the most annoying shortcomings of vacancies, low information content is in the lead. Candidates will definitely want to see your pay range, job description, working conditions, and workplace equipment information.
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 name of the company, the area of activity and a link to the site are enough. If your vacancy is of interest, the candidate reads about you. And not only good, but the negative will look. It is necessary not only to drag and drop "selling" content from advertising materials for the company's clients, 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 for vacancies, letters and offers in several formats. Each information delivery channel implies its own format. Very often, vacancies are rejected and rejected due to the inconsistency of the text format with the channel format. Your message will not be read, but instead it will be ignored or sent to the trash just because of the format mismatch. If you stupidly take a 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 texts of vacancies (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 need a good knowledge of a foreign language, then the vacancy should be written in that language. Like "our candidate will read and understand." If he doesn't understand, then 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 job is posted. Your candidate will understand your text, but first he must notice it, and for this the text must catch his eye. Search tools usually depend on languages. If the candidate's resume is in Russian, and the vacancy is in English, then the automatic assistant will most likely not bring you together. When searching manually, similar incidents can also happen. Many people, even those who speak foreign languages well, nevertheless find it difficult to perceive addresses in a foreign language when they are in a state of relaxation. My opinion is that it is better to check the foreign language skills of a candidate in some other and more traditional way, after he has applied for a vacancy.
Thank you for your attention! I wish everyone not to starve and find what they want!
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What do you pay attention to first of all when meeting a new vacancy?
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Requirements
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Duties
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Salary
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Office or remote
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Tasks
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Technology Stack / Working Tools
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Other, I'll tell you in the comments
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Source: habr.com