US Job Openings Reach Record High

[ag]

     As I've said many times, HR policies in the United States are messed up and do not promote filling positions. Of particular concern is inflexibility with regards to the requirements of the position, which make the candidate pool unnecessarily small. I've often looked at computer programmer requisitions and wondered if there were even anybody in the world that met all of their requirements, given how exacting and specific many of them were.

If you're looking at professional openings in the public sector, a large share of openings are listed only because of laws or policies that require hiring practices to be non-discriminatory, when in reality the job description was written for the sake of a specific person. The entire application and interviewing process becomes a hollow exercise that is completed only for the sake of following the law's letter.

Actually, in many cases there is a real application/interviewing process before the job is advertised. It is not that they do not want a proper process to run, it is that, for some reasons (frequently union-related) they cannot enforce the requirements they really need. So, they, first, do a selection on criteria they care about and then advertise a job description, fitting just the guy they chose (but often not mentioning at all, why they chose him).

It is, actually, worse in Europe, where the civil service rules are even more restrictive.

[ag]

As I've said many times, HR policies in the United States are messed up and do not promote filling positions. Of particular concern is inflexibility with regards to the requirements of the position, which make the candidate pool unnecessarily small. I've often looked at computer programmer requisitions and wondered if there were even anybody in the world that met all of their requirements, given how exacting and specific many of them were.

If you're looking at professional openings in the public sector, a large share of openings are listed only because of laws or policies that require hiring practices to be non-discriminatory, when in reality the job description was written for the sake of a specific person. The entire application and interviewing process becomes a hollow exercise that is completed only for the sake of following the law's letter.

Actually, in many cases there is a real application/interviewing process before the job is advertised. It is not that they do not want a proper process to run, it is that, for some reasons (frequently union-related) they cannot enforce the requirements they really need. So, they, first, do a selection on criteria they care about and then advertise a job description, fitting just the guy they chose (but often not mentioning at all, why they chose him).

It is, actually, worse in Europe, where the civil service rules are even more restrictive.

Well civil service positions would, be definition always filled internally, no? Certain posts might potentially be filled (and contested) by political appointees or civil servants, but posts within a civil service?

Let me give you the example I know best.

University professorships are civil service jobs in Europe. Attempting to follow the rules on those would result in, at best, mediocrity. Furthermore, hiring to a civil service job means impossibility of US-style tenure track - effectively, everybody in such a job (including not only faculty, but even secretaries) has protections similar to US tenure.

Well, good departments routinely go around these sorts of things, by combinining extensive use of "visiting" positions and the tricks like the ones discussed here to make appointments of those selected in a real search process. It is all highly questionable from the standpoint of the law, but not doing it would simply kill European universities, at least as serious research centers, within 20 years.

[ag]

As I've said many times, HR policies in the United States are messed up and do not promote filling positions. Of particular concern is inflexibility with regards to the requirements of the position, which make the candidate pool unnecessarily small. I've often looked at computer programmer requisitions and wondered if there were even anybody in the world that met all of their requirements, given how exacting and specific many of them were.

If you're looking at professional openings in the public sector, a large share of openings are listed only because of laws or policies that require hiring practices to be non-discriminatory, when in reality the job description was written for the sake of a specific person. The entire application and interviewing process becomes a hollow exercise that is completed only for the sake of following the law's letter.

Actually, in many cases there is a real application/interviewing process before the job is advertised. It is not that they do not want a proper process to run, it is that, for some reasons (frequently union-related) they cannot enforce the requirements they really need. So, they, first, do a selection on criteria they care about and then advertise a job description, fitting just the guy they chose (but often not mentioning at all, why they chose him).

It is, actually, worse in Europe, where the civil service rules are even more restrictive.

Well civil service positions would, be definition always filled internally, no? Certain posts might potentially be filled (and contested) by political appointees or civil servants, but posts within a civil service?

Yeah that seems odd.

Where I live, civil service ads are mostly on the high or low ends because the mid level positions rarely make it out of the internal process.

I am, obviously, talking something  like high end, though not very top. Places like research departments of government offices, university professorships and such are in a bind. These places want to hire young guys with advanced degrees. People like that cannot be hired at the very junior level (nobody good would even apply), but low enough to allow for decades of career growth. So, what do you do? Hiring internally those starting at the very bottom is only possible if those people are to be given years off to complete their training. Hiring externally is not normally allowed.

In fact, sometimes different departments of the same institution would have very different needs at the same level. Institutional rules may force the general educational requirements to be the same across a fairly large segment of jobs. But a particular division may need somebody with a Ph.D., without being able to require it. So instead they would specify that the guy has to be a specialist in whateve that particular guy they have chosen has spent the previous 5 years researching. Not because they need that particular expertise, but because that is the filter they are allowed.