Why is America Outsourcing?
I’ve thought about this question many times, as it affects my industry of work as well as many others. Usually I come to the conclusion that India, China, and Mexico are cheap. Although this opinion may be true, another reason has been creeping up. It is a reason to fear.
Maybe, just maybe America doesn’t have enough people qualified for the job. Actually, strike that. The real opinion is that we don’t have enough people who are capable of actually doing the job. I have come across this idea due to the many interviews that I have been going through. I have seen viewpoints from different people of what they saw in interviewees that I hadn’t thought of.
It doesn’t matter if they are prompt or well dressed. Most people look great on paper, but as soon as you get them into a room, you find that the Masters degree doesn’t equal experience or technical expertise. Even the past job experience doesn’t help, as some people can’t answer common questions about the basics who are applying for a senior position. So for this reason, I state that they are qualified, but not capable of doing the work.
It has come to my opinion that many managers hire based on charisma and paper. The staff under the manager is valuable to determine if the interviewee is capable of actually doing the job. Fortunately, I have a manager who can jump on both sides of the fence but is willing to let the team lead and I to do a more in depth interview in technical capabilities.
This is where the testing starts to come in sometimes. You need to test the individual not only on there memory and presentation, but on there abilities as well. Make sure that the test isn’t overwhelming. Make it easy and open ended. You don’t need to test them on the full spectrum of the position, just enough to get a feel for there work aptitude. The person should be free to flaunt there skills if he/she wants to, but at least be capable of doing the basics. Make it known that they may ask for assistance, and whom or where to go to. All resources normally available on the job, such as the internet, should be available to the person as well.
Be optimistic. Finishing a test isn’t important. The test is to determine capability, not quality work with a deadline. Remember that they feel as if they are under a lot of pressure, no matter how big there smile is. Question them on what they would have done had they been given more time. Observe the results to see if they were going in the rite direction. Keep your cool and don’t get upset. Keep your charm and professional attitude towards the person. Testing, if done adequately, can assist in determining if someone can do the job. It can also help you prepare there training should they need it if they are hired.
Finding people who know what they say they know, often times, are fairly shallow. It isn’t just me with this problem. I am finding that many friends in the technical field are almost desperate to find someone with in-depth knowledge of the skills required to do the job. The shortage of technical people in my field has got me wondering. Where did all of these people go? Are we just too specialized? Are we being too picky? There were tons of people complaining in the dot com bust of 2000 that they were loosing there high paying jobs. They seemed valuable at the time to be paid so much. Much like the industry at the time, these people were probably overrated as well.
So if we are lacking people to do the job, then what other options do employers have? One may say you can higher new people into the field and have them trained. This takes time and investment and can be problematic on senior staff being sponged dry of petty knowledge. There is much risk as the person could just take off with there newly found knowledge. The other problem is that if you are hiring people, there is a good chance that you actually need them to have a specific skill-set at the time that you hire. Who has money to throw at someone who doesn’t know anything?
January 6th, 2006 at 9:19 pm
There is a shortage of qualified and capable personnel in every skilled profession. It’s one of the reasons I came up with the following two quotes:
1. It’s not the few that ruin it for the many, it’s the many that ruin it for the few.
2. It’s not that things don’t work as designed, it’s that they are designed not to work.
At my last job, I went through 600 resumes, interviewing only 30 via phone, and then narrowed down to 3 for face to face interviews. In the end, I got lucky as I managed to get someone pretty good for development work. He now comfortably sits on my list of top 10 developers I know.
It is exceptionally rare to find very talented people to do the work. Usually, you have to settle for the lesser of evils. The people I work with at my current employer are on average, above average from what I’ve seen of those gainfully employed in the industry. One huge downer I’ve been seeing lately is people that have supposedly specialized, but it really amounts to them a) being about mid level for one technology, and b) knowing nothing / refusing to learn other technologies. I’m fortunate that on the team I work with, about 30% of them are proactive in doing new things, whether it be digging deeper in their chosen technologies or branching out. But no matter where you go, they’ll be people that are happily stagnant.