Recruiting new staff

[malachi]

Generally it's not, but degrees are so commonplace nowadays that some employers perhaps use it as a simple filter to exclude the bottom of the intellect barrel [note: I'm not saying people without degrees are stupid, I'm saying people with degrees probably meet some sort of minimum level to have achieved that].

This was the conversation I was having with the recruitment depart in one of my pervious jobs. I told them it was stupid thing to have in the JD for a basic job. They couldn't get their head around why the department had such a high turnover.....Well, degree educated people are not going to stay working in a 24/7 call centre with unsociable working hours for very long.

After a while they removed that requirement and got more reliable long term staff.

 

[HangTime]

Yes, call centre work is often an entry point for grads not picked up on the milkround, they just want to get experience on the CV and then move on. I've seen 3 types of people, to be fair I haven't worked in the call centre so there may be more:
1) Grads who maybe don't have the best degree, or just wanted a job near their parents house. Will look to move on within 2yrs
2) Less educated, often still youngsters, may aspire to better but will take them longer to get there
3) Older folk who have established themselves as team leaders, very much in their comfort zone, maybe with a shift pattern that suits their lifestyle around childcare and whatnot. Every call centre of reasonable size in the country will what I would call the Doyenne, a middle-aged, slightly overweight woman with a jolly demeanour that knows the ropes inside out and revels in being the oracle of knowledge for the younger generation.

 

[NickK]

Yes, call centre work is often an entry point for grads not picked up on the milkround, they just want to get experience on the CV and then move on. I've seen 3 types of people, to be fair I haven't worked in the call centre so there may be more:
1) Grads who maybe don't have the best degree, or just wanted a job near their parents house. Will look to move on within 2yrs
2) Less educated, often still youngsters, may aspire to better but will take them longer to get there
3) Older folk who have established themselves as team leaders, very much in their comfort zone, maybe with a shift pattern that suits their lifestyle around childcare and whatnot. Every call centre of reasonable size in the country will what I would call the Doyenne, a middle-aged, slightly overweight woman with a jolly demeanour that knows the ropes inside out and revels in being the oracle of knowledge for the younger generation.

I think I would classify motivators rather than people into types.

I agree with the motivation to have a job, get experience whilst looking to move on. Having a job that can fit around your life is often a very good compromise but historically the nation has seen the mother fit her work around the kids rather than the guy but that is changing. That may lead to your final point, although I've seen fit people that are at 'the oracle' in a call centre, typically understanding the process around the callcentre and not simply the operations of the callcentre itself.

I worked with callcentre staff and sat in on calls as part of building and running services for call centre staff. It's definitely a skill and some of the issues you hear people have and why they've fell into debt is heartbreaking.

 

[dowie]

Can someone tell me why a degree is required to work in a call centre!?!?!?!

It isn't, it's an entirely artificial requirement some might use as a filter.

Degrees aren't really a hard requirement for most roles - including plenty of professions, the main hard requirements for degrees come from medical professions and some engineering roles AFAIK. Even solicitors technically have a non-degree route though AFAIK that's rare.

Accountants can earn a degree as part of their professional exams anyway - IIRC they can get credits towards a BSc and don't require too much more to get an MSc either.

Studying accounting at university does seem to be a bit of a waste of time in comparison for some given you can study accounting by literally working as an accountant and taking your professional exams & in doing so earn money and avoid student debt.

One thing I've noticed is a tendency for job adverts to say something along the lines of "2:1 degree, or equivalent experience in industry". But I have no idea what "equivalent experience" actually means.

Generally, several years more experience than it would take to earn a degree - it is actually formally defined in some places such as for US visas - for H1B for example they have a three to one rule where three years of (professional) work experience counts for 1 year of full-time college - given US bachelors degrees are 4 years this would imply 12 years of relevant work experience to be considered an equivalent to a bachelors degree holder.

So a software developer with 12 years experience potentially counts as a a graduate equivalent - but only the time spent in a software development role, can't necessarily count the call centre job they had for a year or two post-uni.

 

[HangTime]

Pretty ironic since I've found 1 year of practical work experience (in the right job) to have taught me more than 3 years at uni, but there you go

 

[NickK]

Accountants can earn a degree as part of their professional exams anyway - IIRC they can get credits towards a BSc and don't require too much more to get an MSc either.
Studying accounting at university does seem to be a bit of a waste of time in comparison for some given you can study accounting by literally working as an accountant and taking your professional exams & in doing so earn money and avoid student debt.

Mrs works at an accountancy firm. Yes - you don't need a degree, my Mrs did biochemistry and then secretarial work then did so well they decided she should try to become one of the accountancy staff - she has done her Tolley exam and is now a tax technician. Update exams every year - nice. You do spend a considerable amount of time (your free time) doing the professional exams paid for by the company. A senior colleague is younger who started down this route out of school is is higher in the org structure than her peers that went through Uni. There is nothing like that in software.

I did a 4 year BSc(Hons) Software Engineering degree (rather than computer science). There are aspects that don't change, but a lot is something you can learn and a fair chunk is out of date. We learnt methodologies (Yourdon, Yourdon/Mellor, SSADM, Formal methods etc) as compared as meta-methodology understanding, realtime and parallel etc. The degree exposed us to a wider and deeper understanding but although some is transferrable to software development from day one, after 25+ years of industry experience I can say experience matters but learning is vital to maintain skill and pliability across problems.
For example the buzzwords of "Tensorflow" or GPUs used now in AI/ML are simply parallel computation principles. they've been around in maths for eons and in computers before I did my degree.

In the end, technology moves and solves the problems in different ways. If you learn a technology you will be current, if you make the problem solution faster/efficient you will be ahead, if you remove the problem then you're the future.

A degree gives you some current technical and philosophical tools around the last 3-4 years. Experience of the problems gives more value and above either creating a new way to bypass it beats both in commercial value terms.

 

[dowie]

A senior colleague is younger who started down this route out of school is is higher in the org structure than her peers that went through Uni. There is nothing like that in software.

Nah, if anything there is, in theory, greater potential for that in software as there aren't any hard requirements re: professional qualifications whereas in accountancy you need to be a certain type of charter holder to conduct audits.

I know successful developers, project managers and product managers without degrees. In fact at one firm I worked at the head of the entire consultancy arm (so earning some significant $$$ not too different to a partner in an accountancy firm) was an A-level leaver from a grammar school who initially went into banking first.

 

[OspreyO]

Recruiters and companies are setting the bar way to high.

The old power users, or "oracles" won't get hired today. They will need a specialized degree with a good grade.
Anyone wanting to do a conversion degree won't meet the entry requirements for the conversion degree.
yet we will keep hearing they can't get staff with the right skills.

Was sitting on a panel recently. About top third were completely over qualified for the role about a third were spoofers or bad just bad. The solid middle third HR mostly dismissed as HR wanted rock stats, or they wanted a sales pitch like they heard from the spoofer's. Last I heard they were still struggling to fill the role. This was for a low level role. The form they had to fill in to apply takes about a week.

 

[HangTime]

Some companies set the bar high but there's a lot of jobs out there, so people will still get hired without a specialised degree with good grade if they have the right experience, intelligence and interview well.

 

[NickK]

Nah, if anything there is, in theory, greater potential for that in software as there aren't any hard requirements re: professional qualifications whereas in accountancy you need to be a certain type of charter holder to conduct audits.

I know successful developers, project managers and product managers without degrees. In fact at one firm I worked at the head of the entire consultancy arm (so earning some significant $$$ not too different to a partner in an accountancy firm) was an A-level leaver from a grammar school who initially went into banking first.

Yes, sorry I meant in formal qualifications. Accountancy degrees are treated as a starting point, but in reality most accountancy firms have a ladder system of seniority based exclusively on the work experience and the mandatory exams taken. Essentially they work and up or out scheme. Either you pass the exam or your fired - there's no sitting pretty and getting comfy year on year.

@OspreyO Agreed. HR either want someone in the role already from a company they can poach by reference. Also a word by the COO/CFO at board level due to strategic budget constraints can be used to force a blanket "make do" rather than pulling specific budgets by being hyper pedantic HR filtering then leaving the escalations to be filtered and only approving the most vital hires of specific candidates. Also I remember in one place, year budgets weren't the problem but head caps from GIO office IT COO were indicating a desire to limit the unsustainable permanent staff growth leading to 50,000 redundancies in one go and a vast reorg.

 

[malachi]

Recruiters and companies are setting the bar way to high.

There are certain industries which require a degree such as being a doctor. But there are plenty which don't require any but recruiters and companies now give the illusion that you do. That said, I am seeing less companies asking for degrees compared to 10 years ago. Maybe they are noticing many have degrees but they are completely useless at the job. Because people pick useless degrees or don't do further research into where that degree can get them.

Example, my friend who has an Psychology degree and now wants to get into IT because they didn't do the research to find out they need even further education to get something with decent pay. Or my other friend who did an Zoology degree but now works in HR as the its an niche market.

If I was going to do a degree, I would pick and degree which would financially benefit me and not because it sounds cool or interesting, some in people cases. Just to please their parents (stupid thing to do!)

 

[OspreyO]

I'm mainly looking at from an IT point of view. Almost all different types of IT jobs now require a plethora of specialist degrees and qualifications not just developer's.

 

[Throrik]

I'm mainly looking at from an IT point of view. Almost all different types of IT jobs now require a plethora of specialist degrees and qualifications not just developer's.

Don't know where you're looking, but other than the odd job with it being 'preferred degree or equivalent experience' I don't know of many IT roles that require a plethora of specialist degrees. The odd VAR/MSP might require specific Certifications for partner status in the operational/PSO side but nothing else.

 

[HangTime]

IT doesn't seem degree centric to me. None of my hires required a specialist degree and to be honest I don't even think a degree in anything was mandatory, although most of them had one.

 

[Throrik]

IT doesn't seem degree centric to me. None of my hires required a specialist degree and to be honest I don't even think a degree in anything was mandatory, although most of them had one.

That's been my experience too - there's a lot of people out there with Comp Sci degrees yes, but I also see huge numbers of Software Engineers, Data Scientists, SREs, DevOps, NetEngs, Infra Engineers etc with no degrees, no qualifications and even no certs. Me being one of them.

 

[OspreyO]

Maybe its just the ones I'm looking at, and the salary level I've looking at.
But a lot I see have Bachelor’s degree in a related field as minimum requirement.
If other people are pitching for something else fair enough.

 

[NickK]

Maybe its just the ones I'm looking at, and the salary level I've looking at.
But a lot I see have Bachelor’s degree in a related field as minimum requirement.
If other people are pitching for something else fair enough.

I agree with this.

A general developer can learn a language, however there are aspects of development such as security that require a secondary thread of knowledge. Recently I was working with quantum information scientists - they research the maths that feed into algorithms for quantum cryptography. Security IT such as CISO and down need confirmation of knowledge (certifications) for risk management, but in the end they are broad cybersecurity unlike the very specific R&D in that area.
Digital transformation (lipstick on the pig) doesn't require a plethora of degrees, however applying development to scientific computing, chemicals or material research modelling etc, does require an understanding of the field of application.

Having written target operating models and build devops teams, I would say that there is a mindset and skills associated with devops but (sorry to say) it's not rocket science. Like machine learning, the tools and languages anyone can pick up but the fundamental statistical maths and subject matter requires training (ie doing FFTs and not considering spectral leakage due to ignorance). Too many people claim to know tools and libraries - but they don't know the foggiest what they're doing with them.

 

[Maccapacca]

Hi all, I work for a food wholesaler. And getting staff is near on impossible!

Anyone else running a business having the same issues?

The CV's come in, they either don't answer the phone/email, or they don't turn up for an interview.

It's like people don't want to work, or they want top dollar, but don't want to put the effort in.

How are you advertising? Linkedin CV Library and all the others only will really promote your role if you pay and or subscribe. If you're using the free service all you are really doing is giving them your information which they then sell to recruiters. A recruitment agency pay for all these then that gives them more exposure and candidate searches.

 

[OspreyO]

I agree with this.

A general developer can learn a language, however there are aspects of development such as security that require a secondary thread of knowledge. Recently I was working with quantum information scientists - they research the maths that feed into algorithms for quantum cryptography. Security IT such as CISO and down need confirmation of knowledge (certifications) for risk management, but in the end they are broad cybersecurity unlike the very specific R&D in that area.
Digital transformation (lipstick on the pig) doesn't require a plethora of degrees, however applying development to scientific computing, chemicals or material research modelling etc, does require an understanding of the field of application.

Having written target operating models and build devops teams, I would say that there is a mindset and skills associated with devops but (sorry to say) it's not rocket science. Like machine learning, the tools and languages anyone can pick up but the fundamental statistical maths and subject matter requires training (ie doing FFTs and not considering spectral leakage due to ignorance). Too many people claim to know tools and libraries - but they don't know the foggiest what they're doing with them.

Its very hard to get this experience, with a degree or even know you like this area without some exposure to it.
I think there's a lack of willingness train people up, which I just feel its a bit hypocritical if Companies are complaining they can't people with the specific skillsets they want.

 

[malachi]

That's been my experience too - there's a lot of people out there with Comp Sci degrees yes, but I also see huge numbers of Software Engineers, Data Scientists, SREs, DevOps, NetEngs, Infra Engineers etc with no degrees, no qualifications and even no certs. Me being one of them.

Same, been working in IT for about 17 years. I have no degree but I decided to do a few certs since 2017.

Now in my current role, I am the main guy for the companies Azure environment and now taking onboard their cyber security part.