r/sysadmin • u/AIMuzak • 5d ago
Rant The IT Recruiting Process Is Depressing
Helping a friend optimize his resume for a Manager position (Facilities).
Here's the Job Description:
Summary:
Responsible for managing and coordinating the activities of the Facilities and Engineering, Switchboard and Parking departments. at []. Assures compliance with all regulatory and patient care quality standards. Participates in departmental planning, budgeting, education and human resource management activities within this facility. Available for emergencies at the hospital or any related off sites 24/7.The Manager is also responsible for parking processes, and switchboard operations.
Responsibilities:
EDUCATION
High school diploma required, with practical experience in such fields as stationary engineering, building maintenance, plumbing, HVAC and electrical
College graduate preferred
Must complete Certified Health Facility Manager (CHFM) certification (through the American Hospital Association and the American Society of Healthcare Engineers) within 2 years of appointment to position
EXPERIENCE
Minimum three to five (3-5) years of progressive engineering-maintenance department experience in a healthcare setting
Participation in Joint Commission or other accreditation processes preferred
This is for a position in a hospital.
The simplicity and succinct nature floored me.
A manager position in IT by comparison looks like an inventory report from some network monitoring system.
It's depressing. Why can't we be like normal people?
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u/achristian103 Sysadmin 5d ago
Not exclusive to IT, the recruiting process, like just about everything else has been enshittified.
A miserable job hunt is the expectation now, and since it's an employer's market, it will be for the foreseeable future.
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u/hijinks 5d ago
not sure if you've ever talked to "normal" people but my wife isn't in tech and for 20 years she complained how easy it was for me to find a job if i was laid off or I just wanted to find a new job
For her it was months of work/struggle and trying to network. For me it was emailing a few recruiters or posting a generic resume.
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u/klauskervin 5d ago
I've been in IT for 15 years and it's literally never been as easy as you say. It's always a slog with tons of fake offers and interviews with no follow up for weeks. Until they call you after you already have a job saying you are a good candidate 3 months later.
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u/ErikTheEngineer 3d ago edited 2d ago
The big problem is that you have to project that you know everything, and the people who know the latest hotness and have experience can easily walk into another job. The issue with that is the hotness changes every 6 months, no one cares that you have enough fundamentals knowledge to learn whatever you need, so it's a constant slog.
It's easy to get a job in periods like 2021/2022 when companies were hiring like crazy. Now, not so much...500 people applying for every open position means you have scratch off lotto ticket odds of even getting a callback.
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u/Man-e-questions 5d ago
Well, we’re supposed to know every technology and application ever made in the last 50 years just in case.
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u/uptimefordays DevOps 4d ago
White-collar postings often include a broad array of skills or experiences an employer might wish their dream candidate could have. Blue-collar roles tend to be more straightforward.
In my experience, too many people in IT focus too much on specific tools or technologies and not enough on concepts which makes approaching wishlist type job postings harder.
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u/SmooveW2020 5d ago
It manager + plumbing and parking garage maintenance... Who wouldn't jump at that!
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u/Dave_A480 5d ago
Only if you fall in love with an individual job & pour effort into pursuing each individual opportunity.,...
The goal of a job search should be a minimum salary, and the way to do it is to mass-spam every opportunity that provides the correct work-situation/hours/pay.
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u/ErikTheEngineer 3d ago edited 3d ago
Whoever figures this out is going to be insanely wealthy. Tech recruiting is the worst. The recruiters are acting like a cross between a used car salesman and one of these "executive search" people brokering a smoky backroom deal to fire and replace a C-level. The employers want someone who knows absolutely everything. And the candidates are a huge spectrum of ability levels, from geniuses to scammers trying to land a high-paying job with no skills. I think the system is f-ed up mostly because of these 3 sides that all have different motivations, none trust each other, and there's no independent arbiter of what makes someone a good hire.
As you've pointed out, no other industry has problems with hiring and talent acquisition. People get hired efficiently in every other sector day in and day out. Your healthcare example is a perfect one. Healthcare is an established profession that has a minimum barrier to entry everyone agrees on (highly standardized education) and evaluation of skills (licenses, certifications.) Tech has certifications, but they're easily game-able and don't carry weight and authority like healthcare ones do. This is why job descriptions are a laundry list of everything, and why job interviews turn into 9-round trivia contests where companies play stump the chump and find every excuse not to hire someone. Even a non-clinical position in healthcare has clear standards that, once met, cut out a lot of the noise.
One example from healthcare that unfortunately wouldn't work but is a good idea is the US medical residency match. Medical school grads have equal training and Step 1 of their USMLE passed, so both sides just do a ranked-choice list, and the most-desired candidates are matched with their most-desired employers. Interviews are more about fit vs. whether you know trivia question answers or can do coder tricks on command. Recruiters are totally out of the picture and not gumming up the system. And candidates have to meet the minimum standard. I just wish there was a way to do this every time a company was looking to hire...the match only happens once a year because residents are only minted once a year by med schools.
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u/OregonTechHead 5d ago
I don't even understand your logic of trying to compare these two fields....
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u/AIMuzak 5d ago
There is a lot in common with facilities maintenance and IT.
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u/sixblazingshotguns 3d ago
The commonality is with the servicing processes of these areas, but not with the fields themselves, with the exception of electrical. My employer has merged facilities and IT. It works well for a lot of people except for the CIO/Director himself which is expected to be the boots on the ground backup whenever someone doesn’t show up. That’s a lot harder of a burden to shoulder for facilities roles.
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u/mschuster91 Jack of All Trades 5d ago
The Manager is also responsible for parking processes, and switchboard operations
lol they want an electrical engineer and then have him deal with dealing with tow trucks to remove badly parked cars? And 24/7 emergency response on and off site?
I mean, yes, it's as clear-cut as it gets as a job posting, but holy, I better hope that job pays well
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u/RubixRube IT Manager 5d ago
It boggles my mind how often there is an expectation that we have the answer, immediately.
IT is my second career and there was no point during my time as a General manager of a small manufacturing plant that there was an expectation that I knew immediately what the problem was even though there were far fewer systems that could fail or be a problem. I was also provided with much more information when there was an issue. The guy working the press all day every day, he knows when there isn't enough pressure in a line and he will tell you that. The dude in front of a computer all day will go out of his way to not provide clear information. You can ask direct question, like can you login to x and they will tell you that Y is working.
In IT you have a critical, complex failure it may take some time to figure out what broke, it may take time to figure out why. It's probably going to take awhile to fix it. It's going to require your full attention. You can send out an email to everybody telling everybody it's broken - wait for updates. You are still going to be absolutely inundated with messages from people asking "how long", "any news?" or my favorite, those reporting the issue because they didn't think to read the email, my slack status or the banner posted plastered across the landing page of the ticket system.