Unrealistic employee candidate requirements?

[DragonPetter]

It seems like finding an engineering/tech job online is a catch 22. How do we get experience if no one is willing to offer it to us without already having the experience?

Do you think tech companies have unrealistic requirements in their job listings? I've been looking recently online, and they have almost impossible requirements for even intermediate level positions, especially when it comes to years of experience.

I don't understand how they can be so specific in skills, experience, years worked, and still hope to find the right employee when there is so much more to a good employee than these factors. I think these industries are shooting themselves in the foot if they are not willing to bring in new blood for a new generation of engineers.

What do I do if there is a job I want, but don't have the specific experience or skills that they list? Why do recruiters not realize they are turning away very promising candidates who don't even want to bother applying after reading the list of unrealistic expectations?

 

[fss]

Just go ahead and apply anyways. Everyone else does. Rare is the candidate that meets the laundry list of "requirements."

 

[twofish-quant]

Do you think tech companies have unrealistic requirements in their job listings? I've been looking recently online, and they have almost impossible requirements for even intermediate level positions, especially when it comes to years of experience.

Yes, but companies invariably don't tell you the real requirements, and often the requirements are too high so the company has to settle. That's the reason that companies get spammed with resumes.

I don't understand how they can be so specific in skills, experience, years worked, and still hope to find the right employee when there is so much more to a good employee than these factors.

They don't. We're looking for someone that can walk on water. Since you can only stand on water, you're hired.

What do I do if there is a job I want, but don't have the specific experience or skills that they list?

Send your resume. They may immediately toss it in the trash, but you lose nothing if they don't.

Why do recruiters not realize they are turning away very promising candidates who don't even want to bother applying after reading the list of unrealistic expectations?

Because that's not what happens. Once you start looking for work, you quickly figure out that it doesn't cost you anything to ignore job requirements and send in your resume. This creates a problem for the employer in that they are then submerged by resumes by people that clearly are not qualified for the job, at which point they hand the resume to some HR problem, and the HR person starts tossing out people that don't have the right degrees.

 

[KingNothing]

Reading this thread has helped me as well. There have been many jobs I have not applied for because of crazy requirements. I guess I should start doing that.

Coincidentally, I had a very good second interview yesterday for a position where on paper, I literally met about 10% of the requirements. When I talked to the hiring manager, he seemed a bit chagrined to admit that the req's were unrealistic.

 

[DragonPetter]

Thank you very much for the answers, that is a bit relieving to hear, although it still doesn't make much sense for them to do it this way.

So now I have a new question. What do you do if you get a job and they expect you to know how to do something that you've never done before and realize you might be in over your head without someone to train you?

 

[AlephZero]

So now I have a new question. What do you do if you get a job and they expect you to know how to do something that you've never done before and realize you might be in over your head without someone to train you?

Legally, that is their problem not yours, provided you didn't tell any lies about what you could do.

This is quite a normal situation in an "entry level" job. For example I used to work in a group of about 20 MEs, working on a particular type of dynamics problem that you might have studied as part of one lecture in a first ME degree, or not studied at all. We expect ME graduates in their first job to know enough dynamics to learn fast, but we certainly don't expect them to know everything up front, and we wouldn't ask them any technical questions on the topic at interview, because whether or not they already knew how to answer them would not be a good selection criterion. (We would ask them some questions to see if they understood more about dynamics than parrotting a few fomulas, however!)

Just be honest about what you do and don't know, and be constructive about how to fill the gaps. Trying to bluff your way through won't impress anybody.

 

[twofish-quant]

So now I have a new question. What do you do if you get a job and they expect you to know how to do something that you've never done before and realize you might be in over your head without someone to train you?

Go to google and amazon and start learning whatever it is that you have to learn to do what it is that you have to do.

One thing about business which is cool is that you are always forced to learn new stuff. The only situation where this won't work is if there is human safety involved (i.e. if someone expects you to do brain surgery or design a nuclear power plant, and you aren't trained, you should resign), but most situations aren't like that.

The really cool jobs are those in which the reason you are asked to do something that you haven't done before is because you are asked to do something *no one* has done before.