Clickstream

Company Seeks IT Architect Who Knows Everything

This [formerly on Dice] job posting is a perfect example of using keywords to find unqualified applicants, taken to absurdist extremes. Here's a nice excerpt:

Technical Development Language Experience:
The optimum candidate would have recent (within the last 6 months) work experience at a developer level, and long-term history (15+ years or more) working with the following list of languages.
Java (JAVA (JDK, J2SE, J2EE, Swing/AWT, RMI, JDBC,
Applets, JSP/Servlets, JavaBeans, EJB, SSL, Threads,
Sockets, i18n, JAXP, JAXM, JAXB, JAXR, J2ME)
Microsoft Visual C# .NET
Microsoft Visual C++ .NET
Microsoft Visual J# .NET
JavaScript
XML
XSL
Perl
CGI
Oracle 9i (PLSQL)
C++
Shell Scripting
ASP (Com, Dcom)
Visual Basic
HTML / DHTML / XHTML

So they expect someone to have experience with all of these things within the past 6 months? If you read the rest of the posting you'll think it's as funny as I do. I'm sure they'll have no trouble whatsoever finding someone Real Soon Now. Particularly when the applicant discovers that the rate is...$42 per hour.

This is a perfect example of poor hiring practices in action. Instead of thinking about what a candidate needs to succeed in the position, someone threw together a list of every buzzword they ever heard. All they need to do is run a buzzword filter on resumes and the most matches is obviously the best candidate. HR departments should be ashamed of work like this. Hiring managers should be organizing a revolt. Except that half the time they're responsible as well.

If you get this job I want a referral fee.
Sorry, they removed the posting. Too much traffic I guess. I'll fetch it out of my browser cache later.

Posted by Mark Thursday, May 15, 2003 12:06:00 AM | permalink |