Re: University Reccomendations

On 04/26/2012 06:27 PM, Steve Litt wrote:
> On Thu, 26 Apr 2012 14:33:04 -0400
> Dan McDougall<[email protected]>  wrote:
>> The point I'm making here is that it is EXCEEDINGLY RARE that you'll
>> ever have two (or more) candidates that did equally well (at a "good
>> enough" level) in your technical interview.  There will pretty much
>> always be "the guy that did the best" and "everyone else".  At that
>> point in the hiring process education is absolutely 100%
>> meaningless. No one is going to say, "Well, this guy answered all of
>> our questions very competently but he doesn't have a degree...  Let's
>> go with the guy that answered half the questions correctly instead."
> Except the non-degreed competent guy never got interviewed because
> he got screened out by HR because the job description demanded a
> bachelors degree.
I haven't seen a job posting the *requires* a degree in years but maybe 
that's "just me".  I just did a reality check by searching for some IT 
positions ("developer", "security", "linux") on dice.com in the 
Jacksonville area and here's what I've found:

- Most don't have the word "degree" at all!  I opened on dozens where 
ctrl-f couldn't find the word.
- "Bachelor's degree or equivalent combination of education and 
experience."  Note the "or equivalent..."
- "Bachelors degree in computer science, mathematics, or related field 
preferred."  *preferred* (i.e. not in the filters)
- "Candidate should have a bachelors degree in related business area or 
equivalent work experience and 6 or more years of related work 
experience." That's oddly specific and asinine at the same time.  Still, 
degree isn't required.
- "PreferredSkills/Experience Bachelors Degree in a technical field: 
Computer Science, Engineering or IT related discipline."  *Preferred* again.
- "Education equivalent to a two year degree in an information 
technology related discipline, or the equivalent in related work 
experience."  Translation:  We have no idea what is necessary to do this 
job (the rest of the wording on this one was supremely ambiguous, LOL).  
The key here is "...or equivalent in related work experience."
- "Bachelor's degree (B. A.) from four-year College or University".  I 
found one that actually seems to require a degree!  Everbank apparently 
thinks a degree and 7+ years experience with AIX, Solaris, and Red Hat 
go hand in hand.  Was for a "Lead Systems Engineer" position.
- "Bachelors degree from accredited institution in information or 
computer science, engineering or related field or at least 5 years of 
experience in Enterprise Capacity Planning role plus high school 
diploma."  Another one of those "...or at least 5 years of experience."  
this one in particular stated the job requires 5 years of experience so 
for efficiency's sake they should just take the degree part out of it.
- " Prefer BS degree or equivalent work experience in large scale 
midtier environment in System Administration Unix, Computer operations, 
programming or related field in midtier OS, enterprise virtualization or 
monitoring environment. Knowledge of midtier hardware: AIX, Dell 
commodity, Sun Sparc and blade technology."  This one makes it sound 
like they'll hire someone with a degree *or* someone that actually knows 
how to do the job.  I'm guessing they really mean the latter :D

I actually had a good time reading the job postings.  There were lots 
that made me laugh and laugh (many years of experience in "Reduce Map", 
really? Ahahaha).  The most fun were the Everbank positions where they 
had requirements lists so long and so specific I can't help but wonder 
if the postings are only for show.  Meaning, maybe the don't *want* to 
hire anyone but have to post the job so they can get an H1B or 
something.  I dunno.  I just find it highly unrealistic to post a job 
looking for someone with 10+ years of experience administering every 
Unix there is, an equivalent amount of Windows administration 
experience, Oracle database expertise, Cisco certifications, and a 
variety of other highly-specialized IT-related skills that you could 
only ever pick up if you worked for a huge company.

All that for a job that looks like you'll be doing data entry; plugging 
IP address into a boring monitoring tool all day.

-- 
"Those who choose proprietary software will pay for their decision!"