What is with HR/Job Posters...

General Chat
#1

Why does it seem that most of jobs out there now have to include web development as a skill. For example and the reason this post came about:

A friend of mine, who at times can be a little clueless as to what he says means to others, says “I applying for a new job.” I reply “Great, where at and what will you being same as now?” Of course he goes into great detail about the position and the location of the job, but one thing catches my attention and I am ask him for the link to the job posting.

I read and to my again great disgust read all about the part of the job he can do and the part HE CAN’T do. Furthermore, shouldn’t even be asked to.

Web Development:
Design and Maintain Web Sites -
Blah blah blah blah…
MSSQL Database interaction.

The site is horrible at best the way it is and was built using Yahoo builder. :roll:

I reply "No… of course it isn’t… If you are anything like me and have been working with web pages since high school and went to college for it, oh not to even mention you have to have a programmers mind set. Other than that easy as pie! :) That give him the hint that I was non to pleased with the comment.

Now, back to the reason for the post, why is that HR/Job posters think that they can just roll web development into any job, and that web development is simply using some Editior to maintain a site?? In all actuality of it, they are trying to have one person do the job of 2. And how many GIS people, secretaries, System Administrators, Help Desk, and various other positions know web develpment?? (Besides the ones that learn on the job.) Its just very annoying to me, a person who does web development for a living, to have my job so down played all the time.

Is what I do tough, no, not if you are person with the programmers thought process. But please if you no clue into what someones job is about, any job, never go up to them and say “Its not that hard right??”

#2

It’s the HR dept’s a-technical side. They’re looking for technical staff. To do what? Uuh, technical things. The website 'n stuff.

The one mistake they (and many other who hasn’t been introduced into the niche) make, is to put ‘web development’ and ‘designing websites’ on one line. And to be honest with you: I made the very same mistake and rolled right into a WebApp Devving job (I customize and manage Documentum, if you’ve ever heard of it. Tough little application, lots of Java code).

HTML is easy.

CSS is moderate.
Photoshop is moderate.

PHP/ASP is advanced.
MySQL is advanced.

.NET is hard.
Java is hard.
MSSQL is hard.

But those not introduced into it don’t know any of that. They just think ‘Web development? That’s with HTML right? That’s easy right?’

You can’t really blame them. It’s like saying ‘SKiing? That’s sliding down the slope right? That’s easy right?’ I know some skiing, and I can tell you right now that it’s NOT easy AT ALL.

You can try to teach them to not say that it’s easy at all, but that’s an endless mission. You’ll always run into pplz that just don’t know any better. You cannot really blame them for their ignorance. They just don’t understand the term ‘web development’, and what it really means.

#3

yeah, I do agree with cutting them some slack, but they are HR, shouldn’t they have a clue has to what a position/job is and differances are, not down to the details, but simply as Web, IT, Computer?? I mean I can see searching for an IT person that does more support than they should have to, but to say, We are looking for and IT Admin that will be in charge of servers, computer support, end user support, and web development.

That just seems like people being lazy to me. But again, that is just me! :)

#4

shrugs You gotta keep in mind that these people get their orders from the management:

Management tells HR: we need IT people for sysadmin and webdevver positions, and keep it cheap
HR publishes ads: we need one IT person for sysadmin and webdevver
Management tells Sr. Consultant: you’re getting a new person for sysadmin and webdevver.
Sr. Consultant tells Management: I need one for either.
Management tells Sr. Consultant: We’ll see how that fits the budget.
Management goes to restrooms and … well, you know.

That’s pretty much the way it goes, and the bigger the company, the worse it gets.

#5
That's pretty much the way it goes, and the bigger the company, the worse it gets.

Acutally I would have to slightly disagree with this statement for 2 reasons:

  1. The bigger the company the more likely they will do the research into what they need as they are not going to waste resources on people not doing the jobs they were hired for and work not being done.

  2. Smaller companies don’t have the have the money to spend on 2 salaries so they are a lot more likely to try and combine jobs and try to make one person know or do the jobs of 3 people.

I used to work for a very large newspaper in the IT department, doing Sys Admin work. They had a very set criteria of things I was to be doing and not doing. By large I mean 26 different properties in 4 different states. This didn’t include the print shops, or the TV/Radio stations. They were good at not trying to get me to jobs I was not supposed to.

Then I quite, wanted to get back to programming. And started working for a small print shop doing web sites. I was running the web department, helping with prepress work, and developing software for a company they had paired with.

Now I am back to a huge company and I am doing only the web project I am supposed to and actually would be in deep crap if I was to help on something that wasn’t assigned to me.

So I would have to say from experience, the larger companies are more in touch with the type of person they are looking for and less likely to ask you to more than your original job description as stated.

But that is just from my experience and everyone has different experiences.

#6

Indeed, my experiences are opposing yours. And it has to do with bureaucracy: the bigger the company, the more important bureaucracy becomes, and bureaucracy, i.e. the paperworks, are not peoplemanagement. I’m working for a small company with about 20 workers (both employers and employees) and everything goes well, job descriptions are flexible but never vague (and when they are, it’s easy to get things cleared up).

I’m being outsourced to large companies for helpdesk though. Companies that operate worldwide, multinationals with a billion in profits on an annual basis. And that’s where I see that money plays the bigger role. This morning I read an email about someone leaving the company (major reorganisation going on) and the job needed to be filled asap. So, instead of hiring a qualified person, they take someone else from inside the company, and put him on BOTH the opening AND his currently running project. I presume the poor guy will get a raise, but it probably won’t be proportional.

Heh, but that’s just my experiences and what I see around me.

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