On my recent trip to NZ and AU (to speak about project management), I had some informal conversations with people who could not find enough people for their projects.From my non-scientific survey, it appears that we have started a technical hiring crunch (not enough candidates for positions). Consider people you might not have considered before:
- Part-time workers
- People over 40. Yes, we can still see and hear. Development is not just a young person's job. 🙂
- People over 65. Not everyone enjoys retirement.
- People who may not have a degree, but have an avocation for software.
I'll be thinking about this for a while, because if we really are headed for a hiring crunch, it will be global this time.
Labels: agile hiring, recruiting
For testers, there’s been a dearth of skilled people on the ground in Melbourne (Australia) for a while. We had good success training people from a non-testing background, such that most developers never actually realised that those people had no prior experience. We had less success with an over-40, but that was a failure of our hiring process at the time (as well as some unfortunate one-off mishaps). Lesson learned…Hiring is a cruel teacher!
For anyone else in Australia wanting more info on my experiences, or some pointers, feel free to drop me a line via my website (if I don’t get inspired by this to blog). It’s hard work, but I think we actually got much better candidates than the market would have provided even in better times.
In short, just my endorsement of what you’ve said. Australian companies seem very reluctant to cast their net further and wider, to my constant disappointment. It can be hard work, but organisationally, you will usually be better for the experience.
“Headed our way”? In the New England region of the US it’s already here, and bad. Everybody I know (myself included) is hiring, and we can’t find good technical people. We can find mediocre people, but sometimes it’s hardly worth it.
-sigh-
I think it’s already here in the UK – certainly in England. We’re already looking at different options – but age has never been a factor for us.
Susan.
Interesting… I thought that this phenomenon is happening only in Romania. Companies from abroad still come here in search of cheap workforce and are experiencing the same problem: cannot find people matching their requirements. IÂve started to blame the Romanian academic education that is not as reliable as it used to be. But seeing your blog and the previous comments IÂm starting to think a little bit different.