Recruitment and HR 2024 – what’s new
Average skill level. It’s not on the open market, and here’s why.
Average in terms of average wild boar business – this is a set of knowledge for the integrator department (so as not to pay for the integrator’s work), but pay such an employee 20% more than a junior. Moreover, the difference for the regions may be at the level of “raised from 60 to 70”, for Moscow it is “we will raise it later – in a year from 140k to 160k, you will live richly.” Given the current inflation, this is a huge increase in 1–2 years, especially if calculated at the exchange rate of a dirty green piece of paper.
Average level for the “market” – not described anywherebecause if you describe it numerically as “passed 3 intermediate-level vendor exams,” then the cost of one set of “course plus intermediate-level exam” immediately exceeds 500k rubles, without considering the loss of employee working time for self-training.
Accordingly, such an employee or sharply exceeds the “average” level in his own opinion – while not reaching the “average level” in the employer’s opinion, or stops developing qualifications, grows within the organization to the level of “head of a department from himself.” At the same time, it must be said that his salary is still raised reluctantly – because where will he go if he hasn’t left before, but they can give him a nice sign.
A practically non-overlapping area is formed from the ideas of the employee and the employer in terms of the relationship between knowledge \ salary \ other requirements. Articles begin like:
The shortage of (highly qualified, low-paid) specialists was revealed thanks to a survey by the Institute of Economic Policy. Gaidar (IEP), RBC got acquainted with the results of the study.
And finally, a high level of qualifications. Team leads, architects, and other gentlemen tomatoes.
There are such people, but they are either known to everyone who is entitled to their position, or they are rented out by someone from the top 10 list 25 best Russian system integrators 2023 or Ranking TAdviser100: The largest IT companies in Russia 2023.
And all three of these skill groups are facing a new trend in hiring and the market: the separation of technical and administrative personnel.
I had only read about this before in my grandfather’s history about the USSR. This is a very interesting movement. It is expressed in the fact that in the USSR in the last 20 years of its existence, since the time of failure Kosygin reform From 1965 to 1968, there were three parallel tables of ranks – technical, administrative and nomenclature. The technical job involved working as an engineer (already, of course, a communist) – the head of a section – a workshop – at most a plant, but a plant – rather as an exception. The administrative report card was more interesting; you could go to the deputy manager on issues of distribution of bonuses, vacation schedules, places in a sanatorium and other distribution of benefits, or regulation of access to the management body. The leadership, in turn, was already moving along the nomenklatura line, where one could enter either from the administrative one, or immediately start with the leadership of the party cell, then the district or factory committee, and then the beginning of the nomenklatura (not to be confused with the party) career. So, both in the USSR and now, a position in distribution and personnel already belonged to, as it were, a higher social group from the point of view of unspoken social relations (and real access to special distributors).
Consequence – part of HR (not all) immediately looks at any candidate “from above”, from the series “the land surveyor arrived to the second deputy castellan and should bow to his feet only because he was called here in the first place” – evaluating both him and his resume, according to his own set of features. Signs that are often not at all related to either working soft skills or technical knowledge. Someone is looking for the same charisma in a candidate as that Turk on his last vacation, someone is assessing presence of capital experience someone is looking for theirs.
Since the task of such HR (there are others, they just work and work well) is NOT HIRING, BUT IMITATING VIOLENT ACTIVITY, then all their numerous advice “how to write a resume correctly so that ME THE QUEEN OF THE SEA will like it” may contradict the position of the same queen, even sitting in the same open space. This, of course, does not exclude the mass of fake resumes – which are written by the same HR, as they see fit. And separately, it is necessary to take into account systems for automatic analysis of resumes, for which the resume must be redesigned, adding key phrases for robots at the end.
At the stage a little higher, bureaucracy begins “according to Kafka,” or rather, according to his Castle.
This was – it seems to me – less before Covid. Now it’s “more”. It looks like this: having burned into the coals from pressure on both sides, from the flow of completely unsuitable vacancies from HR on the one hand, and pressure from the authorities from above “why don’t you fill the vacancy” – the boss begins to look for workers himself, and – runs into problems in advance established salary scale. In slightly larger organizations, these forks are distinguished by a huge assortment, called “grades”. But a review of grades is only possible for the entire organization, so sometimes even the highest grade of those hiring does not correspond to the average in another organization, but it is impossible to do anything about it.
Why is this model, having bad hiring and keeping staff under constant stress and overwork, beneficial to an effective owl?
Because in this model no one is to blame, and the problem can be solved at any time, but at a cost. An efficient owl doesn’t have its own nuts, so why feel sorry for them?
All grades, forks, states were agreed upon at the very top, and the very top was not mistaken in approving these grades and just such ones.
If something goes wrong, then the employee is to blame.
If something seriously goes wrong, and the employee cannot repair, implement, or master it, then you can always outsource the work to a contractor. It will be guaranteed to be expensive, and where it is expensive, and the work is not measured in cubic meters and tons, you can always negotiate with someone and tailor it a little. Someone may say “ugh, kickbacks and corruption” – not at all, on the contrary. This is a reasonable use of the budget, because the employee is to blame for the situation, and management, on the contrary, fixed everything.
What does it look like in a particular example?
Looks very funny. Potential colleagues came to me in January 2024 to talk. Three years ago I had an interview with them, but then we didn’t agree on money – they offered less money than I already had. Since then, part of the organization has left for neighboring countries, some have changed jobs – but all the same problems that they had remained in the same places. They even raised the salary for the vacancy – then it was, roughly, $2,500 at the rate of 75 = 190k, and now they already have 240k, that’s 50/190 – 26% in three years, even higher than official inflation! It’s no longer possible, because of the grades. And in order to search better, they hired another HR, and he has been searching and searching, this time for a new rate, since the summer of 2023, and still nothing comes of it, how can this be. What could possibly go wrong? But they NEED it, they are planning a transition to import substitution, but they could not agree on a budget for an integrator, and the deadlines are running out, what should they do. In three years they already had two architects, one was fired due to incompetence, the second ran away on his own when he saw the volume of work. I sympathized with my colleagues and advised them to hire more HR.
And what should a worker do in such a market?
Nothing to do”. Improve soft skills and qualifications. The hiring situation in such a market is as follows:
Phase 1: Deep Concern. For six months or a year, perhaps a year and a half, all the effective owls involved go to meetings and express concern to each other that somehow the jerboas are not coping. They nod, agree, and move tasks to the next sprint, problems into technical debt, projects until the budget is agreed upon by the tender committee.
Phase 2: Serious concern. The most important element of reporting is broken at the wrong time – a beautiful “everything is fine” schedule when viewed by the deputy general or a representative of the parent organization. Or the office Wi-Fi breaks down because they forgot to update the keys, and no one knows how to do it. The boss slams his fist on the table and says NOW! OTHERWISE I WILL ORDER YOU TO BE EXECUTED!
Phase 3. Never happened and here we go again. All of the above breaks down again, for the same reasons. Because they didn’t do anything.
Phase 4. The head of the department is called to his beloved director, he is given an individual budget for hiring, regardless of all grades, he personally, through his connections, within 2-3-5 days he finds the person who will do the repairs. Or an integrator is urgently hired, an agreement is concluded with him so that this will never happen again, and the integrator hires someone on staff.
As you can easily see, a real vacancy has not been put on the market all this time. There is a stub for the vacancy, but the vacancy itself, if necessary, is filled by other people and other methods, or is not closed at all. This is also why doing some kind of statistics on hh, linkedin or habrocareer == a pointless exercise, regardless of the sample size.
Addition. An indispensable tool for composing anniversary articles, service feuilletons, as well as ceremonial poems, odes and troparions, as well as deciphering individual lines from vacancies.
Market salary (competitive salary) == 10% lower than yours now, but we will lie about bonuses if necessary.
Remote work == no more than 2 days a month, no further than the city, after six months in the office and signing an agreement to install a Russian-made A-probe (from natural renewable material from a leading Russian manufacturer).
There is VHI == there are three clinics in VHI and they won’t agree on anything more complicated than an enema.
Knowledge of KVM, VMware, Hyper‑V, Proxmox and bhyve is required == we ourselves don’t know what we have installed and we don’t care.
Working with innovative projects == you will try to do the architect’s work instead of him, because the invited architect from the integrator does not know how to talk with management.
You need to be able to configure Mikrotik == there was no budget, and there isn’t now.
Gitlab/Github knowledge required == we don’t have it, but it sounds good.
Requires knowledge of Mavem == terrible legacy in three layers.
We have a monolith on symfony == we change admins and devops every six months, they can’t stand it any longer.
We have a test task, a small one == task for a week, then the customer will say that the code is not very good. And it will disappear.
We have an algorithmic session with a time limit == you will pass it if you solve the first 400 problems on the portals according to the list above.
We have a test task for UX/UI/animation/rendering == it’s strange that there is no ready-made list of “leaders in deception in the Russian-language segment.”
We are a resident of Skolkovo == RUN FOOLS
And Happy New Year everyone!*
* According to the lunar calendar.
