I’m a NUS alumni and current a Senior Manager for one of the biggest IT Firm. Just last week I met guys from my batch, most of whom were hiring manager in reputable firms.
In our conversation we realize we have the same serious issue, and our solutions to that is exactly the same, but we’re still not getting results.
We have a talent shortage. Our solution is high salary, head hunt and expand to non-CS people.
What we found out were the same, most of the fresh grads are not qualified for the job, cannot perform under stress, fail deadlines and leaves between 6 – 12 months. It isn’t that we didn’t vet our candidates, we have rigorous interviewing process, with in-person coding test, personality test and a 60-90k package for fresh grad, much more if you’ve xp.
On average only less than 10% manage to go into final round of interview. Yet 80% leaves within the first year without producing any good results, and those who stayed on would have another offer lined up by their third year. University and GPA are poor indicator, in fact I had xp with a few poly student out performing NUS FCH but leaves due to better offer, our company refuse to pay non-degree holder more than 50k per annum. Some of the wiser among readers can guess my firm.
We also realize that many younger candidates, <5 yrs xp, has an average of 1 yr tenure but virtually same as fresh grads. Despite that many still demand high salary, we think GES is partly to blame. Interestingly, we also realized that a particular group of them were also willing to accept a much lower package for a less demanding role, I guess their xp have traumatize them. Tracking our ex employees, we realize that about half of those who couldn’t handle it change to a different field and a sizable portion took easier roles.
Those >5 yrs xp is a huge mix bag but many have unrealistic expectation due to how high we’re offering fresh grads. The most Inspirational case I came across was this one candidate who asked for a 70% jump from his previous salary because a particular ecommerce was listing high salary for fresh grads and he feels that he should get 20% on top of that, he barely pass our coding test with his 4 years xp. I do not blame him, the market is broken because there is just not enough talent.
To put my point across, in my company we track the progress and output of every SWE. Last year, 53% of the productivity is created by 16% of the team. All of them are in the senior or lead position, all of them are overwork and burned out. Those <5yrs xp represent 58 % of the team but only accounts for 27% productivity with one unicorn responsible for ~3% productivity. To be fair, about half of them were hired last years, they account for 7% productivity.
I don’t know what’s wrong with our education system, but we aren’t creating talents or hard workers.