Maybe they should change their interview process to identify these problems before hiring.

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Originally posted by parabellum:

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Originally posted by darthfuster:
No one could express it before but we all knew by instinct that it was a bad idea to shut everything down.

This is more than that. They're talking about people under twenty-five, meaning that some of them were halfway (or more) through college when the COVID fraud was implemented.

No, this can't be blamed on school lockdowns within the past three years. This is symptomatic of the everybody-gets-a-trophy bullshit and the just-read-your-iPhone-all-day laziness. It's been going on for many years and the chickens have come home to roost.

And I don't care. As a matter of fact, I think it's funny. The old way of doing things was outdated and wrong, somehow, and this is what they get when things are changed.

A few years ago a new neighbor was telling me he didn’t realize how expensive retirement would be. The guy was a college professor, Phd. in economics…..

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Originally posted by parabellum:

No, this can't be blamed on school lockdowns within the past three years. This is symptomatic of the everybody-gets-a-trophy bullshit and the just-read-your-iPhone-all-day laziness. It's been going on for many years and the chickens have come home to roost.

And I don't care. As a matter of fact, I think it's funny. The old way of doing things was outdated and wrong, somehow, and this is what they get when things are changed.

Exactly right. Having taught engineering courses for 25 years, the quality of student has continually dropped. There has always been poor students, and those with bad attitudes, but the majority of students wanted to learn and eventually developed the skills necessary to be a decent engineer. There were, of course, the stars. Post-pandemic, the decline accelerated, and now, I would say the majority of students simply do not care. Not only do they not know anything, they don't believe they need to know anything, and they simply do not care. When I taught difficult "weed out" classes 15 years ago, I would have a long line of students at every office hour, complaints and gnashing of teeth to the Department Chair. Now, they just slide through the course, and when they get the "F," they file a grievance for discrimination, etc. Rather than focus on teaching or research, now I focus on creating cheat-proof exams and documentation to support the inevitable grievance.

It would be easy to not care, but I know that these shitheads are going to be designing things my life, or my children's life, depend upon. While there are plenty of checks to catch errors, the older engineers that do care are retiring, and the shitheads move up. Checks don't work if the person doing the checking is stupid, lazy, or simply apathetic. Stockton Rush and the disaster of the Titan submersible is a case study in where Gen Z attitudes are taking us. While Rush wasn't Gen Z, he was trying to be a young hipster engineer displaying the same reckless attitude as I see in the current generation of engineering students. At least he killed himself along with his victims.

DrDan, your experience should be the focus of the WSJ article instead of the drivel they put out attributing this failing to covid.

While I have no doubt that the pandemic has and will cause problems with capability of new hires, I think some of the examples cited in this article have been happening long before Covid got here.

I have a degree in mechanical engineering. While my school had a machine shop, I never saw it until a portion of my senior year, and it was really introduced as an option to help you in one class. There were no courses that trained you in in them and I graduated over 15 years ago. Our coursework was heavy on theory and computers. It never seemed right to me even then.

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Originally posted by mrvmax:
Maybe they should change their interview process to identify these problems before hiring.

I used to sit with the other Foremen and our Supervisor and go over the resumes for new hires . We only saw the ones that HR forwarded to us . " Skills and abilities " were sorely lacking on a lot of them and it was questionable if they even met the basic qualifications to apply . It was obvious that there were other things in play ..

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Originally posted by mrvmax:
Maybe they should change their interview process to identify these problems before hiring.

But the problem is in too many large companies, it’s HR who is doing the interview and hiring process, not the actual managers who need competent people. HR is either getting baffled by bullshit in the interview process or has a quota to fill or both and are letting these unqualified people get hired.

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Originally posted by PASig:

quote:

Originally posted by mrvmax:
Maybe they should change their interview process to identify these problems before hiring.

But the problem is in too many large companies, it’s HR who is doing the interview and hiring process, not the actual managers who need competent people. HR is either getting baffled by bullshit in the interview process or has a quota to fill or both and are letting these unqualified people get hired.

I was an attorney and, for a few years, my company made the mistake of making me a manager of a staff of junior attorneys.

At one point, I needed to hire another attorney. I could not look for one on my own and was only allowed to consider candidates vetted by HR. The people they sent me checked the right diversity boxes - except they weren't lawyers. I could never seem to get it through to the dim-witted HR drones that a prerequisite for an attorney position was that the candidate actually have a law degree and be admitted to the state bar.

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Originally posted by PASig:

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Originally posted by mrvmax:
Maybe they should change their interview process to identify these problems before hiring.

But the problem is in too many large companies, it’s HR who is doing the interview and hiring process, not the actual managers who need competent people. HR is either getting baffled by bullshit in the interview process or has a quota to fill or both and are letting these unqualified people get hired.

It's a problem for smaller companies as well. A local spring manufacturing company with a couple hundred employees had a banner 'Hiring all shifts now' in front for two years. A friend applied in person, was told he's perfect, set up an interview and then the company manager didn't show up for the interview. He called the company and found it wasn't really a company manager as they had outsourced their hiring process. This process happened a few more times and after being ghosted twice more he gave up applying there.

From talking to friends, this isn't unusual. Companies said they are desperate for people as they ghost applicants that try to apply. I've heard enough personal stories to conclude there's a lot more here than just applicants not being qualified.

Trying to get rid of a turd at work for the past year. This 21 year old twat lied his ass off on his resume and is less useful than any of our worse interns. I'd say he functions at a high school level, but he got hired into a senior level position and makes close to 80k a year.

Since he hit his one year mark recently, I've been "encouraging" him to apply to other positions outside my organization. It's just too damn hard to fire someone and management has no balls.

I've since dramatically increased my level of technical grilling of candidates during interviews. Nobody seems to want me on their panel any more...

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We only saw the ones that HR forwarded to us . " Skills and abilities " were sorely lacking on a lot of them and it was questionable if they even met the basic qualifications to apply . It was obvious that there were other things in play ..

Ah yes, HR.
Seems we've been spending too much of the "teaching/learning' time indoctrinating. If you combine the everyone gets a trophy stuff, with gender and race, it ends up looking like this:




I'd guess a good chunk of people processed through our "educational system" in the last decade or so, spent as much time discussing gender/race/societal issues as they did on the 3 R's... Sooo, ummm, basic "skills and abilities", what are those?!

The downward spiral continues. 30 years ago I found it common for recent high school graduates to have very low math skills and many were functionally illiterate (unable to read and understand simple instructions, unable to compose and write a simple report).

Today's high school graduates are probably being taught by those I found totally lacking 30 years ago.

Diplomas and certifications are largely meaningless today.

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Originally posted by selogic:

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Originally posted by mrvmax:
Maybe they should change their interview process to identify these problems before hiring.

I used to sit with the other Foremen and our Supervisor and go over the resumes for new hires . We only saw the ones that HR forwarded to us . " Skills and abilities " were sorely lacking on a lot of them and it was questionable if they even met the basic qualifications to apply . It was obvious that there were other things in play ..

This. Many companies have outsourced their candidate gatekeeping to software, woke HR ingrates, or third parties who use DEI as the primary qualification. Schools also face similar gatekeeping scenarios that focus on other considerations than merit.

There are plenty of hard working and diligent folks in the workforce, but they often get ignored and screened out of the process before interviews even happen.

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Originally posted by HKAngusKL:This. Many companies have outsourced their candidate gatekeeping to software, woke HR ingrates, or third parties who use DEI as the primary qualification. Schools also face similar gatekeeping scenarios that focus on other considerations than merit.

There are plenty of hard working and diligent folks in the workforce, but they often get ignored and screened out of the process before interviews even happen.

Yep, in larger companies and even some smaller ones, HR's "goals and guidelines", factor in a lot more than simple "qualifications". I would also guess that many internet "job search" sites/services also do the same thing, so even if you're a small business and use those sites, guess what?...

Ruh roh, the most qualified person for your opening might be an older or semi-retired white male, one wonders who they screen out first.

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Originally posted by PASig:

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Originally posted by mrvmax:
Maybe they should change their interview process to identify these problems before hiring.

But the problem is in too many large companies, it’s HR who is doing the interview and hiring process, not the actual managers who need competent people. .....

"Who works for who, huh?"
--Hector Salamanca in Better Call Saul, Season 3 Episode 6

This is what happens when HR is allowed to go unchecked.

The most important task for a manager is building the right team with the right people.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: radioman,

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:

quote:

Originally posted by mrvmax:
Maybe they should change their interview process to identify these problems before hiring.

But the problem is in too many large companies, it’s HR who is doing the interview and hiring process, not the actual managers who need competent people. HR is either getting baffled by bullshit in the interview process or has a quota to fill or both and are letting these unqualified people get hired.

I’m no longer a manager, but I look over resumes and develop questions for every tech job in my area of expertise (and some outside of my area). It’s easy to weed out the slackers. Although I have no degree, I interview degreed candidates regularly and have even interviewed PhD Engineers. I guess I’ve been fortunate enough to work for companies that value experienc. Companies can change or suffer - it’s their choice.

Or, companies won't change and we all will suffer

I could not read past the part where the newly minted engineer could not do lathe work that's supposed to be mastered in the first or second year.

I could just imagine the newly minted engineer's first question to the consultant: "Before we begin, what's your preferred pronouns?"

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Originally posted by PASig:
Yep. It’s a brave new world now out there

We have had several incidents in the past year that I’ve been involved in investigating where young new employees are bringing babies and toddlers into work with them, acting like it’s not even a big deal.

My buddy is a firearms instructor for the Sheriff's dept. As part of his job, he also has to train and qualify the jail staff. Recently they had a female who was a new hire for the jail, and as part of her initial training she had to qualify on her handgun. She showed up to the range (mind you, this was scheduled in the middle of the scheduled work day, not during off-hours) with her 2-3 year-old kid and said she didn't have anybody to watch it. She wasn't employed much longer.

Another agency recently had a road officer who washed out of FTO about midway through because she kept calling off or showing up late because she had to take care of her kid. It was almost a daily occurrence.

My SIL calls off work all the time because she needs "mental health days".

The business of bringing your kid to work has gotten progressively worse. Poor judgment is endemic. To top it off the kids are usually poorly behaved.
Bringing your kid to work signals poor judgment and common sense. There are always alternatives.