Are there too many qualified people chasing too few opportunities?
Asking about general experiences with seeking new opportunities. Personally, a couple years ago, I had about 2 years of finance experience fresh out of undergrad and wanted to pursue a role in a roll-up strategy focused on acquisitions. The role reported to the CFO and was supposed to primarily focus on finance support in addition to supporting the acquisitions process.
Ended up losing out to a guy who was at least 5 years older than me with associate/VP level experience, and he ended up staying for a little over 1 year, before becoming a director somewhere else 1.5 years later.
What I thought about this is, how does a guy pursue a lowly analyst role, then decide to quickly become a director not long after, while not even gaining seniority in a single company? It makes me think that his experience level was so much more extensive than mine that he had the privilege to do this.
I oftentimes notice that employers have such good options, it's like they don't know what to do. Interview processes get extended out to 4, 5, 6 rounds instead of the already long 3 rd process. Employers are able to drag out processes and they still have their offers easily accepted because even though the employer has multiple great candidates to select from, applicants have only 1 great opportunity that is realistic for them.
Am I alone in this experience?
I think this has been true for a while, especially in industries that are not very big. There are a lot of really qualified people out there willing to take entry level roles to move somewhere else.
That sucks.
You can get a rough estimate of people's backgrounds when applying through LInkdin. On the job insights section at the bottom of the positing it shows a variety of people applying for the same entry level position. You have people at the "director/VP" level and people with masters degrees as well as people with 5+ years of experience.
Type in a job that you think is entry level, click on a posting, then scroll down to the insights section.
That's huge, I never noticed that actually.
Over the last 10 years, yes it's certainly the case now. When your parents were fresh out of undergrad? Not so much. Employers now will always have the upper-hand and can do what they please when they have 30 great target-school candidates interviewing for 2-3 slots. And these older gen-x/baby boomers wonder why the young prefer "socialism" whatever that means.
What do you expect when you have 25 year old's with college degrees that can't buy a car, much less a home, much less get married and have children. Why would you be surprised they prefer some form of socialism? It's a systemic failure. On the other hand, it's also perfectly valid to ignore this as well and tell young people they need to work harder, pick themselves, complain less, etc. BUT, don't be surprised when taxes increase, wealth is lost to funding social programs, debt forgiveness, riots, and all that.
If these issues aren't addressed now they will only get worse. The world is not an individualist libertarian fantasy. When people feel like they have nothing lose that's when you must fear most.
Yeah, I agree. I think capitalism is good for America, and hope to take advantage of its benefits for myself and support my community. But, the younger kids who call for socialism have a case based on many current conditions that we're facing.
Like what?
It doesn't matter which "conditions" or even if they're valid or not. The point is history has made itself very clear that people have a breaking point. You are only seeing a little of it now with the riots and such. But again, when young people feel like they have nothing to lose why wouldn't they try and tear down the system? Why wouldn't they vote for a Sanders or AOC like figure? You think anybody cares about what Friedman or Sowell (no matter how valid they may be) has to say when they can't create families or find meaning in their lives? Wake up and start to seriously think about the country or don't act all shocked and outraged when these people are voted into government.
If we had more competition and less "synergies" perhaps we would have more jobs, though they might pay less.
Hell yeah. There is way more supply of talent for broad general business roles (IB, corporate finance, accounting, etc.) than demand for talent. I'm convinced more now than ever that, for the most part, the only surefire way to move up is by knowing someone.
Kiss asses are the main ones that move up at most companies I’ve been to. Who do they promote? Kiss asses.
I thought that was the case, and my manager that I thought was the biggest kiss ass ever was let go recently. Was a little existential for me since it shook up this theory for me a bit. Granted, I don't know the full story, but it definitely caught my team by surprise.
"Fit"
It's like any other profession.
Take sports, back in the 50s/60s, people maybe thought about going pro after playing in college. Then it became specializing in college, then in high school, now parents are trying to train their 3 year old to go pro on the all elite area travel team.
There's more information out there about how to get into banking or other fields, and with that the path is more defined, so its easier for people to follow.
Hiring wise, in my opinion, every employer has 2 problems: 1. they think they are really great at hiring; 2. they think people will stay for a long time bc "its a great place to work" but most bosses/employers aren't good managers which causes people to leave.
Hiring is like dating. You basically know if you want to hire someone in the first five minutes of meeting them. If you need 6 interviews, you prob shouldn't be making the decision or don't really want to hire someone. Same with dating, if you have to date someone 6 times to figure out if you're attracted to them, you prob don't find them attractive.
The main problem, in my opinion again, is ghosting (or whatever you want to call it). By ghosting, I mean, employers don't want to tell their 2nd/3rd/4th choice "no" bc they don't know what their 1st choice is doing. So they keep people hanging on, then end up having to re-interview. Also note, some companies are very hot and cold on hiring, not just covid era all the time. So they might tell someone on Monday they can hire someone, then on Friday re-think it, and then have to go through the same process in 3 months.
Def experienced hot and cold hiring. But on the dating analogy--the major difference is that in dating, there is a single decisionmaker, while in employment there are usually at least 2 and sometimes 3+ depending on how the company runs their recruitment.
Women can easily determine if they're attracted to someone in 5 minutes, and it may result in you getting laid on the first date. But then she starts to realize you don't have time to buy her flowers as much as she like, or give her the best opinions on her outfit or whatever, and decide while attracted to you, that first night was just a mistake.
Employers are probably trying to avoid those mistakes, so they are a little bit more thoughtful than this girl you laid on the first night. In addition, they are more thoughtful because they have multiple people to answer to on the decisions they make, while the girl you're dating might have been happy with satisfying herself for the night, and that's totally ok.
So, while it seems like employers are just going through a normal, thorough process to fill a need, I disagree that's really as it is. To me, you can bite off more than you chew, as just as you said, there might be the impression that they know what they want and need. But, maybe employers don't. Especially in times where employers are choosing to get the "best" from an experience standpoint, while it's a measurable component and kudos to the employer, where does that end? You can always find an ex-CEO, but should that person really be at the analyst level? Is that really smart? Optimal?
Yea, I mean, I think they're more to dating women than just buying them flowers and telling them they look nice (could be wrong on that).
What I mean is, as an employer, what are you really getting from a 6th interview that you didn't get from the 2nd.
Normally, if you're good at hiring (which few firms are), you can figure out who to hire in 5 minutes. So you might have 10 people apply, and you already know 3 of them can do the job. The rest is kind of having one of those 3 do something that makes them stand out.
There is absolutely more supply vs. demand in the hiring market. We recently put up an add on LinkedIn for an analyst position seeking someone who had 0 - 3 years experience. We were open to training someone out of college, but also open to someone who had a couple years' experience and knew the basics, with perhaps a slight preference for the latter just given the remote work dynamic at the moment. I managed the process for us. Within twelve hours we'd maxed out our 300 LinkedIn applicants that we paid for, and I was shocked at the sort of people applying for our role...which the description clearly stated was entry level (but, a great opportunity, really). We had people with 10+ years experience applying for this job, and we also had people with 10+ years experience track down members of our team and reach out separately for this role. We had a number of people apply who were in the 5 - 7 years' experience range who would probably crush the job if given the chance, but that is not what were hiring for. If these are the sort of people applying for entry level positions, it made me slightly depressed thinking about the applicant pool to mid level positions I'd personally be interested in. Fortunately for our targeted pool, we are very strict about the hiring criteria we want and all of those with too much experience were dinged. But, I am sure there are firms out there who suddenly get this wave of experienced applicants and start thinking that maybe they do need someone with more experience, or maybe they should interview these people on the off chance they take lower comp or realize they can just afford them with what they originally had in mind. I am sure those applying for these types of jobs think along similar lines. So, it really comes down to the hiring firm being disciplined with the sort of person they want to hire. If we took the time to interview all of those applicants with tons of experience the process would be dragged out by a couple months, which isn't fair to others, especially if we just "wanted to see" these people.
Do you think applicants with 5+ years of experience applying for entry level roles are viewed as “damaged goods”? My thought would be if you’re as killer as your resume suggests and you have 5+ years of experience but you’re applying to a job that requires 0-3 years of experience, you aren’t likely to be as killer as your resume hints, otherwise you wouldn’t be applying to entry level positions.
There are certainly case exceptions to that notion but in general I’ve always wondered if hiring managers thought of those candidates in that way.
EDIT: Jesus Christ why would anyone want notifications on any new comments to any thread. Stupid feature. Had to edit my comment to turn it off.
I never spoke to these applicants, so I can't say for sure. But I agree with you that there is likely an element of someone not being as good as their experience suggests if they are applying to a position that is a step down from their current role. For example, one resume I received was from a guy who had many different complicated transactions listed under his M&A experience and my thought was either 1) this is all bullshit, or 2) if this is not bullshit, he would be targeting somewhere better than my firm. #1 is more likely, in my opinion, which I did end up confirming via a quick soft check (world is very, very small). Or, the thought process from these overqualified candidates could be something like "I am so much better qualified than what they're currently looking for, that I can get this firm to rethink the sort of hire they want to make". It'd surprise me to learn that this works, but who knows.
Isn't this the market at work? Too many risk averse people chasing a stable job instead of taking risks and starting companies? I have noticed two things in my 10+ years of working: (i) the rewards for being an employee are getting smaller and smaller (think about shrinking bonuses in our field); and (ii) there have never been so many ways to get rich. Just think about it, Youtube influencers getting paid to play video games didn't exist 5 years' ago.
There is the same dynamic in quant funds. A lot of firms want fresh graduates, but if you have over 5 years of experience and are not a PM with a full process then it's much harder to get hired. There are very few non-entry level jobs except for PM seats.
I agree that jobs are becoming less attractive in general. Even the jobs that pay well do so because of your position in a corporate hierarchy (or at junior levels, your interview and negotiating skills), not the actual work you do. A few youtubers do make tons of money, but I don't think someone starting that today would have great chances. There are so many youtubers now covering any topic you can think of. You have to start doing these things before everyone wakes up to it.
Hasn't having a strong network always been the best move. If that network comes from the family you are born into or if you create it?
Also youtubing isn't a career/your own business. Its really just a 100% commission job. Think about it If YouTube went under, It be the same as if any other company laid off their sales team. Really its just a job, where you try and get as much attention as possible.
Totally, you see this with the Backoffice at GS. Take a look, the shear amount of overqualified kids is unreal. Like why the hell did you major in Chemical engineering and now work at GS back office making peanuts. I don't see the risk reward here. Even in the front office once a req goes out from us it's a like a mad rush.
Going to put this out there without getting into race. Sometimes hard finding qualified minorities without lowering the bar.
Also, quant talent is not that easy as you all might think. 95% of kids are from China and THAT IS A PROBLEM. We can sponsor 1 kid but not 4. Honestly, there is a lack of good quant talent in the US.
Depends on the industry. In finance, at least the most competitive parts (AM / HF / PE / IB / etc) supply of labor vastly exceeds demand for them.
For stuff like engineering where you have the opposite dynamic, there's a lot more room. Honestly in a decade or so, I wouldn't even recommend finance as a career path to new graduates.
Isn't there always going to be high competition for the best jobs? Choose the hot company of the decade people are going to be lining up to get their foot in the door.
I wouldn't say that Finance is a bad path in the future, but If people can't land in IB and have developed good business skills I would recommend trying to go down the Bus ops route instead.
Sure there will always be high competition for the best jobs, but there is a big difference in how hard it is to get the avg job w/ a foot in the door in many finance roles vs. something like engineering. For instance, extremely hard to land a role in buyside in finance but a potential equivalent in engineering is data science. And while data science roles aren't easy to get, they're not particularly hard to get either. Essentially the need for data science roles exceeds the current labor supply while in finance, you have 100 kids vying for every buyside job
Yes and its because of sites like this one (WSO). The information asymmetry gap is closing fast which is also why non / semi-targets are becoming far more competitive.
I'm also seeing far more people content with being "career analysts". There has to be a thread somewhere about this, but not everyone is hyper fixated on getting the quick experience and moving up or out every 1-3 years. The money is really quite excellent when you think about it for the work we actually do.
And exacerbated because of the pandemic layoffs and hiring freezes. I've been surprised to not see many postings/updates on the current job market for experienced hires.
I keep seeing plenty of openings even during COVID. You just need to know the right place to look. I think right now the traditional avenues are maybe not nearly as efficient as they once were.
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