Comment by Philip-J-Fry
6 years ago
Hiring for exact skills is what you do when you need the skills ASAP and the actual supply of engineers is there. The time you waste looking for someone with the exact knowledge you need could have been spent getting a good compiler engineer and just teaching them what you know. And magically that good engineer will get better, it's pretty amazing stuff.
I've was told multiple times, University/School teaches you how to learn. You get your actual knowledge and skills from the job. What I learned in 3 years of university was nothing compared to what I learned in 6 months on the job.
At first, it sounds like "win/win" if universities trained their students to use the same tools companies want. Companies would save money for training, and graduates would be ready for their jobs.
But in longer term, it is actually "win/lose", because if three years later the fashionable tools change, the companies that optimize for saving money on training would simply fire their existing employees and hire new graduates.
For the students, it is better to be the kind of person who understands the deep principles and can learn new tools as needed.
And the companies have a choice to either offer job trainings, or offer higher salaries to people currently working in other companies who already have the needed skills. (Or whine about market shortage and import H1B servants.)
I will second this. I would much rather hire an engineer who has a related background and wants to learn over an engineer with the exact skillset but does not want to learn. It may take a few months, but the former engineer will pick up what you want them to know (if you mentor them correctly), and past that inversion point, they are immensely more valuable.