ACM CareerNews for Tuesday, July 9, 2024
ACM CareerNews is intended as an objective career news digest for busy IT professionals. Views expressed are not necessarily those of ACM. To send comments, please write to [email protected]
Volume 20, Issue 13, July 9, 2024
Using Personal Projects to Land Your First Job in Tech
Dice Insights, June 27
For many recent graduates, the IT job hunt can seem daunting. The good news is that employers are embracing skills-based hiring, and thus not placing as much emphasis on previous job experience. As a result, a resume filled with a long list of jobs is not the only way to show off your unique skills and experiences. You can also leverage personal projects, coursework, and extracurriculars to build a compelling application.
If you are able to leverage your personal projects, you may be able to showcase skills or experiences that can boost your candidacy. These personal projects can be anything, such as testing your coding skills in competition, building a new app, or contributing to an open-source project. Building something you would use showcases both technical ability and initiative. For example, you could create a mobile app to streamline a daily task, develop a website for a local business, or even build a tool to automate a tedious process at your previous part-time job. You could also contribute to open-source projects. This demonstrates collaboration skills and exposure to industry-standard codebases. You just need to find an open-source project on GitHub that aligns with your interests and then contribute bug fixes or new features.
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Cyber, AI and Data Dominate Upskilling Priorities
CIO Dive, June 21
Company executives are targeting their job training investments in three key areas: cybersecurity, AI and data. In a recent survey, more than one-third of C-suite leaders identified cybersecurity and AI as their two top investment areas for training. In part, this is due to the increasingly competitive IT hiring market. A year ago, only 13% of executives said hiring for AI skills was difficult. In contrast, 32% said finding AI talent was challenging this year.
AI, data and cybersecurity have always been intertwined, but the need for highly skilled teams in these areas is reaching a critical point. Without these skills, teams may not be able to complete or even launch key projects. Decision-makers need to get creative with how they handle skilling, reskilling, and upskilling, whether it is addressing root causes behind recruitment or retention issues or investing in more effective, efficient training solutions. Businesses have incentives to plug the holes, since critical gaps in skills can put pressure on existing IT staff.
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Why Is It So Hard to Find Entry-Level Software Engineering Jobs?
Technical.ly, May 10
Job seekers are finding it harder than expected to land entry-level software engineering jobs. Unfortunately, the number of new hiring companies has actually shrunk since the pandemic. At the same time, some companies are not offering as many early-career positions, with a focus instead on senior-level positions. Even when there are entry-level positions open, they now seem to require the equivalent of several years of experience
The current state of the job market is due in large part to the aggressive over-hiring that took place during the COVID pandemic. Post-lockdown, consumer demand for internet services fell, and companies responded with massive staff cutbacks. There were over 262,000 layoffs in the IT sector in 2023, a jump of 60% from the previous year. The only comparable year with such a rapid pace of tech firings was two decades ago, when the dot-com bubble dramatically burst. This resulted in a supply and demand imbalance, with an over-saturation of developers who had been hired during COVID and then laid off. The hiring environment shifted dramatically, and candidates no longer had their choice of which job they wanted. Remote work only added to the competitiveness, as the candidate pool for each position was not geographically constrained.
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4 Hot Hiring Trends and 4 Going Cold
CIO.com, June 24
The hiring slowdown in the IT industry over the past two years continues to influence the way companies approach hiring this year. Many tech leaders are now looking for innovative ways to grow without adding permanent staff. The top strategic priority for companies across all industries is incorporating new technology into their business model. As they search for employees with very specific skillsets, companies are streamlining the application and interviewing process, changing their perspective on what makes a strong applicant, and shifting their approach to contract work.
One of the hottest current hiring trends is salary and benefit transparency. Ambiguous salary ranges are becoming less common, in part due to new laws designed to enhance fairness and equity by requiring employers to disclose salary ranges and benefits up front. With multiple states now having salary transparency as law, and many companies open to remote or hybrid roles in those states, most companies are adopting a country or global salary disclosure in their job descriptions. And that is making the salary negotiation process more efficient. Being transparent about salary ranges now gives both sides an open door to discuss it early, understand expectations, and make salary conversations more honest and open as opposed to guessing what each other is going to ask. This will be a space that will continue to evolve for years to come, and new trends and behaviors will emerge because of it.
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Move Over, Remote Jobs: CEOs Say Borderless Talent Is the Future of Tech Work
CNBC, June 30
To work remotely or not is no longer the question. Experts say it is borderless hiring for technology roles that is now getting all the attention. Once you realize that you do not have to all be in the same office five days a week in order to build a compelling culture and feel connected to the mission and solve complex problems, you then start thinking there are great people all over the world. With tech leaders focusing concurrently on innovation and value-driven efficiency, tech hiring that goes beyond national borders and global time zones is a growing phenomenon.
Borderless tech hiring has doubled in the last three years, and that has raised the profile of tech hubs around the world. By 2022, the tech talent workforce in cities like Beijing and Delhi far outweighed that of U.S. powerhouses like San Francisco and New York, reports CBRE Global Tech Talent Guidebook 2024. The report cites burgeoning tech talent markets like Bucharest, Romania; Cape Town, South Africa; Cebu City, Philippines; Nairobi, Kenya and more. Global hiring is an example of a luxury that is moving down the value chain. Talent marketplaces and a digitized workforce make global hiring an affordable luxury within reach for just about any company.
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Job Candidates Want to Know if AI is Assessing Them
Silicon Republic, June 26
According to a recent survey of tech workers, a clear majority (80%) of respondents want to be informed when AI technologies are being used to assess their job applications. The survey found that more than half (54%) of organizations share information around the use of AI with candidates during the recruitment process, with 14% of employers revealing that they use AI screening tools to evaluate job applicants. Of the organizations involved in the survey, one-third use AI in the workplace and more than three-quarters (78%) of organizations anticipate allowing staff to utilize AI tools in the future.
AI-powered tools used by recruiters can include the scanning and ranking of CVs to identify the most suitable candidate based on the job description. This, despite growing fears around the use of AI in the hiring process, including potential biases hardwired into the AI systems. Additionally, there is somewhat of a generational gap still when it comes to embracing AI. For example, only 18% of respondents aged 50 and up have used AI themselves to simplify applying for a job, compared to almost 32% of 18-24 year olds. The survey highlights the importance of tailoring CVs to each job you apply for as 70% of employers think that reviewing a CV is the most effective assessment format when screening applications.
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The One Interview Question You Should Always Ask (And Those To Avoid)
Tech.co, June 26
The majority of job applicants fear something about the interview process, whether it be being the center of attention, or getting caught off guard with unexpected questions. But the good news is you can do something about it. Aside from doing your research and preparing your answers to the best of your ability, arming yourself with a great question to ask at the end is a great way to strengthen your competitive advantage, and avoid getting caught off guard at the end of the interview. While there are some tried-and-tested questions you should be aware of, there are also some that you should avoid at all costs.
At the conclusion of an interview, asking questions allows you to learn more about what it is like to work for the company. It also lets you demonstrate your intentions for the company and role. While asking anything is better than drawing blanks, there is one question that trumps them all: What is the most important problem I can solve in first 30 days? This question is unrivaled because it has multiple intentions. Asking interviewees about the most critical problem facing their company is a great way to decipher what challenges the company is facing. From there, you can decide if this is a job that you have the desire and capacity to do. The question should prompt an interesting discussion, and help you understand if your approach aligns with the one that is currently being taken by the company, and whether they are receptive to new ideas. In addition, if you are interested in taking the next steps with the company, asking this question is a great way to position you for future success.
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Companies Are Facing a Skills Gap Crisis That College Alone Can Not Fix
Fast Company, July 1
The conventional thinking is that an expanding pipeline of new tech graduates will eventually help to close the IT skills gap. To some degree that is true, since new tech grads will go on to find roles in emerging industries such as AI, semiconductors and clean energy. However, the search for new talent is ultimately a zero-sum game, with companies constantly poaching new talent. Thus, there may be no way to meet the scale of emerging skills needs through college alone. The good news is that alternative options exist for finding new talent, such as apprenticeships that enable workers to earn and learn at the same time.
Recent research reveals apprenticeships could move 830,000 people into higher-wage roles, resulting in $28.5 billion more in earnings annually. This, in turn, could provide huge boosts to business productivity and to the wider economy through pathways that are built for all workers at all stages in their career and educational journey. The opportunity is there, and employers are now realizing that apprenticeships are necessary for emerging in-demand occupations. That includes those that are relatively new to the labor market, like cybersecurity or data analyst.
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Work-Family Balance in Academia?
Blog@CACM, July 1
Finding the right work-life balance in academia can be harder than it sounds, especially for researchers with a family. The difficulty is particularly acute for mid-level academics (doctoral students and temporary postdocs). And that is even true in countries where work time is set at 40 hours per week. When you are in academia, work time often goes far beyond that. With that in mind, the article examines a handful of obstacles facing academics as they search for the right work-family balance.
The work-family balance is of particular relevance to women pursuing an academic career. In 2022, according to the official statistics, the median age of all Ph.D. candidates in computer science was 30.2, whereas the average age of women when giving birth for the first time was 29.9. If we want to get more women into the sciences, then we also need to talk about work-family balance. It is important to note that fathers can also be affected by these issues and should not be overlooked. Nevertheless, it is unfortunately still the case that women often bear the main burden when it comes to balancing work and family life. Many doctoral students assume that their work will continue in a similar manner after giving birth, but the reality is often quite different. Due to teaching obligations, numerous administrative tasks, and the lack of a clear research plan, working hours can go by quickly each week, even when not much active research is conducted.
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Can Artificial Intelligence Be Open Sourced?
Communications of the ACM, July 1
The search is now on for open source LLMs (large language models) that can match the power and capabilities of a proprietary LLM such as GPT-4. While theoretically possible, it might not be realistic. For example, as soon as an open source model can reproduce GPT-4, there will likely be a much more powerful model in the corporate sector, so there will always be a gap between the open source models and the private models. In fact, this gap may even be increasing. At the same time, there are questions about whether open sourcing AI, particularly generative AI, is an imperative social necessity to counter corporate concentration. In a worst-case scenario, such a model might introduce an entirely new set of dangers.
In December 2023, a group of 50 corporations, universities, and research organizations worldwide announced the formation of the AI Alliance. Anchored by IBM and Meta, the alliance had a stated goal to advance safe, responsible AI rooted in open innovation. This alliance grew by another 25 members in February 2024. The work of the alliance is split into six focus areas, including safe, secure, and trusted AI; open foundation models encompassing multi-lingual, multi-modal and science models; diversified AI hardware; AI skills development; policy advocacy, and open-source frameworks and tools. The AI Alliance is not the only organization quickly ramping up advocacy and action in open source AI. The Open Source Initiative (OSI) also announced in February its timeline to create a formal definition of what constitutes open source AI, with a 1.0 definition slated to be released in October. Also in February, Carnegie Mellon University began work on a multi-stakeholder Open Forum for AI (OFAI).
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