Ever wonder which skills and keywords result in the most employment search engine hits?
Ever wonder which skills and keywords result in the most employment search engine hits?
I was interested in finding out what skills were most in demand, and which keywords in a resume would create the larget number of useful matches. I ran some quick keyword search comparisons on 2 popular job search engines -- Monster.com and Dice.com. I could not use Hotjobs.com because it only showed the first 1000 hits. The results were interesting (looks like we should all know SQL).
Here were my results. The table shows a rough average number of hits for the various keyword and job catagories. In all cases, the searches were for only USA positions (all) posted within the month.
Position Type Monster Position Type DICE
------------- ------- --------------- ----
SW Developer 4420 SW Developer 6712
Analyst 3000 Analyst 3800
Administrator 1200 Administrator 1500
Technical Skill Monster Technical Skill DICE
---------------- ------- ---------------- ----
SQL 3100 Unix 3931
Unix 3000 Oracle 3927
Oracle 2500 SQL 3514
C, GCC 2410 Java, Javascript 3128
Java, Javascript 2330 MS WinNT/2k/XP 2262
MS WinNT/2k/XP 2162 C++ 2042
Internet 2000 VB 1587
html 1861 C, GCC 1426
C++ 1450 XML 1327
VB 1350 Internet 1263
XML 1079 html 1251
Solaris 793 Solaris 963
TCP/IP 729 Perl 800
Sun 640 TCP/IP 770
Perl 620 Shell 764
Linux 600 Sun 723
Shell 500 Linux 584
AIX 362 AIX 519
Novell 280 GUI 355
GUI 200 Novell 269
Kernel 62 Assembler 205
Assembler 58 Games 170
Python 46 Kernel 142
Games 40 Python 46
IRIX 35 IRIX 20
I think using the popular job sites for this was useful, as that is were most of us find published positions. Perhaps someone will be inspired to do a better analysis than this and keep a web page up to date with the results.
Keith, this is very interesting, but not quite as relevant to Advogato as to, say, Wired.
I arrogantly consider myself a pretty strong hacker (comparatively speaking, of course), and that a hard task will always exist which nobody else can effectively solve, given time constrains, budgets, etc. At least this is what my expirience suggests so far.
Now, Advogato in general is populated with dozens of people who are way stronger (for instance, we have DaveM and ~rth, to say nothing about raph). They do not always post, but they read. Such folks should consider ignoring the requirement gystogram, because it does not say which tasks are hard. It says which areas of skills require a lot of manual labour, which is different.
To take an example from close to home, how many positions which require intimate knowledge of SMP, caching and TLB, Linux arch API, UNIX process API are posted to Dice? You can search by keyword, but that would bring you driver monkey positions, because every word I wrote above is a buzzword. All together they mean something different. Someone can bring same examples from userland, too.
I think Advogato readers are looking at different positions in general than presented by Monster or Dice pools. Those positions are drowned in numbers.
It would be really interesting to find numbers of positions which require, something like porting Linux to Sun MAJC architecture (by the way, this requires retargetting gcc), _and_ supporting it for several years, with contributions to Linus tree. I may be talking out of my ass here, but another example would be porting GTK+/GNOME to another window system, wildly different from X. Perhaps if we knew such numbers and numbers of Advogato readers, we might deduce if we see an overpopulation and should consider real estate or pre-owned car sales instead. Unfortunately, I have no idea how to count such places.
Now, back to work...
>this is very interesting, but not quite as relevant to Advogato as
>to, say, Wired
Right. Go back and read some of the older articles and say that again. Plus I don't have publishing rights on Wired.
Advogato is filled by people covering a range of experience and many (as evident by some articles and diaries) are dealing with the current employment climate and have had to settle for less until opportunities present themselves. Many of these people are highly experienced and skilled (some more than you I'm sure). Most good jobs are by networking, reference, etc., and the best skills a person could have are not technical in nature. But you also have to accept that a large number of corporations use employment search sites as their means of promoting openings. Even Red Hat does this; I know, I worked with HR on openings. Search sites have functionally replaced newspaper and trade journal ads.
>every word I wrote above is a buzzword. All together they mean >something different
I agree; that is an obvious limitation. Reminds me of filtering spam -- you want as many valid hits as possible without filtering anything desirable. I thought it would be interesting to see what keywords triggered the most responses, and how they compared to each other. I'm not going to defend whether they do a good job.
>It would be really interesting to find numbers of positions which >require, something like porting Linux to Sun MAJC architecture
Yes; but if you were going to locate someone nationally, where would you publish your opportunity of your personal attempts came up empty?
I've asked the recruiter and account manager about the job market and they seem to be saying Java skills are most often the ones that surface. Given 30 days a month, there would probably be 10 to 15 requests for Java skills, though.
But most of the requests I hear are ones that have most, including the kitchen sink. Meaning, those who have a lot of skills and experience in all areas. Willing to accept a position with lower pay.
I've also compared salaries of others as well, those from non-computing field and it seems they are still hanging high up there. Some of them even earn 60 to 70 bucks an hour. On the other hand, most IT salaries at the moment seem to be down there. Can't see myself going in that direction, though. Perhaps I'm too picky or just burned out.
I wouldn't sell myself at the level. It's just too far down for me to go there.
60-70 sounds pretty damn good. Over here I don't think too many in the whole country has that kind of incoming cash flood. Here IT folks can get around 15-25e/h (lowish to well paid) for normal non-manager jobs. So don't complain. :)
This is the recurring theme I keep seeing. I've been out of work for over a year now, after electively resigning from my previous employer (surviving 5 rounds of layoffs, 2 trashed mergers, 3 or 4 new CEOs [I lost count at the third], etc, all in 18 months).
What I'm seeing in the marketplace while looking for work, is that employers are firing entire departments, and then looking to hire one (MAYBE two) people to fill all the positions and skills required to replace that missing department, at 1/2 the salary.
"The successful candidate must be fluent in C/C++, Perl, Java, Exchange, Unix, NT, SAP, PeopleSoft, Oracle, VB, Flash, XML, HTML, DreamWeaver. MSCE, MSD, CISSP, CCIE required."
It's really pathetic, and tends to push people (like myself) to do consulting to stay afloat. If I finish this final gig, I will have grossed $3,000.00/USD over the last year (that's not a typo).
I've relocated from the Left Coast back to the Right Coast, and the situation is exactly the same. No work. No Pay. No Jobs. Go Away.
Maybe we wait another year?
In the web world, at least, no one wants much else. I am thinking seriously of looking into the import/export industry as an alternative to this crap. I think I have some good ideas about things that would be successful to ship between the U.S. and Italy.
http://www.computerworld.com/careertopics/careers/recruiting/story/0,10801,47374,00.html
Ok, I'm off topic from my own "let's stay on topic" request, but does anyone else notice how the skills discussion thread has annealed to this same issue?
It's really weird in a Rod Serling sort of way -- Homeland Security and immanent war is one thing but that doesn't completely explain why virtually all IT research and development appears to have just vanished overnight. I only know one shop doing quasi-development, and that's Roland Tanglao's group developing basically a clone of PayPal for a Canadian bank. Every thing else I see is VB on a roller-coaster ride to disaster or people butting heads with unfinished SOAP bars, almost as if, like Dave's AT&T insider reports, that they want to see it fail
shoot, posted that last one to the wrong thread! It was supposed to go on the end of this thread and talk about the thread going on here. After a while, and with enough sleep deprivation, all these Advogato pages start looking the same :)
And still no one cares about decent security skills.
Oh well, SQL is still pretty hot.
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