I feel like I am doing better than average with my job search. Each week, I have a screening call or a direct interview with a hiring manager or team member. However, something is wrong with the job market, and for different reasons than common narratives suggest.
Each company I speak with seems to have fallen for the same trap: The pursuit of operational efficiency has backfired.
Over the years, companies have increasingly committed to outsourcing internal teams, leaving one-person departments run by managers. Those managers liaise with outside agencies who become the manager’s team.
Ironically, this operational efficiency also extends to agencies that dump 10+ clients on one employee. There are not enough hours in a week for an agency employee to give to a company, so the employee has to subcontract again to someone else, who may subcontract again, depending on the circumstances.
For the companies I speak with, I learn that the opening is to replace a previous manager. There is nobody to promote internally, obviously. They gutted those roles. So, the company is looking for someone with extensive expertise who can “manage outside relationships.”
That last bit is a sticking point to all of this. My resume mentions my “work with internal teams,” and it always gets called out. While a company I speak with might have a “team,” there is no actual team that you will mentor or help to upskill. “You are an island,” one group warned me during an interview. A glorified project manager is another way of putting it.
This has helped me reframe why job postings require disparate skill sets, proficient knowledge of every software tool, and several years of highly specific industry expertise.
It isn’t the company being unreasonable or greedy in a slow job market. It is the company having no other choice. Nobody can train or mentor you in those tools or industries, so BYOB.
I am sure some of these companies are finding the people they need. Those willing to offer large sums of money and remote work are likely doing exactly that. For everyone else, well, just look at the thousands of open job postings for roles that you will see reposted repeatedly with what feels like requirements that are impossible for the average worker to obtain.
Everyone agrees that bad job markets happen and that these things are cyclical. But is this time different?
If companies are going to be made up of managers who work with outsourced teams, but the pool of qualified managers is already small and shrinking, and no new people can become managers because no company is hiring internal direct reports that the manager mentors and later puts up for promotion, where do we go from here?
Applying to Jobs on Desert Islands
