It's not just young people
>> I do not like to exaggerate on my current IT skills. If I do not have much experience with something, I make it known.
Ditto.
However, anecdotally it does seem that there are an awful lot of people who will, to be polite, "talk up their skills" - where (just picking some contrived example) "once inserted install CD/DVD for and accepted all the default answers" (ie skill level is "has actually seen it but little more") becomes "expert at administering ".
What seems to be happening, is that HR people who lack the skills to tell their OS from their USB port are compensating by asking for "expert in " when what they really want is "knows how to turn on computer with ". That leaves honest applicants in a quandary : do you tell the truth (in which case don't bother applying because the HR droid will bin your application for not having all the boxes ticked), or do you lie ? Personally, I don't lie on applications - but that also means I don't make many as most would be a complete waste of time (I stand no chance of getting shortlisted even though the job seems just at my level).
Thus, for many outfits, the majority of the applicants they get to see (after their outsourced HR has "vetted" them) will be the "CV embellishers".
You don't have to look at too many job adverts to realise this is the case. So many of them have a clear and obvious (to anyone with any experience in IT) disconnect between what they ask for and what they actually appear to want when you read between the lines.
Of course, there are so many other hiring fails, just two that come immediately to mind :
Agencies that can't read ! When I see jobs listed by agencies, I generally try hard to find out who the job is with. More than once I've found the agency advertising on the "job sites" with the "click here to apply" button - while the employer has "no agencies" and "applications must be on our form" on their website. Naturally the illiterate agency doesn't want you to figure this out, as they want their fee if they manage to sneak an application past the employers requirements.
Of course, it's not just for the above - I kind of like to have some idea who I might be applying to work with !
Agencies and employers that can't be arsed to communicate. A few work the old fashioned way - they'll acknowledge your application, and let you know if you've not made it. Too many these days can't be arsed to do either ! I realise they probably get lots of applications, but is that an excuse to not even send an email ?
