Comment Re:To hire specific people (Score 1) 465
To be fair, HR are often doing exactly what the PM stupidly asked them to do. The problem is, HR don't understand the domain well enough to make flexible judgements.
The conversation will go something like this:
PM: "Get someone to replace Jill".
HR: "What does Jill do?"
PM: "She maintains the backend for the web app"
HR, not entirely sure if they want to know what any of those words mean: "Could you be more specific? What skills does she need to do her job?"
PM: "I'lll get her to send you a list".
So what's the solution, assuming you still need HR in the loop?
A lot of companies now separate the skills into "essential" (if you can't make a web app in a language like Python, Ruby, Perl, don't bother), and "nice to have" (RoR experience). The phrase "ability to rapidly acquire skills in" is also good - you don't really need git experience if you've used some other version control.