> ...I mean hiring junior level candidates, not trying to shove a more senior female developer into a lower level position...
The word "shove" aside, I wish more companies would hire senior people for junior roles if they want them. One of the big problems with the American (and I presume Western) job market is the unwillingness to train people unless they're straight out of college. It seems that moms (and less often, dads) who take time off to raise the young ones would benefit from a new approach.
Of course, the employer and employee need to be on the same page about day-to-day duties, expected career growth, and so on. But that seems like a solvable problem.
Sorry, I think there's some confusion about the usage of the word senior there, I meant senior in terms of skill level, not in terms of age. Age shouldn't be a factor at all, it doesn't matter if you're a fresh college graduate or a 60 year old so long as you have the skills to do the job. What you don't want to do is take a highly skilled worker and then hire them into a low skill position, they'll get bored/frustrated, assuming they even accept the position in the first place because presumably you're paying market rates so you'll be massively under paying them in that position.
> ...I meant senior in terms of skill level, not in terms of age...
No worries. I understood your meaning. I also meant that. I meant that hiring managers, in my experience, are more likely to give an outright "no" to an underqualified senior person than to offer them a junior role.
If the person took some time off, decided to switch industries, decided to switch specialties, or just figured out they were in a rut, giving them a junior role and letting them work their way back into an expert role should be a consideration.
I know the prevailing sentiment around here is anti-age-discrimination, but the flip side is also bad. We've seen in a few European countries what happens when the unemployment figures for young people are an order of magnitude higher than people with more experience and it's not pretty. Young people need to be given a chance to start their careers and senior people taking junior roles can get in the way of that. The current trend towards people not having the required savings for retirement is going to echo into future generations that have to delay the start of their careers because those jobs haven't been vacated.
I always figured that was part of some implicit contract.
"You'll hire me for a job I can't immediately do, and I'll treat growing into my job as the number one priority".
With the job market as it is, it's unrealistic to expect people to hire candidates who can't help lighten the load within a week or two of their start date.
I wish there was a less-risky way to 'try out' candidates. Someone I know works in boutique finance and whenever they bring on someone at a junior level, they're on a 60 day probation and the partners decide whether or not to retain them.
I think it's easier for them to do it because their applicant pool / candidates are predominantly young, white/asian, male, and high-achieving. They've never been sued by a candidate they've let go and they've found some real 'diamonds in the rough'.
I can't imagine that they could say the same if they let go of 40 mothers with children. But it does highlight a solution path - make it less risky for companies to evaluate candidates although I don't know how to do that without eroding worker protections.
The word "shove" aside, I wish more companies would hire senior people for junior roles if they want them. One of the big problems with the American (and I presume Western) job market is the unwillingness to train people unless they're straight out of college. It seems that moms (and less often, dads) who take time off to raise the young ones would benefit from a new approach.
Of course, the employer and employee need to be on the same page about day-to-day duties, expected career growth, and so on. But that seems like a solvable problem.