Less Work, More Pay - Dream IT/ICT Jobs in Public Sector

Over the last 1+ years, I was in multiple interview panels at several government organizations, and had the opportunity to talk to ~50 applicants. The experience has been puzzling. While it is understandable that the top candidates won't apply for a government job, knowing the remuneration will be bad compared to the private sector, most of the candidates we interviewed were hopeless. Before explaining why I say so, following is a background on type of candidates these organizations were looking for.

All of these organizations handle money some way or another. While some organizations were known for having good remuneration, they are no way comparable to the remuneration by the private sector. These organizations had state-of-the-art enterprise systems developed by reputed vendors (local and foreign). While they managed to get these systems (don't ask me how), in many a cases, they are struggling to keep them running smoothly due to the advanced technology, scale, 24x7 operation with tight SLAs, and lack of expertise. These positions were primarily for enterprise applications/systems development and support covering all aspects of software, hardware, network, and security engineering. Applicants were expected to start from day one and expected to have immediate impact. Based on government policies anyone complying minimum requirements in job post need to be interviewed.

So what the applicants did wrong:

• In ability to answer basic theory or practical questions
• Not knowing what he/she is applying for, even though job posts explained the expected role reasonably well. Plus hardly any background search on the opportunity except some personal contacts to justify why you should hire me
• Applied just because it was a government job and because parents, brother/sister, or neighbor said working for government is good
• Hoping for job security and less work, while job post clearly mentioned all jobs are on contract and performance basis (this is due to government policy)
• Never heard of enterprise applications/systems or the largest system I worked with had only 3-4 nodes. The only thing I know are web, mobile and WAMP. Well, some knew a bit about how to use ERPs
• Perception that my degree is quite valuable, though it's from some random institute
• Applying with zero experience when job post says 7+ years of experience in a related role. Or the number of people that worked under me was none
• No or expired industry certifications. Hardly any new learning since graduation
• Expecting 100K+ salary while private sector may not even pay me 35K
• Not knowing how to prepare a resume/CV
• Bad attitude, not knowing that I could be wrong, frequent job changes or looking to consolidate, the false perception of security and machine learning, there's only one best solution, not knowing current affairs, etc. - Well, we ask these questions when we know you are not a fit just to make you happy
• I am an IT/ICT teacher with no industry experience

While some may still get into other public organizations, and live happily ever after, my role is to make sure candidates with above concerns won't get in. I'm at least happy that no organization wanted to hire anyone I wanted to reject.

Alternatively, it's quite disheartened to see extremely narrow view that most candidates got about the IT/ICT industry, their carrier advancement, or life in general. This seems to come from institutes they study and companies they worked for. While we are concerned about the students we produce at CSE, I don't have words to describe these applicants. While I hear many a times "we don't have good employees who I would happily pay, if competent" it is us as teachers, institutes, and employers who have contributed to this problem one way or another. We have a role to show how the technology advances and the need to keep up through leaning-to-learn, both as teachers and employers.

I do agree that there are many shortcomings in the government recruitment process. Those have been highlighted and a some have been rectified with multiple iterations of call for applicants and interviews, where some organizations had reasonable success in attracting decent candidates. While there's much more to be done on the government side, my reason for writing these is for the applicants who waste their and our time with false hope of less work and better pay!