It’s no longer news, many companies are reaching a new low every year when it comes to hiring entry-level employees. Some people say we have reached a diamond shaped organisation chart, where there are more mid-career and senior employee compared to a decade back.
This has nothing to do with having lesser Gen Z or due to declining births in the early 2000s. We have an oversupply of fresh graduates and young talents these few years, but way lesser hiring.
Last year, I am seeing only 1 entry level hired into the office, working in a project team with 7 other seasoned engineers and 2 leads. This is not alarming in many companies, but where I work, engineers are a short lived role and moves up quickly due to the intensity, not to mention the office building has 70 employees, 1 new hire into a building of 70, the ratio does not make sense. We are reaching 1 management level role to 3 employees who actually work on the project.
This year, no engineer was hired, that project team shrunk to 6, the good part is because 2 of them were promoted to leads, and the previous 2 leads had an internal transfer. Workload increased, and there seems to be no intention from HQ to increase the headcount of this office.
No juniors are here to learn and succeed anyone, everyone becomes a seasoned employee now and the pipeline is cut off at the bottom. This also indirectly means upward movement will eventually be limited.
If your company is having similar problems, can you share with me what kind of mitigation are in place for your company if they stopped hiring true entry levels?