Services
Recruitment Realities and Industry Dynamics
The Reason it’s so hard to find JD Edwards Professionals.
I think this is important for companies to understand what is going on with JD Edwards Recruitment and why it’s a problem finding candidates to interview.
The first thing you need to know is what JD Edwards has gone through.
JD Edwards Company merged with Peoplesoft, who stripped the software of the JD Edwards
name and called the product “Peoplesoft One-World”. That caused one of the most recognized
names in Software to disappeared briefly. Next, Oracle announced that they would do a hostile takeover of Peoplesoft, with the intent to throw the Software in the trash! How many organizations do you think bought “One-World” during this period of time?
When Oracle finally did get their hands on Peoplesoft, they did a few good things, and a few bad things with JD Edwards Software.
On the positive side, they brought back the name, “JD Edwards”. They also took the old JD Edwards World Software, and gave all those companies somewhere to go with it, renaming it “World Soft”, and developing more release of the software. Obviously, “One-World” became “E1”, or rather “Enterprise One”. E1 also was upgraded with new releases, until Oracle decide that they would just do updates after release 8.12!
Oracle announced that everything would be channeling into their Fusion product, which basically didn’t happen.
Fusion remains a standalone. Oracle also stopped paying commissions on JD Edwards sales for quite a while. Oracle has been targeting sales for all of the “Oracle” products and has put JDE on the back burner.
On the backside of all of this confusion, many companies were thrown off by all of these things going on with the JDE products! There were a great number of companies that moved to SAP, a competing software package that is known for difficulty in making on the fly changes and modifications! The entire entertainment industry left JD Edwards for SAP!
As JD Edwards sales stalled during all of this, companies didn’t hire trainees to learn the product, so the average age of a JD Edwards professional now starts at around 55 and goes way up from there!! There are lots of folks currently retiring or planning to over the next couple of years.
The age range has another effect on hiring as well.
In this age range, most people own their homes and have either paid them off, or are close to it. Their children, grandchildren, friends and social lives are all located in their immediate vicinity. Folks in this age group are very set in their ways, and very adverse to geographic change. Also, because companies running JDE Software are located so far apart, these potential applicants would likely have to move to take a new position.
In making a physical move,
the increase in Property Tax by itself will be substantial, and likely cause a huge decrease in income!
These folks are in demand and make competitive salaries regardless of location.
I recently had a client tell me that they were running an Employment Ad in Mexico, where they were looking for someone with heavy JDE E1 Manufacturing that has a Visa and would take $40K less than their America counterpart! I’ve never laughed this hard before! These folks are at a premium and are well sought after! There are lots of companies who want someone traveling back and forth from the USA to Mexico, supporting JDE manufacturing!
It’s like a California Client telling me that they need an experienced JDE E1 Business Analyst with Job Cost, Contract Billing, and Home Builder who will take $125K.
Where do you want me to look for this person? Let’s say Iowa or Arizona! I have a candidate at $125K who lives on 1 Acre in a 2500 sq ft home that’s worth $400,000.00. That California Company zip code tells me that the median home price is 1.3 Million! For this person to be able to make this move, they’ll be living in the hood dodging gunfire (if they want to own), or living in their car, taking sponge baths at the local gas station! Let’s say that they didn’t owe anything on their Arizona home and could put the $400,000 down on that $1.3 Million average home. In most California areas, that home is under 1200 sq ft, and was built in the 1950s!! On a postage stamp size lot! And the annual property tax bill on a 1.3 Million home!? LOL!