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Ask HN: Why is hiring so dehumanized, and what can be done?

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Re: Ask HN: Why is hiring so dehumanized, and what can be done?

#31

Post by lief79 »

systemvoltage wrote: post #14

Hard take which is pretty much unpalatable to HN crowd: If I had a small dev shop, I would put out an hiring ad that says you must drop off your resume in person and we will only hire people from 50 mile radius. Like they used to do in 1970's. Not a fan of: 1) Global pool of candidates 2) Leet code bullshit 3) Remote work Fan of 1) Permanent hiree after 3 months of time with us. 2) You will be part of our family, we'…

#3 doesn't seem to correlate well with being able to interview/meet with team members, unless hiring takes priority over emergencies, etc. Then again, with enough bodies that should be possible to do without much of a hit.

Re: Ask HN: Why is hiring so dehumanized, and what can be done?

#32

Post by endemic »

systemvoltage wrote: post #14

Hard take which is pretty much unpalatable to HN crowd: If I had a small dev shop, I would put out an hiring ad that says you must drop off your resume in person and we will only hire people from 50 mile radius. Like they used to do in 1970's. Not a fan of: 1) Global pool of candidates 2) Leet code bullshit 3) Remote work Fan of 1) Permanent hiree after 3 months of time with us. 2) You will be part of our family, we'…

I'm amused at the juxtaposition of "you'll be family" with "no bullshit."

Re: Ask HN: Why is hiring so dehumanized, and what can be done?

#33

Post by ghaff »

warrenm wrote: post #11

Work for smaller companies Only "apply" to jobs where you already know at least one person at the company

Not even just smaller companies if you know someone high enough up :-) Every job I've had since right out of grad school has basically come through sending someone I knew an email.

That's really the answer although it's probably not very actionable for a lot of more junior people.

Re: Ask HN: Why is hiring so dehumanized, and what can be done?

#34

Post by donatj »

In 2006 when I got my first dev job, I sat down with the lead developer for about half an hour and we largely just had a very friendly and informal conversation talking about how I would hypothetically build things, what software I enjoy using, etc. I very vividly remember talking about how great I thought it was you could do basic math in the Firefox search bar at the time.

He left to talk to the owner, came back with a (in hindsight very small) number on piece of paper, and I started that week.

When I started at my current gig over a decade ago I had a three-day ordeal of interviews. In person, telephone, full day of in person again. Spoke with at least six different sets of people. Jobs I've applied for in the interim have been even worse.

As someone who has been in a hiring position myself, I think that first informal interview tells you way more than any checklist. If you need the checklist items answered, put them on the application. Interviews should be for getting to know the person.

I don't do hiring these days, but from what I've heard, DEI doesn't want us going off pre-approved script at all. I understand where that's coming from but it seems like it would do more harm than good.

Re: Ask HN: Why is hiring so dehumanized, and what can be done?

#35

Post by janosett »

glass3 wrote: post #18

Applicants could organize in a guild. The members can rate each other in a friendly environment with constructive feedback. Then, the guild knows who are the best matches for a given job. Employers at first communicate with the guild and only have to evaluate 5-10 candidates. All interviewed candidates pool their knowledge about the employer so the next suggestions from the guild will be even better matches. Medieval…

This could be really useful, but it feels like the bootstrapping phase might be difficult to get past -- on one hand you need to reach the size and level of repute for companies be willing to deal with the process, and on the other you need to provide a sufficient value proposition for candidates to contribute to the guild.

I also have some concerns about how you manage problems as this sort of guild scales. How do you keep a consistent standard of skill? what if members performance changes over time?

Re: Ask HN: Why is hiring so dehumanized, and what can be done?

#36

Post by gbuk2013 »

From a hiring perspective there are tools available.

I work for a startup that is selling a CRM to addresses all of those pain points. We have many large customers and were recently valued >1B.

We have several competitors that make the same sort of thing.

The point at when our product makes sense cost wise is apparently 8+ recruiters so that certainly excludes a large number of smaller companies.

The solutions range from boring (e.g. CRUD things, advanced search, campaign management) to fancy (e.g. automation, AI things).

Our approach is basically to reduce / automate as much as possible to free up as much time for the recruiter to do actual human things.

Re: Ask HN: Why is hiring so dehumanized, and what can be done?

#37

Post by janalsncm »

glass3 wrote: post #18

Applicants could organize in a guild. The members can rate each other in a friendly environment with constructive feedback. Then, the guild knows who are the best matches for a given job. Employers at first communicate with the guild and only have to evaluate 5-10 candidates. All interviewed candidates pool their knowledge about the employer so the next suggestions from the guild will be even better matches. Medieval…

Given the number of laid off professionals now, this is very doable.

To join, one must have some amount of professional experience and pass a test. Members pay some nominal fee to support an internal liaison team. That team communicates with with companies looking to hire. Create some sort of internal ranking metric (which includes filters for e.g. location and pay), and top ranked members will be connected directly with HR at the company.

This is basically what H1B sourcing companies do. No reason it can’t be for full time as well.

Re: Ask HN: Why is hiring so dehumanized, and what can be done?

#38

Post by AussieWog93 »

Was talking to an Uber driver about this, funnily enough.

Apparently it's very common for applicants to just spam their resume out to every employer, since there's no cost to do so.

If it were standard practice to implement some kind of hurdle, so that the applicant would have to spend an hour of their time to get a resume in front of a human, then there would be a lot less resumes to sift through and therefore a lot more time that could be given to each one by the employer.

Another commenter mentioned having to drop off resumes in person, but I suspect something as simple as this could have a huge impact on spam.

Re: Ask HN: Why is hiring so dehumanized, and what can be done?

#39

Post by bko »

glass3 wrote: post #18

Applicants could organize in a guild. The members can rate each other in a friendly environment with constructive feedback. Then, the guild knows who are the best matches for a given job. Employers at first communicate with the guild and only have to evaluate 5-10 candidates. All interviewed candidates pool their knowledge about the employer so the next suggestions from the guild will be even better matches. Medieval…

Isn't this the role of head hunters?

They get paid a lot for finding a candidate so their incentives are a lot more aligned with your own. You can openly ask about salary and timelines. They're not gonna waste your time or theirs if they know you require X while the employer is willing to pay a lot less.

They also work across different orgs so they can place you accordingly. They can even help you prep for an interview and work with only serious employers (they don't get paid unless you get hired). It's very reputational. Some workers use the same headhunter their whole careers. Plus it's very industry specific so it's more personalized. Head hunters for hedge fund jobs will be very different than those for IT departments for law firms.

It's not perfect but it's decentralized and you can choose the head hunter you want to work with as opposed to being stuck in an industry with a bad guilde. It's not perfect and you still have to jump through hoops but i think that's unavoidable

Re: Ask HN: Why is hiring so dehumanized, and what can be done?

#40

Post by ghaff »

yamtaddle wrote: post #20
stuckinhell wrote: post #9

Part of my job responsibilities is hiring, retention, and unfortunately layoffs. Hiring is only going to get worse in technology related fields. The competition has increased 10x in the last couple months compared to the last year for a single jr - mid developer position at my company. That's going from 1000 applications to 10,000 applications. I even created a jupyterhub notebook to do some analysis on the unfiltere…

Just require applications to be sent by mail. Explain why you're doing it up-front. The tiny hassle and tens-of-cents cost should cut volume down tremendously. [EDIT] Incidentally, in the age of ChatGPT, I suspect I'm going to be recommending this more and more often for a lot more use-cases....

It's an interesting idea, especially if you largely automate the analog->digital ingress process.

Unfortunately, you probably would have an adverse selection process. Anyone who can (or thinks they can) easily land a job will be F this crap. And the truly desperate will jump through the hoops.

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