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I had to get a background check for my job; the report is a 300 page pdf

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Re: I had to get a background check for my job; the report is a 300 page pdf

#211

They claim machine learning, but I'd guess their workhorse is a "grep -f badwords tweets.json | makepdf | send boss@employer" kind of thingy.

They're definitely using some form of sentiment analysis, but IMO these are exactly the kind of results you'd get after setting a programmer, with little to no actual data science background, loose to train his nets on data with a limited or absent intuitive understanding of bias from training data. And what's worse is that in their business false flags probably aren't even considered. It's an extra wide supercharged…

People who live in Scunthorpe or Apeniston would have a great time with these things, I imagine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem

Re: I had to get a background check for my job; the report is a 300 page pdf

#212
post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FAANG is full of people who don't actively tweet. G+ was famous for Google execs not using it.

Ok, fair enough, but try and extend the pattern. What if the technical candidates don't have a Facebook account, a twitter account, a github account, or any other active online presence? Do you think such resume's will jump to the top of the decision pile? I highly doubt it.

I mean, you can doubt all you want, but Zuck still has tape over his laptop camera. Negative signals may show up higher. But neither of us has any data to back anything up, just anecdotes.

Re: I had to get a background check for my job; the report is a 300 page pdf

#213
post #4

Here's the company doing this: https://fama.io/ The idea that you can assess someone's workplace performance based on automated screening of their tweets is utterly absurd. If anyone works somewhere that uses this tool, or anything similar to it, you should run far, far away from that company. This is a terrible precedent, and much too much Orwellian for my taste. EDIT: somewhat related, but a while back I made a Twi…

On a related note, I declined a job interview when a company wanted to do the interview process via HireVue. Has the Orwellian telescreen feel. The process includes candidate recording interview responses and uploading them for AI to evaluate. HR must not realize that as part of the interview, candidates are also evaluating whether the company is a good place to work at.

I wonder if we already have products where the AI does the entire first-stage candidate selection based on detailed data profiles on those who've applied, and HR only receives the CV's of people that passed the AI filter.

Re: I had to get a background check for my job; the report is a 300 page pdf

#214
post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who’s responsible for you being a single parent with limited skills? The corporation?

The better questions is do you want to help your neighbours and people in your community who are in such a situation, or do you just say "It's your problem" and turn a blind eye. What kind of world do you want to live in? Keep in mind you're only one serious medial disaster (massive car crash, cancer, etc.) away from bankruptcy, so it would be extremely quick for the tables to turn. Do some reading into people who we…

This is entirely true. I’d much rather pay 5% more in taxes and have Medicare for all rather than the current system (although Canada/rest of the commonwealth actually spend less per capita with a longer life expectancy), where healthcare pricing is almost entirely opaque. So cool you work at your favorite FANG making 200k/yr + 50k in RSU, but what happens when you get cancer in 2 yrs and they lay you off? Maybe you get unemployment for a year? Then you have to apply for Medicaid and how you don’t die while also losing your house. Your partner/spouse may also lose your healthcare coverage.

Re: I had to get a background check for my job; the report is a 300 page pdf

#215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like Hire Right ( https://www.hireright.com/ ) uses this. And a lot of the FANG tier companies use Hire Right. That'd a exclude a lot of the tech companies.

HireRight almost failed my background check because I got the month wrong on my graduation from high school. I legitimately don't understand why a background check has to be this in-depth. Edit: actually I think it was elementary school. Even worse.

Failed mine as hireright did not understand the difference between an area of emphasis and major. Had to talk to boss and hr. It was a mess.

Re: I had to get a background check for my job; the report is a 300 page pdf

#216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The name doesn't even need to be common. There are a dozen's dozen ways to spell my last name, and I've received emails intended for somebody else simply because the sender searched the directory and clicked the first hit they got. For extra credit, I share the same name [spelling and all] with a decently famous musician. If you search for me you'll get him unless you include//exclude an extra choice word or two.

There was nothing wrong with your name until you were about 12 years old?

Specifically for the music artist, there was nothing wrong until my mid-to-late 30s. Both myself and the musician artist in question are similar in age.

Regarding common mis-spelling, that has been as issue for decades. It is a regular deal of "that's an 'e', not a 'o'".

Re: I had to get a background check for my job; the report is a 300 page pdf

#217
post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You know it's still well within the range of possibility to live a healthy, fully actualized life without a named online presence, right? It's possible, sure. But why should anyone have to hide like that? It's the principle of the thing: an ordinary person shouldn't fear for his livelihood just because he exercises his right to speak in public.

Why should you hide your real name? Because no one would hire you because you don't seem perfect. Employers are looking for perfect and the real you isn't perfect. No one is. Some people do seem perfect but they only show you a piece. You want the world to accept all of you and the world is pretending to be something else.

Yes. You should have multiple online personas. I certainly do. I have accounts for video game stuff. Accounts for warhammer miniature painting. A "general bullshit" persona. And a professional persona. The professional one should be squeaky clean.

Re: I had to get a background check for my job; the report is a 300 page pdf

#218
post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FAANG is full of people who don't actively tweet. G+ was famous for Google execs not using it.

Ok, fair enough, but try and extend the pattern. What if the technical candidates don't have a Facebook account, a twitter account, a github account, or any other active online presence? Do you think such resume's will jump to the top of the decision pile? I highly doubt it.

As someone who doesn't have Facebook, barely uses Twitter (zero tweets, I just use tweetdeck to follow some people), doesn't share his GitHub account with employers (just don't really care to) - my resume still jumps to the top of the pile based solely on the big names I've worked for in the past.

So - yes.

Sure, you're going to add more qualifiers now, but I'm giving a counterpoint to your original claim.

Re: I had to get a background check for my job; the report is a 300 page pdf

#220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like Hire Right ( https://www.hireright.com/ ) uses this. And a lot of the FANG tier companies use Hire Right. That'd a exclude a lot of the tech companies.

That is FANG tier? Do any FANG companies use HireRight? They aren't on the blogroll list.

Google and Dropbox used this company on me.
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