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The computers rejecting job applications

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Re: The computers rejecting job applications

#141

Post by ryandrake »

Bukhmanizer wrote: post #29
JackFr wrote: post #10

This makes me think of the (most likely apocryphal) story of the hiring manager faced with a huge stack of resumes. He divides the stack in half, and tosses the top half in the trash. "We don't want to hire those people. They're terribly unlucky."

Frankly, the logistics of hiring make this a reality. I remember helping my boss hire interns, and picked a few out. Later on, they found out that they weren’t able to go to all of the schools that they wanted, they could only choose 2. Where did all the people from other schools go? Straight in the trash. Same deal with hiring full-time employees in my experience. Random, usually understandable circumstances preclud…

This is why I always laugh when someone trots out the tired "shortage of engineers" excuse about why they can't seem to hire. For any tech job posting, the employer needs a super-aggressive filter just to get the list of applicants down to some manageable double-digit count, and this filter is not always going to be nice or fair unfortunately.

Re: The computers rejecting job applications

#142

Post by SharpeDidntFoul »

You can pay about $250 for someone to optimize your resume with certain key words, punctuation, and formatting choices to make it through these systems. I did this and it worked. I was going for entry level finance roles in tech and finance. I went to a top 40 finance program, interned at Morgan Stanley, a hedge fund, and a respectable incubator, but had a hard time getting replies to my job applications. I used all the help and resources from my university's career center and followed everything on the infamous "Mergers and Inquisitions" website, which is supposed to be the holy grail of career guidance and resume formatting for finance majors. I had my resume looked at my everyone I could get critiques and edits from. I wasn't getting answers from my applications. After hiring someone to change the formatting, I got automated replies saying that they liked my resume and would reach out to schedule a phone screening. Same person, same level of "professionalism" on the resume, same experience, just different key words and seemingly arbitrary formatting choices to please the AI overlords.

I found 5 people claiming to optimize resumes for algorithms for the sorts of jobs I wanted. They all had high reviews from customers. I then asked them all questions through email and phone calls to see if they actually knew what they were talking about. I picked the one who appeared the best. Not only did she have some personal proximity to the space, but she seemed to know all of the nuances of how to please the resume algos. It was the best $250 I ever spent.

Point is, people are cracking these processes, it feels arbitrary but that's how the game works now if your a job seeker. Whether if be something like a resume screener or something of this level that claims to be able to understand your personality in 25 minutes, you can crack the system. If your hiring, I can't imagine how confusing this whole mess is on top of your already busy work day, but it's easy to manipulate these screening software products to make them think whatever you want. I've met many sketchy software sales people who just schlep useless enterprise products at businesses. I wonder how much of the enterprise SaaS world is made up of this sort of thing.

Re: The computers rejecting job applications

#143

Post by metrics314 »

curiousllama wrote: post #40

I was part of a very in-depth evaluations of both Pymetrics & HireVue for a large company recently (2 different evals, among others). Some interesting things we observed: (1) It was not clear to us, with any level of certainty, whether either tool did anything more useful than filter out people who don't want to take the test / don't trust "AI". (2) It was not clear to us, with any level of certainty, whether (1) was…

I’m an IO psych at a large tech company that evaluated pymetrics against job performance and there was no relationship, just near 0 correlations so recommended not using them and we don’t. These AI tools are not transparent enough in explaining their outcomes and lack what we call face validity or job relevance. A coding test is at least a good filter at the top for entry level roles with large pools because it has relevance and false negatives aren’t as much of a concern (but we test still for disparate impact) otherwise for most roles a structured interview is the best option.

Re: The computers rejecting job applications

#144

Post by 35fbe7d3d5b9 »

dimitrios1 wrote: post #104
patrickthebold wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a section on my resume called: 'Technologies I'm Unfamiliar With' Underneath is a Laundry list of today's sexiest technologies. It's not quite as advanced as your suggestion, but it's pretty effective. It's also a good icebreaker when you have the in person interview.

I've always viewed staying up with the latest tools, technologies, and practices as part of my job. I've also found that the people who tend to not do this or display a similar sentiment you touched on with your comment, it's because you have carved out a large enough amount of success or niche with what you are working with. Am I reading into this too far?

As someone who gets to participate in the hiring process more than I'd like to, I look for balance on resumes.

If you bring nothing but J2EE 1.4 experience I'm going to assume you've carved out a focused niche. I'll steer the interview towards broad, modern practices and technologies.

If your resume talks about nothing but modern technologies, I'll try to dive deep to be sure you aren't a dilettante with surface knowledge in a ton of things but no deep capabilities where it matters to $company.

In general the best resumes show a balance of deep expertise in foundational tech and exposure to new technologies. A dev might have done Python for a decade but has started poking at Elixir, an ops person knows Linux like the back of their hand before they start talking about Kube, etc.

Re: The computers rejecting job applications

#145

Post by BerislavLopac »

BerislavLopac wrote: post #23
JackFr wrote: post #10

This makes me think of the (most likely apocryphal) story of the hiring manager faced with a huge stack of resumes. He divides the stack in half, and tosses the top half in the trash. "We don't want to hire those people. They're terribly unlucky."

I've read once of a company who fired everyone who had below average performance score.

Oh yes, and I know of at least one country that is considering setting the minimum salary as a percentage of the average salary...

Re: The computers rejecting job applications

#146

Post by metrics314 »

aspaceman wrote: post #85
curiousllama wrote: post #40

I was part of a very in-depth evaluations of both Pymetrics & HireVue for a large company recently (2 different evals, among others). Some interesting things we observed: (1) It was not clear to us, with any level of certainty, whether either tool did anything more useful than filter out people who don't want to take the test / don't trust "AI". (2) It was not clear to us, with any level of certainty, whether (1) was…

How do you find good psych people? Showing my bias but it’s a genuine question. I remember in school all the psych and social psych folks being total jackoffs in blowoff classes. How do you find people you can take seriously? Who don’t just quote psychology today and act like it’s insight? Like I know the field is professional and has skilled professionals - but how do you find them?

For hiring and assessment design look for people with at least Master degrees in Industrial Organizational psychology. PhD isn’t necessary because it’s an applied field and there aren’t many applied PhDs so work experience is more important. Most start out in public sector which is much more rigorous in their interviewing and defining roles than the private sector is. SDSU and SFSU have great programs in CA and their professors can connect you to their alumni networks. SIOP is the professional organization. IOPredict, Biddle, and RocketHire are some consulting firms.

Re: The computers rejecting job applications

#147

Post by naravara »

mattgreenrocks wrote: post #94
finolex1 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pymetrics test mentioned in the article involves among other things, clicking on a balloon till it pops and pressing the keyboard as many times as possible in a minute. As much as people love to hate on leetcode-style interview programming questions, they are at least remotely related to performance on the job. Personally, I've found it to be a good filter in terms of deciding where to interview at. Companies tha…

> Personally, I've found it to be a good filter in terms of deciding where to interview at Emphasizing this point for others. This is the best way to approach it IMO. The company should work to impress you as much as you work to impress them.

> The company should work to impress you as much as you work to impress them.

This becomes more true the further in your career you go. But for entry level positions it's really just a numbers game.

Re: The computers rejecting job applications

#148

Post by ghaff »

CodesInChaos wrote: post #110
thekyle wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The secretary problem says that once you pass on a CV you cannot go back and latter decide you want that person. I don't think that is a restriction that exists in real life hiring. It is possible to review all the CVs and then decide which one to pick.

When I was involved in hiring, we received a steady stream of CVs and then had to decide if we want to interview and eventually hire or reject a candidate (typically we decided right after the interview or programming task). While there is a short time window in which multiple candidates might be evaluated, this approach is pretty close to the assumptions of the secretary problem.

I assume that's pretty typical. It's certainly my experience. We interview someone and have a call and it's usually either an enthusiastic yes. Or an OK I guess (or just no), in which case we keep looking. I'm not sure I can think of a case where we were "I guess they'll meet our needs if no one better comes along."

Re: The computers rejecting job applications

#149

Post by treeman79 »

mattgreenrocks wrote: post #94
finolex1 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pymetrics test mentioned in the article involves among other things, clicking on a balloon till it pops and pressing the keyboard as many times as possible in a minute. As much as people love to hate on leetcode-style interview programming questions, they are at least remotely related to performance on the job. Personally, I've found it to be a good filter in terms of deciding where to interview at. Companies tha…

> Personally, I've found it to be a good filter in terms of deciding where to interview at Emphasizing this point for others. This is the best way to approach it IMO. The company should work to impress you as much as you work to impress them.

Got a call from a recruiter that was looking for an oddly specific combination of skills. Me, so it’s Company X? He was flabbergasted. I gave 3 months notice. I was literally the only person in the world with that combination of skills. So I asked how much, went to bosses, I’ll stay on longer if you pay me that rate.

Good money for a few months.

Re: The computers rejecting job applications

#150

Post by 35fbe7d3d5b9 »

jdmichal wrote: post #106
OliverGilan wrote: post #38

About a year and half ago I was applying for a software engineering internship at Goldman Sachs and they made me take a Pymetrics test. One of the tasks was to press the spacebar as many times as possible in 30 seconds. I didn't do the task and withdrew my application.

Is it bad that my first reaction would be to bind autohotkey to spam out space bar events?

Probably, too try-hard. I think mine would be to press the spacebar once. I'd get rejected for not following instructions.
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