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The computers rejecting job applications

bbc.co.uk

151–160 of 261 posts

Re: The computers rejecting job applications

#151

The next logical step would be to train an adversarial AI against the hiring AI. You'd have the system generate your resume and application to maximize your chances. Then the hiring AI would need to be re-trained to account for this. And so on. In the far future, this feedback loop creates an economy where every job application is total gibberish. No human can possibly explain why their resume is a recipe for carne a…

The scary-ier part is how many life-critical processes might end up ( or already are ) like this. That being said ; balls have zero to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to. But if you don't have access to that kind of technology, i i can i i i everything else . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [0]

[0] https://thenextweb.com/artificial-intelligence/2017/06/19/fa...

Re: The computers rejecting job applications

#152

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…

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…

that's the balloon task, it measures willingness to take risks in contexts of ambiguity (the chance of it popping is not known). the button press task is probably used to normalize response time data, since some of the between person differences in average response time is due to (probably uninteresting) differences in motor-control of the neuromuscular system. were there any other tasks like ones that asked you to identify the color of the text regardless of what the word said (e.g. a blue word "red")?

Re: The computers rejecting job applications

#153
post #49

FWIW (at least in tech industry), apparently the automated filtering systems are a myth spread by companies who make money on the promise to optimize your resume to get past the filter. https://twitter.com/GergelyOrosz/status/1292909844886945792 (The OP of the tweet was an engineering manager in several big tech companies, wrote The Software Engineer’s Guidebook last year, and talked with many recruiters in the proce…

Huh? This directly disagrees with my experience. I believe this person is mistaken. Resumes are always filtered before they hit my desk, I just never even knew the filter happened. Apparently they toss out a huge amount. Reading this tweet in depth disagrees with a lot of my experience in Fortune 500 tech companies. Can’t figure out the misunderstanding.

jakub_g refers to the claim that "automated filtering systems are a myth". That doesn't mean that HR aren't filtering them manually.

Re: The computers rejecting job applications

#154
I find the concept of not being allowed to hire (or not hire) whoever you want horrifying.

My life goal is to get my kids to a level where they can afford to refuse to take demeaning tests. But if companies want do employ them, they should be allowed to do so.

Re: The computers rejecting job applications

#155

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 r…

Even fairly strong correlations break down on restricted ranges of inputs. Eg, if you're hiring between 80-90th percentile candidates (top ones get better offers, lower ones get filtered out), yes, the correlation will get swamped by noise; not so much if you are hiring between 0 and 100.

Re: The computers rejecting job applications

#156

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.

A finger-tapping test is often used to normalize other kinds of response time, essentially to control for uninteresting between-person differences in neuro-muscular performance. Was there some kind of cognitive control task too, e.g. where they ask you to refrain from responding to certain stimuli? Typically in something like that you'd have a hard and an easy condition, and the difference in average response times between those conditions is a proxy for "cognitive control" or impulsivity. If an employer were interested in that they'd want to remove the effect of finger speed.

I don't think companies should be administering psychometric tests. But it doesn't make the task you refused to do meaningless.

Re: The computers rejecting job applications

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I'm curious about what the combination of skills was ?

Re: The computers rejecting job applications

#158

The next logical step would be to train an adversarial AI against the hiring AI. You'd have the system generate your resume and application to maximize your chances. Then the hiring AI would need to be re-trained to account for this. And so on. In the far future, this feedback loop creates an economy where every job application is total gibberish. No human can possibly explain why their resume is a recipe for carne a…

I kind of rambled on about this in another comment on this thread, but I paid someone $250 to optimize my resume with key words to appease AI. It worked. I got automated replies to schedule phone screenings from jobs that had rejected my old resume. It's already happening.

Re: The computers rejecting job applications

#159
post #49

FWIW (at least in tech industry), apparently the automated filtering systems are a myth spread by companies who make money on the promise to optimize your resume to get past the filter. https://twitter.com/GergelyOrosz/status/1292909844886945792 (The OP of the tweet was an engineering manager in several big tech companies, wrote The Software Engineer’s Guidebook last year, and talked with many recruiters in the proce…

I paid someone $250 to get my resume past ATS systems, it worked.

Re: The computers rejecting job applications

#160

Doing an online application to initiate contact with a potential employer is already a strike against the applicant. The whole point of these systems is to whittle down the pool of candidates down to single digits. Of course each candidate is going to "perfectly match" the stated faux-objective criteria because that's what the users of these systems think they want. Whether or not that's what they need is another que…

Google did a study on what elements of the hiring process correlated with good performance and found that references we're almost useless.
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