We created a fake language to root out resume liars • Hacker News Board

Re: We created a fake language to root out resume liars

#351

Post by lwigo » Wed, Mar 10, 2021, 2:28 PM UTC

DoubleGlazing wrote: post #340

brigandish wrote: post #77

> That way, when candidates were pitched to us with "X years of MOVA experience", we knew that somebody was full of it. I'd put my money on the recruiter. I once had an excruciatingly awkward interview at a company on an industrial estate in the middle of nowhereland with no train station nearby that took me bloody ages to get to… which was actually going well until they asked me about my long experience with Exchang…

Had the almost exact same experience, but with Java. I'm a C# developer and although I have some experience with Java, I don't have enough to list it as a skill on my CV. Anyways, in this interview I was being asked about Java and I answered every question by saying I don't really know Java. The interviewers were obviously getting annoyed. So I asked "Sorry, I thought this was a C# job?". No, it was a Java job and ma…

Recruiters will straight up ask for .DOC versions, too. The gall.

Re: We created a fake language to root out resume liars

#352

Post by hashtag-til » Wed, Mar 10, 2021, 2:28 PM UTC

pacman2 wrote: post #244

brigandish wrote: post #77

> That way, when candidates were pitched to us with "X years of MOVA experience", we knew that somebody was full of it. I'd put my money on the recruiter. I once had an excruciatingly awkward interview at a company on an industrial estate in the middle of nowhereland with no train station nearby that took me bloody ages to get to… which was actually going well until they asked me about my long experience with Exchang…

"The whole recruitment process seems broken " The IT market is pretty good compared to other fields but in the and, the market might have collapsed already. ""The Market for Lemons: Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism" is a well-known[1][2] 1970 paper by economist George Akerlof which examines how the quality of goods traded in a market can degrade in the presence of information asymmetry between buyers and…

Do you think this would explain the status of places like LinkedIn? Long ago, it was an OK place to have an online CV. Now it is a place people use show off with non-relevant _stuff_.

Re: We created a fake language to root out resume liars

#353

Post by xoudini » Wed, Mar 10, 2021, 2:29 PM UTC

pkilgore wrote: post #303

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet they could put git in a job opening as if it were a programming language. A quick litmus test would be "write hello world in git". It would either come up empty (bad), a bullshit answer (bad), or a reply that git is not a programming language (good), or a creative solution (funny and good).

git init && git commit --allow-empty -m "Hello World" && git log --pretty=format:%s -n 1 I need more interesting hobbies (than doing a lot of random git man page reading for various reasons).

I had a similar thought:

  git init -q && git commit -q --allow-empty -m "Hello, World\!" && git show --format=%B | head -1

Re: We created a fake language to root out resume liars

#354

Post by cosmodisk » Wed, Mar 10, 2021, 2:30 PM UTC

DoubleGlazing wrote: post #340

brigandish wrote: post #77

> That way, when candidates were pitched to us with "X years of MOVA experience", we knew that somebody was full of it. I'd put my money on the recruiter. I once had an excruciatingly awkward interview at a company on an industrial estate in the middle of nowhereland with no train station nearby that took me bloody ages to get to… which was actually going well until they asked me about my long experience with Exchang…

Had the almost exact same experience, but with Java. I'm a C# developer and although I have some experience with Java, I don't have enough to list it as a skill on my CV. Anyways, in this interview I was being asked about Java and I answered every question by saying I don't really know Java. The interviewers were obviously getting annoyed. So I asked "Sorry, I thought this was a C# job?". No, it was a Java job and ma…

The recruiter was in idiot but not to consider c# dev for Java job is quite silly too.

Re: We created a fake language to root out resume liars

#355

Post by hellbannedguy » Wed, Mar 10, 2021, 2:30 PM UTC

I understand the need for Resume accuracy in key roles.

We all know the people with spotless resumes, who get jobs they don’t deserve, and perform abysmally, and sometimes alienate whole departments—middle managers in dockers. Or, the run of the mill worker whom just does the bare minimum, and counts on that bloated resume as a life saver.

If I had a company, many jobs would be based on test results. It would take nepotism, preconceived notions, liars, out of the hiring process.

Of course, many jobs could not be filled this way.

I don’t know why companies try out local applicants for a couple of weeks, and if they preform, make it permeant. “

Employer, “You did well on our tests. Could come here for a couple of weeks, and we will see how you do?

It would give the diamonds in the rough, minorities, and guys whom didn’t go to the four year party, a chance, and company might gain a productive worker?

Re: We created a fake language to root out resume liars

#356

Post by behringer » Wed, Mar 10, 2021, 2:30 PM UTC

jameshart wrote: post #317

LudwigNagasena wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn’t put “chess” onto my resume unless I was at least titled. Otherwise, what is a signal that it sends to the hedge fund crowd of overachievers? That you have a hobby that you managed to not get good at?

Is the objective of hobbies to ‘get good’ at them? That sounds exhausting. If someone lists ‘skiing’ as a hobby I’m not expecting them to have Olympic medals to back that up. ‘It says here on your resume that you play guitar. Well, let’s see how you fair in a guitar battle with Slash from accounting’ This is just more of that hyper competitive ‘well rounded college applicant’ performative high school stuff, isn’t it?…

I would not list guitar playing on my resume unless I was prepared to entertain a crowd at my job interview.

Likewise I wouldn't list chess unless I was good enough to at least entertain a grand master for a few minutes.

Re: We created a fake language to root out resume liars

#357

Post by mrits » Wed, Mar 10, 2021, 2:30 PM UTC

rkalla wrote: post #346

falcolas wrote: post #332

So, let me get this straight - you lie about your job requirements, but get all bent out of shape when the candidates lie right back at you? Brilliant. I can’t think of a better example of why hiring is broken; of how unequal the power dynamic is between employers and employees.

Is anyone surprised FB has this culture? This would be like me leaving little breadcrumbs of an affair for my SO to find and then have it all culminate in an "AH HA! I caught you snooping!" when they call me out on it. So... healthy...

I am, seeing how it has nothing to do with FB

Re: We created a fake language to root out resume liars

#358

Post by gota » Wed, Mar 10, 2021, 2:31 PM UTC

Gustomaximus wrote: post #337

A while back a few of us created a April fools 'Face Gestures' video for Opera software. For years after I would occasionally have people mention they were interviewing a candidate that said using our 'face gestures' was one of their favourite features of the browser. Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkNxbyp6thM

The video is hilarious, congratulations

A well implemented version of the idea would actually be useful for people with impaired mobility. Perhaps focusing more on eyes and blinking, or combining limited gesturing with eye movement/blinking...

anything to avoid having to lick to bookmark or shake your tongue is a plus, really

Re: We created a fake language to root out resume liars

#359

Post by georgiecasey » Wed, Mar 10, 2021, 2:31 PM UTC

ALittleLight wrote: post #10

This reminds me of an anecdote I read once, maybe in Liars Poker, about how lots of people applying to this hedge fund put "Chess" on their resume somewhere thinking it made them seem like a deep or strategic thinker. As it happened, at this hedge fund there worked a former Soviet master or grandmaster ranked player. And so, whenever interviewing any candidate who claimed great proficiency with chess on their resume,…

James Damore must have read that book as well, he lied on his CV saying he was a FIDE master.

I'm always fascinated at the esteem chess is held in for some reason. I don't have a high rating (lichess rapid ~1900) but to me, improving at chess is the same as improving at everything else: practice.

Re: We created a fake language to root out resume liars

#360

Post by kamarg » Wed, Mar 10, 2021, 2:34 PM UTC

buu700 wrote: post #331

indeed30 wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, recruiters have accounts with companies, but in my experience the recruitment fee is a percentage of salary, and the individual recruiter compensation is on a commission model. In short, I personally have no problems in believing that the higher the salary, the higher the payment to both the recruitment company and individual recruiter. However, I think we all know that closing the deal is far more important to…

I haven't worked with a recruiter, so this is pure speculation, but it seems to me that a recruiter's greatest incentive would be to close any deal at all as quickly as possible, because they're competing against the alternative of you finding a position on your own first (or otherwise no longer requiring their services). Getting you a high salary is just gravy.

> they're competing against the alternative of you finding a position on your own first (or otherwise no longer requiring their services)

Almost every recruiter will constantly ask you if you're interviewing anywhere else or working with any other recruiters. They do this so they can be sure nobody else has the right to represent you to a client but also to gauge how much effort to put into presenting you to any of their clients. If you're not working with a a single recruiter exclusively, you'll often find that the amount of work they put in to get you in front of their clients drops dramatically to the point they no longer return your calls/emails.