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Automated Job Rejection

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Re: Automated Job Rejection

#31

Post by fiatmoney »

This reeks of principal-agent problems. HR departments at large firms are notoriously concerned with 1) folk knowledge about not getting sued (with a very tenuous relationship to reality, eg mgkimsal's comment), and 2) checking boxes. Since their actions have almost zero connection to outcomes, it's no wonder they play it safe / easy in hiring, and both firms and workers see shortages.

One way to start solving the problem is to make the department with the position responsible for filling it, either with their own man-hours, or via their own headhunting budget.

Re: Automated Job Rejection

#32

Post by incongruity »

legutierr wrote: post #25
incongruity wrote: post #14

(warning: anecdote ahead) I once had a job at a large institution created, for me, with requirements based solely on my resume. The automated HR system decided I wasn't a match for the job. It took a month or two for them to be able to hire me after that fiasco.

I hope that they replaced or repaired the automated system. How did it turn out?

Admittedly, this was a few years back, so I'd expect it's been replaced, improved, etc.

But it all worked out for me in the end – I had a number of years of good employment, working for an awesome boss.

Re: Automated Job Rejection

#33

Post by incongruity »

cperciva wrote: post #29
incongruity wrote: post #14

(warning: anecdote ahead) I once had a job at a large institution created, for me, with requirements based solely on my resume. The automated HR system decided I wasn't a match for the job. It took a month or two for them to be able to hire me after that fiasco.

I don't know anything about your specific case (obviously) but what you describe isn't necessarily a bad thing. In some organizations, one of the rules of HR is to add a level of corporate sanity-checking to a process which is otherwise driven by individual managers -- by creating additional unstated requirements if necessary. To take an extreme case, if Bob the VP of Sales decides he wants to create a "Senior Engine…

I totally get your point – checks and balances are important. However, I don't think anyone is helped by unstated or invisible requirements. It speaks to a high level of mistrust of employees and candidates.

Now, if HR were to explicitly add those requirements and be open about it, I'd wager it'd still keep fraud down while also actually improving the hiring process for both HR and the hiring manager.

Re: Automated Job Rejection

#34

Post by dredmorbius »

joezydeco wrote: post #11

How about the fact that none of these employers even have the courtesy to contact the applicant at all? I'm not talking only about unsolicited resumes sent to H/R managers, but job applications submitted through the big websites like Dice, Monster, and Careerbuilder. Not even a "we'll keep you on file" like the old days. I'm half-tempted to make a shame board to let applicants tally up how many unanswered candidates…

I've had firms contact me to tell me they've passed me over for consideration ... for positions I've never applied for. Apparently even rejecting various pseudonyms I've generated.

Which I suppose is the flipside of your situation.

Re: Automated Job Rejection

#35

Post by cperciva »

incongruity wrote: post #33
cperciva wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know anything about your specific case (obviously) but what you describe isn't necessarily a bad thing. In some organizations, one of the rules of HR is to add a level of corporate sanity-checking to a process which is otherwise driven by individual managers -- by creating additional unstated requirements if necessary. To take an extreme case, if Bob the VP of Sales decides he wants to create a "Senior Engine…

I totally get your point – checks and balances are important. However, I don't think anyone is helped by unstated or invisible requirements. It speaks to a high level of mistrust of employees and candidates. Now, if HR were to explicitly add those requirements and be open about it, I'd wager it'd still keep fraud down while also actually improving the hiring process for both HR and the hiring manager.

Fraud is a difficult problem to deal with -- the more open you are about what you're doing to prevent it, the more you speed up the "evolution" of better (aka. worse) fraud.

Whether that effect is large enough to justify the lack of transparency in this case, I don't know; but I'm sure there are some cases where it is appropriate.

(Marginally related: This is why I have some sympathy for Paypal when they say "this payment is suspect" and refuse to provide any more information -- they can't tell me why a particular payment set off alarms without also telling the bad guys how to evade their alarms.)

Re: Automated Job Rejection

#36

Post by esrauch »

brudgers wrote: post #27

Automated resume rejection makes a lot of sense. If there are 200 applicants for a position, software which eliminates all of the candidates only has 0.5% error. That's pretty good AI.

I know that was a joke, but in situations like this there are two separate measures of error; precision and recall. Precision is how many of the results marked as relevant really were (measure of false positives), recall is how many of the actually relevant results were correctly considered relevant (measure of false negatives).

Any system can trivially have perfect precision by saying all results are not relevant, or perfect recall by saying all results are relevant. Your system would have 100% precision and 0% recall.

Re: Automated Job Rejection

#37

Post by rtkwe »

brudgers wrote: post #27

Automated resume rejection makes a lot of sense. If there are 200 applicants for a position, software which eliminates all of the candidates only has 0.5% error. That's pretty good AI.

That only works so long as the rules given to the filtering program are accurate and feasible, and if a single failed requirement DNE complete rejection. Management drawing completely overboard reqs for the filter means the filter becomes meaningless.

Re: Automated Job Rejection

#38

Post by joezydeco »

dredmorbius wrote: post #34
joezydeco wrote: post #11

How about the fact that none of these employers even have the courtesy to contact the applicant at all? I'm not talking only about unsolicited resumes sent to H/R managers, but job applications submitted through the big websites like Dice, Monster, and Careerbuilder. Not even a "we'll keep you on file" like the old days. I'm half-tempted to make a shame board to let applicants tally up how many unanswered candidates…

I've had firms contact me to tell me they've passed me over for consideration ... for positions I've never applied for. Apparently even rejecting various pseudonyms I've generated. Which I suppose is the flipside of your situation.

Wow, that's just bizarre. Are you sure you don't have a resume active on some random job board that's continually getting sent out?

Re: Automated Job Rejection

#39

Post by yummyfajitas »

knowtheory wrote: post #26
natrius wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming you're right, who cares? Why must large corporations train employees if they don't feel it's in their best interests?

If you're talking about the social contract... who is supposed to train employees? It's certainly the case currently that the US workforce bears the burden of training itself currently often by taking on substantial debt to afford a college degree. But to say that companies that operate in the US don't have a substantial interest in ensuring that the US has a trained and skilled work force... that just seems dangerou…

Employees could pay for their own training, and receive a wage premium for their trouble? That's what happens now, and it seems to work well.

The only real issue is that the education establishment seems to sell a lot of low quality training that doesn't provide much in the way of job skills. But that's an issue with the educational establishment, not with the purchasers of skilled labor.

Re: Automated Job Rejection

#40

Post by dredmorbius »

joezydeco wrote: post #38
dredmorbius wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had firms contact me to tell me they've passed me over for consideration ... for positions I've never applied for. Apparently even rejecting various pseudonyms I've generated. Which I suppose is the flipside of your situation.

Wow, that's just bizarre. Are you sure you don't have a resume active on some random job board that's continually getting sent out?

One of me does have a publicly posted resume. I've given some thought to seriously trimming what it reveals.

Others of me have public profiles, sans resume: https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/33WYAgFc...

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