I automated my job application process • Hacker News Board

Re: I automated my job application process

#121

Post by xingped » Sat, Dec 28, 2024, 7:04 PM UTC

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #98

codegeek wrote: post #12

Nice. But as a hiring manager, this is the last thing we want. Flooded with auto submitted Resumes. I posted a job recently and got 100+ resumes in 2 days and 99% were not even remotely close to being a good fit. I struggled to sort through so many Resumes to find someone worth interviewing. The problem is that with so much noise, good candidates may get ignored or rejected by mistake. And the cycle continues. I get…

Maybe not your company, but it seems hiring companies brought this upon themselves with immediate AI rejects of qualified candidates, ghost jobs, ghosting candidates after interview, etc, etc. If it takes a qualified candidate 100's of applications to land a single interview, then can you blame someone for automating it? I'd say that having the initiative and ability to automate it well would make this guy a great hi…

100%, this is a natural reaction to the situation companies have created. When you get a rejection response mere minutes after submission that claims "after careful consideration..." then of course I'm not going to spend any more time than that applying to any jobs anymore. Prove a human actually took the time to review my resume and I'll actually apply to your company like a human.

Re: I automated my job application process

#122

Post by sensanaty » Sat, Dec 28, 2024, 7:06 PM UTC

codegeek wrote: post #12

Nice. But as a hiring manager, this is the last thing we want. Flooded with auto submitted Resumes. I posted a job recently and got 100+ resumes in 2 days and 99% were not even remotely close to being a good fit. I struggled to sort through so many Resumes to find someone worth interviewing. The problem is that with so much noise, good candidates may get ignored or rejected by mistake. And the cycle continues. I get…

I've had situations where a reapplication to the same spot (with the same resume/details) I got auto-rejected from would yield an acceptance.

I blame all the ASTs and companies that fail to give any feedback whatsoever other than a generic "We went another way". If you can't give people the 5 minutes of effort of looking over their resume, why do you expect them to respect your time instead?

Re: I automated my job application process

#123

Post by quicksilver03 » Sat, Dec 28, 2024, 7:06 PM UTC

I'd prefer an application to automatically fill in my data in those junk ATS systems, such as WorkDay, that pretend to parse my LinkedIn profile or a PDF resume and inevitably makes me do all the copy-paste twice.

A couple of years ago it was so bad that I stopped applying as soon as I saw that WorkDay crap pop up, regardless of the company.

Re: I automated my job application process

#124

Post by plagiarist » Sat, Dec 28, 2024, 7:07 PM UTC

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #98

codegeek wrote: post #12

Nice. But as a hiring manager, this is the last thing we want. Flooded with auto submitted Resumes. I posted a job recently and got 100+ resumes in 2 days and 99% were not even remotely close to being a good fit. I struggled to sort through so many Resumes to find someone worth interviewing. The problem is that with so much noise, good candidates may get ignored or rejected by mistake. And the cycle continues. I get…

Maybe not your company, but it seems hiring companies brought this upon themselves with immediate AI rejects of qualified candidates, ghost jobs, ghosting candidates after interview, etc, etc. If it takes a qualified candidate 100's of applications to land a single interview, then can you blame someone for automating it? I'd say that having the initiative and ability to automate it well would make this guy a great hi…

I also find it hard to sympathize. This is an industry that is notorious for emailing software developers with irrelevant job offers.

We know from the irrelevant offers that many professionals have automated the processes for casting a net. How it is a problem if individuals do that in reverse?

Re: I automated my job application process

#125

Post by bravura » Sat, Dec 28, 2024, 7:07 PM UTC

ripped_britches wrote: post #33

As someone who automates everything and normally loves this type of thing, my approach for job hunting has been way different. Instead of spray and pray, I spend a week or so deeply researching where I want to work and figure out how to get there role-wise. Everything 100% manual and focused, no more than 8 total companies. Maybe spray and pray works if you’re more junior, but later in your career you’ll want to be v…

With that said, an LLM to a) generate a LONG-list and b) help you zero in on your short-list; is something I would pay for.

Re: I automated my job application process

#126

Post by Etheryte » Sat, Dec 28, 2024, 7:08 PM UTC

nickff wrote: post #90

Etheryte wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, while paying to reduce spam may work in other contexts, in this setting the incentives don't align. Imagine if Linkedin got paid every time you applied for a listing, the pile of ghost jobs would be practically infinite.

Some of the listing services actually do charge employers per applicant, unless they are rejected within a certain amount of time (usually 48 or 72 hrs).

The critical distinction here is that the employer pays, not the applicant. This direction works, that's roughly how all job boards work if you squint, but if it was the applicant paying, the incentives would be opposing.

Re: I automated my job application process

#127

Post by programjames » Sat, Dec 28, 2024, 7:10 PM UTC

andylynch wrote: post #115

programjames wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's actually a solution around this: name and shame! Just like bad companies get called out on GlassDoor, companies should create a reputation system for prospective employees (e.g. a professional credit score). This already exists for potential tenants, so I don't really understand why it doesn't exist for potential employees given they occur at about the same frequency and have a similar amount of money trading…

You’re talking about blacklists. They are not a new idea, in fact they are well known, but also prohibited by law in many places because of their widespread abuse. There’s also a more general idea in competition law that companies shoul, well, compete their fields, and allowing cartel-like behaviour on the labour market is contradictory to this.

A reputation score is only a blacklist if you target specific people to tank their reputations.

Re: I automated my job application process

#128

Post by _DeadFred_ » Sat, Dec 28, 2024, 7:10 PM UTC

nsxwolf wrote: post #106

the_snooze wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a hiring manager, I've chosen to opt out of this system altogether. Instead of public postings, I just poll my network and post job announcements in private channels in my professional community. Much higher signal-to-noise ratio.

I wish I knew how to find one of these channels. My real human professional network has slowly evaporated over the last decade.

Advice from an old guy that went through this after moving to a new area and loosing my phat California income eventually. If you aren't working, pickup consulting gigs. They will probably suck and be high stress low reward, but it will help you build connections locally. Look for ones that don't just need a body but that really need help so you are in a position where your work is visible. Heck once I got in most of the 'come in and clean up our mess' jobs wanted to hire me to manage their teams/projects. Not ideal but it paid well and I have a pretty limited pool of bog standard dev work (or worse, internal IT dev) where I live anyways.

Re: I automated my job application process

#129

Post by lolinder » Sat, Dec 28, 2024, 7:12 PM UTC

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #98

codegeek wrote: post #12

Nice. But as a hiring manager, this is the last thing we want. Flooded with auto submitted Resumes. I posted a job recently and got 100+ resumes in 2 days and 99% were not even remotely close to being a good fit. I struggled to sort through so many Resumes to find someone worth interviewing. The problem is that with so much noise, good candidates may get ignored or rejected by mistake. And the cycle continues. I get…

Maybe not your company, but it seems hiring companies brought this upon themselves with immediate AI rejects of qualified candidates, ghost jobs, ghosting candidates after interview, etc, etc. If it takes a qualified candidate 100's of applications to land a single interview, then can you blame someone for automating it? I'd say that having the initiative and ability to automate it well would make this guy a great hi…

> it seems hiring companies brought this upon themselves

You're missing the point. The primary people who suffer for this environment isn't hiring companies—they'll eventually work through all the resumes and find someone who will be qualified to fill their open roles, it's just much more expensive—the primary people who suffer for this is qualified employees who now have to work that much harder to stand out from a sea of garbage.

Your odds and my odds of having our resumes thrown out summarily are 100x what they were a few years ago, because time-per-resume has dropped dramatically. That's the fallout from this trend to be concerned about, and we're the real victims of it, not the hiring companies.

Re: I automated my job application process

#130

Post by ghaff » Sat, Dec 28, 2024, 7:12 PM UTC

programjames wrote: post #120

ghaff wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Applicants have long sprayed and prayed even when it involved sending physical letters. Some of the current systems have decreased the effort per company applied-to but, for entry-level employees, it was rarely a carefully-targeted thing for new professionals. It was always a numbers game to some degree although admittedly the scale and tools involved have changed.

The smaller scale in the past made it so managers either knew (at least by reputation) the person submitting the resume, or it was not too expensive to find out. Nowadays, jobs are getting 100x as many applications, most of which are far lower in quality. University admissions has followed a similar trend, going from 5–10 being "spray and pray" twenty years ago to 20–30 applications nowadays. However, it didn't incre…

The "solution," such as it is, is that companies strongly bias towards referrals and managers towards people they personally know. And, from some conversations I've had, that is exactly what is happening. With the result that it's tough for junior people with no real networks (OK maybe their school is a signal) because companies really don't want to sift all the junk they're getting and I don't really blame them.