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I automated my job application process

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Re: I automated my job application process

#201

Post by jjav »

salomon812 wrote: post #173
Aurornis wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Over Christmas I met up with a friend who teaches part-time at a local college. He said he’s failed more people this year than the cumulative total of his entire past teaching career due to LLM abuse. He doesn’t use LLM detection tools, but he says it’s easy to identify papers with warning signs of LLM use. For some reason, using ChatGPT for his specific niche topic overuses a few obscure, rarely-used words that most…

I know the on-site is time-consuming and expensive, but so is firing people (at least in United States it is.) I've had a few on-site interviews where having them on-site made us realize we could never work with them. Given how much time they will spend with you, it's totally worth it to spend your resources on hiring.

> so is firing people (at least in United States it is.)

There's probably some country somewhere where it is easier to fire people than the US, but not sure where would that be.

There are zero requirements to fire people in the US. No reason needed, no notice, no compensation, nothing.

Most (if not all) other countries have varying levels of requirements, notice and compensation required to fire someone. In the US, nothing.

Re: I automated my job application process

#202

Post by johnnyanmac »

salomon812 wrote: post #131

I'm a software manager that has been doing some form of interviewing/hiring for 13 years. I did two rounds of hiring software engineers last year, one in spring that seemed normal, and one in the fall that was was brutal. The fall hiring had a flood of applicants, and in retrospect, most seemed like AI was used in some way. For the fall round, I suddenly had a higher percentage of applicants that qualified after resu…

>We have a full-time recruiter working with us, and I'm not 100% sure what tools he used, but I switched to manually reviewing each resume, and given that it was 100s, it took a long time, but I still had my problem of great initial screen, terrible technical interview.

I think it's very scary when even manual review is still yielding you results with horrible technical screenings. I wonder at that point if your technical review is very hard or specific (specific makes sense, yo did you you are looking for esoteric), or if it's just truly that polarized a market. Many are laid off and I imagine those qualified with such specialized knowledge and anchoring themselves instead of searching.

>I also switched to only on-site interviews

Kind of crazy. Not that I mind on-sites, but I haven't even heard a mention of on-site in the interview process since COVID. And I'm basically applying to any relevant position, locally or remotely. Just another curiosity.

Re: I automated my job application process

#203

Post by mlloyd »

pknomad wrote: post #141
salomon812 wrote: post #131

I'm a software manager that has been doing some form of interviewing/hiring for 13 years. I did two rounds of hiring software engineers last year, one in spring that seemed normal, and one in the fall that was was brutal. The fall hiring had a flood of applicants, and in retrospect, most seemed like AI was used in some way. For the fall round, I suddenly had a higher percentage of applicants that qualified after resu…

I am a Platform Engineer and it feels like your experience mirrors mine. Like you, our challenge is filtering out large volume but also filtering out LLM abusers. We're not opposed to people using LLMs, when appropriate. I find that candidates inappropriately use it to circumvent the process and that is a big deal for me (and our team). We try to do the right thing(TM) by the candidates by creating minimal interview…

When folks are engaging in mass circumventing of pervasive processes, it's because the process has broken 'typical' attempts to interact with it.

You're being penalized for doing right by candidates but it's likely that a lot of those candidates were penalized previously when they tried to interact the 'right' way with other folks hiring and adapted workarounds as a result.

It's a quintessential arms race. For what it's worth, I appreciate that you're trying hard to keep your hiring process broad and to mitigate your potential blind spots. That's refreshing to hear from a hiring manager.

Re: I automated my job application process

#204

Post by sroussey »

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…

I agree! Not that it’s worked as of yet.

Re: I automated my job application process

#205

Post by [deleted] »

Aurornis wrote: post #163
HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> If it takes a qualified candidate 100's of applications to land a single interview, then can you blame someone for automating it? Yes, a candidate is responsible for their own actions. This logic only sounds good until you’re on the hiring side and you see the stark difference between the LLM abuser applications and the people who are genuinely applying. Those people who have to apply to 100s of jobs are probably i…

[deleted]

Re: I automated my job application process

#207

Post by hnthrow90348765 »

Aurornis wrote: post #145
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…

Public job board listings have always been flooded with low-effort spam applicants, but AI tools have supercharged the problem. The saddest part to me is watching the AI and social media malaise infect young mentees. I’ve been doing volunteer mentoring for years. Recent cohorts have been infected with a sense that the job market is nothing more than a game that they need to min-max. It’s sad to see smart, motivated y…

>It’s sad to see smart, motivated young people get their opinions on the job market from cesspools like Reddit and TikTok, which teach them that trying is lame and the only way to retain your dignity is to withhold your effort from a job, lie your way through interviews, and “quiet quit” by testing the limits of how little you can. Reddit and TikTok swoop in to rationalize this behavior as the fault of companies and CEOs, not their own decisions.

I was given Tech Lead duties after being hired as a Senior SWE, but when it came time for the promotion and pay bump at the end of this year, I kept my current title and only got a 3% pay increase. All of the feedback was good. If there was criticism or bad opinions, it was withheld. I have to wait until next year to see if I can get that now while still carrying those duties, which is ample time to look for new positions.

I was also shown a chart where I was under the 50th percentile (roughly 33%) of pay of other Senior SWEs at the company. That was a nice disclosure, but they don't want to do anything about it. That is patently saying they believe I am below average even though I am doing regular senior SWE work plus tech lead duties without the title and pay. But they don't have any feedback for that. It's possible I just accepted a lower salary and they want to keep it as low as possible.

There could be other reasons why I didn't get it, but I have to guess at those reasons. I'm not going to do more than the minimum if they don't give me actionable feedback and don't reward taking on additional duties. Their move is to not give rewards for working harder, my move is job hopping for that increase.

You can't have many of these experiences before you become jaded. I am definitely not spending a minute outside of work when I take up additional duties on the job and still don't get rewarded for it.

I'm going to act like a business of one and just take as much as I can for as little as possible throughout the career. If that means spamming LLM applications for the next position, then so be it I guess.

Playing the blame game about whether workers or businesses caused this is pretty pointless, but the simple truth is that many people get far more money for far less effort than a Senior SWE (and certainly more than manual labor at all levels below where I'm at).

All of these stories we hear paints a picture of how the world really works, so can you really blame people for getting ahead that way and not taking the path of hard work when it doesn't reward you? I don't want to be taken advantage of and be a sucker - do you?

Re: I automated my job application process

#208

Post by Terr_ »

bdangubic wrote: post #191
stackskipton wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In our remote interviews, I've started pasting the question into meeting chat that I've already fed into ChatGPT. Mainly because some candidates do actually do better with reading and thinking but it's also just pure bait to paste into their open ChatGPT window. Since I've already got input on my side, if they start reading off ChatGPT output, they get a strike, two strikes and interview is ended. However, I do belie…

it is surprising there isn’t some SaaS bullshit company that solves this problem. we have shit like Pearsons and whatnots when taking exams, I took few certification exams and it was like - install this thing that takes over my machine - 360 camera around to show my surroundings - no phone/watch/… One would think by now there’d be two Stanford grads with a SaaS shit taking care of this for $899/hr Last interview I di…

Even as we speak, scams are going on where pretend-employers are backdooring the computers of applicants that way.

I fear the only applicants who would agree are also the ones who can't be trusted with any employee access to your corporate resources.

Re: I automated my job application process

#209

Post by sroussey »

drillsteps5 wrote: post #66

In the middle of fruitless multi-month job search, I manually view LinkedIn/indeed job sites daily and look for new positions, going through requirements, making sure I have the skills and experience (also helps with understanding if I need to upskill in certain areas), then look up the company, the industry it's in, etc. By the time I'm ready to apply to the position I know I'm interested in and a good fit for, ther…

Often it’s 100 applicants in the first hour.

My advice for both sides: don’t use job boards. Use your own website.

Re: I automated my job application process

#210

Post by casenmgreen »

salomon812 wrote: post #131

I'm a software manager that has been doing some form of interviewing/hiring for 13 years. I did two rounds of hiring software engineers last year, one in spring that seemed normal, and one in the fall that was was brutal. The fall hiring had a flood of applicants, and in retrospect, most seemed like AI was used in some way. For the fall round, I suddenly had a higher percentage of applicants that qualified after resu…

Speaking as a contractor since 2017, I have given up using recruitment agencies in the UK to find work.

I am likely the number one expert, in my field, globally. I apply for roles which specifically ask for an SME in my field. There is no question here of skills, and it is as certain as it can be without actually knowing that I am a light year ahead of all other applicants (because there is practically no one else actually qualified in my field). I'm not flapping my ego, this is how things look to actually be.

I find now I never get even contacted by agencies.

I think they are not reading my CV/application, and I think this is happening because they are flooded - hundreds of applications in the first hour. They take the first person who looks good enough (and they're not good - there are practically no people in this field who actually have skills and experience, as opposed to just "I've worked with") and run with that, and then turn to filling the next contract.

The upshot of this is that it doesn't matter how good you are, because your CV isn't going to be seen, not unless you apply in the first ten minutes or so.

You have to play that game, and automate your applications, to be seen.

So the question is, if you don't want to play that game, how now do you find companies who need skills?

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