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I automated my job application process

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Re: I automated my job application process

#211

Post by XenophileJKO »

elashri wrote: post #194
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…

I'm pretty sure the temperature of even GPT4o-mini is not 0 so how would you know it is the something like you have. It would be hard to be reading an answer, it would feel awkward and probably obvious it itself. But I'm just saying that some people would have memorized answers to some standard questions (they apply to many places as you might know).

Alternatively they might also use a different model that has different response traits.

Re: I automated my job application process

#212

Post by robocat »

voidr wrote: post #61
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…

Hiring agents have been spamming potential job seekers for years with garbage and then came up with the abomination known as ATS, which makes it very difficult to argue that job seekers should not use automation. Either the market needs to come up with a good solution that encourages good behavior from both sides or the governments can step in and start regulating.

> both sides or the governments can step in and start regulating

How could regulations help?

Both sides already have good incentives to match positions to candidates; yet we are collectively failing.

Re: I automated my job application process

#213

Post by Terr_ »

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's certainly a mutual escalation issue. Even a few bad-actors on either side can catalyze more bad-actors on the other, especially since most of the badness involves abuse of scale.

Re: I automated my job application process

#214

Post by salomon812 »

jjav wrote: post #201
salomon812 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, n…

There's a difference between layoffs and firing. To fire an individual, the company must have documentation to ensure it's not a wrongful termination. Ironically, it's easier to lay-off 100 people because all you need to do is demonstrate their division's project is cancelled.

And that documentation takes time as a manager, which costs money.

But I admit not knowing completely because I haven't had to fire anyone yet. I have talked to legal about the process regarding someone not on my team.

Re: I automated my job application process

#215

Post by floating-io »

salomon812 wrote: post #200
sarchertech wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firing people isn’t as expensive as people make it out to be. People vastly overestimate the chance of a lawsuit. And they overestimate the chance of a lawsuit that makes it far enough that it costs significant money even more. Hiring fast and firing fast (for lying or misrepresentation) is almost always a better business decision than being ultra defensive in the hiring process.

It's not the lawsuit, it's about the time wasted as a manager and salary to the person as you work out if it's actually time to fire. Performance Improvement Plans, a bunch of back-and-forths. I'm not going to be the kind of person that fires quickly, so there's a bunch of sunk cost we have to take. Plus, fast firing creates a cooling effect among everyone there. And for what? To save money on hiring? Not worth it.

The counter argument is that firing too slowly can be a serious drag on morale. Leaving your team to carry dead weight can really suck for the team.

Ask me how I know... :)

Re: I automated my job application process

#216

Post by UncleMeat »

sarchertech wrote: post #189
salomon812 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Firing people isn’t as expensive as people make it out to be. People vastly overestimate the chance of a lawsuit. And they overestimate the chance of a lawsuit that makes it far enough that it costs significant money even more. Hiring fast and firing fast (for lying or misrepresentation) is almost always a better business decision than being ultra defensive in the hiring process.

The fastest that I can possibly fire somebody is still months from the date I choose to hire them.

I decide they are the best candidate. A recruiter talks with them to negotiate compensation and they accept the offer. This takes a week at best, but can take weeks if they are choosing between multiple offers. Then they choose a start date. They've got a couple weeks at the old job, plus probably some time in between roles before they start. So 2-6 weeks waiting here. Then they join and go through the company-wide onboarding and training processes and set up their equipment. Another week.

The first time I actually get to have them do any work is 4-10 weeks from the date I chose to offer them a job. It now takes me some time to realize they are hopeless and misrepresented themself on their resume. Three weeks would be an extraordinary outcome here, but it more likely that this takes 8+ weeks. Even if the actual process of firing them is instant once I've decided that it was a bad hire, I'm still out 3-5 months from the date I chose to hire them. Any other strong candidates I had in the pipeline now have other jobs and I am starting from scratch.

That is incredibly expensive.

Re: I automated my job application process

#217

Post by hbbvgn »

casenmgreen wrote: post #210
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 ac…

Obviously your field is in no demand at all. Otherwise, why would you be searching for employment if you are #1 in it?

Re: I automated my job application process

#218

Post by trod1234 »

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…

As a side note, for a person with a decade of experience in IT, its currently taking roughly 1500 applications per pre-screen interview to give you an idea where the market is at today (and over the past 2 years with the mass adoption of AI).

Less than 1/100th of 1%.

You should also see what I had to say about the history of slavery, and wage slaves, and what anyone can expect from them. The TL;DR is that what you are looking for no longer exists if it ever did, because you have adopted a scorched; salt the earth strategy for finding labor.

What you call lazy, may actually be incredibly hard working (given the current environment) to even get to the point where you see them. Is it their fault you didn't recognize them for the value they could potentially provide? If you pay wages comparable to an office assistant for skilled labor, why do you expect to get anything more than what that first role provides? The economics of things are important.

You need to re-calibrate unreasonable expectations (delusions) back to some more close to reality.

Re: I automated my job application process

#219

Post by neilv »

It's lucky for some people that I'm not hiring right now, because I'd probably perma-denylist anyone I caught sending me LLM-generated text, especially for something that's supposed to be one-to-one, like a cover letter/email.

That is such a obvious imminent plague upon society, in so many ways, and the only thing I can do is nip the few buds that are within my reach.

Re: I automated my job application process

#220

Post by programjames »

ghaff wrote: post #190
programjames wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a solution, but I'd prefer a system that, when ideal/efficient, is optimal.

I'm not sure what other solutions look like: Gatekeeping of various forms including institutions and certifications, letters of introduction like essentially the US service academies, standardized tests, informal networks, etc.

There's two distinct reasons why more qualified candidates might get skipped over:

1) There is too much noise occluding their signal.

2) There is a form of gatekeeping going on.

Gatekeeping only really works in exploitative systems (e.g. "me and my children are the masters, and you and your children are the slaves") or when the noise is so high that companies wouldn't gain much from not gatekeeping (e.g. Harvard admissions in the late 1800s).

So, if you don't exist in an exploitative system, providing more signal is going to both benefit deserving candidates and punish gatekeeping companies. I don't see why a reputation score would increase gatekeeping.

At the end of the day, every applicant could be ranked on their ability at the job. Wouldn't it be best for everyone—companies and prospective employees—to know where they rank up, so they don't waste time applying to hundreds of jobs or sifting through hundreds of applications?

The only people who are hurt are the hustlers: people who spend far more time hustling for a position than gaining the skills needed to do well in that position. Their goal is the extreme limit of noise, where success rate is directly proportional to how many applications are filled out, and I have no sympathy for the destruction of the commons (that I have to live in).

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