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I automated my job application process

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Re: I automated my job application process

#251

Post by floating-io »

salomon812 wrote: post #231
floating-io wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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... :)

Okay, so the original argument is about whether or not it's worth it to fly people out for an on-site. Hotel and airfare: $2000 absolute max. Salary at $100/hr for one month for me to figure out it's not going to work out, then pull the trigger to fire: $24,000. I mean, being a manager is hard, but putting in the time and money to hire and then putting in the time to make sure your team doesn't have a morale drag, it…

The catch is that even in-person interviews are no panacea. I agree that it's worth the time to filter -- I wasn't really responding to that bit -- but from what I've seen, you have to be a very good interviewer not to get a bad hire every so often.

I often wonder how many hiring managers are actually good interviewers, in-person or not, but I digress...

Seeing the truly bad hires dragged along to the detriment of the rest of the team is a sore spot for me, though. It happens way too often in my experience.

Re: I automated my job application process

#252

Post by stackskipton »

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).

Yea, the newer models wouldn't catch this but there is enough candidates going to chatgpt.com and just pasting in the question.

As always, it's arms race and one I wish I'd didn't have to participate in.

Re: I automated my job application process

#253

Post by salomon812 »

UncleMeat wrote: post #216
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.

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 r…

This. 100% this.

I can't believe any company would look at this story (which I've heard variations on from multiple peers) and go: "we should save money by not flying candidates out for an on-site and use terrible AI tools to sort our candidates."

Re: I automated my job application process

#254

Post by ghusbands »

salomon812 wrote: post #214
jjav wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

What jjav is referring to is "at will" employment - in almost all US states, employees can be fired for almost any reason, with no recourse. So the fact you're saying that firing people is expensive and time-consuming in the US flies in the face of the actual legal environment there compared with most other relevant countries.

Re: I automated my job application process

#255

Post by mhb »

cherryteastain wrote: post #26
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…

This situation is basically equivalent to the prisoner dilemma and requires jobseekers to spray and pray

More like tragedy of the commons.

Re: I automated my job application process

#256

Post by [deleted] »

salomon812 wrote: post #214
jjav wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

[deleted]

Re: I automated my job application process

#257

Post by robocat »

teeray wrote: post #57

It’s astounding that we, as an industry, are so averse to licensing developers. It solves the resume spam problem and the repetitive LeetCode round(s) that every company now wants. We also don’t have to settle for the licensing process other industries have—ours can be more inclusive of alternative development backgrounds, while still providing a meaningful quality filter.

Because MCSE was such a success?

This article unintentionally perfectly rebuts the idea of licensing: https://mcpmag.com/articles/2005/05/11/the-death-of-paper-mc...

Our industry is one where actual skills should and do matter, and much gatekeeping has been reduced.

Professional rote learning is great for mandarin jobs where you are working within a static prescribed framework (legal, accounting, building codes). It is terrible for jobs that require professional taste.

Tell me how you would create a license for a graphic designer or UX specialist.

I actually fail to understand idealists that believe that licensing might even work. Who are y'all?

Re: I automated my job application process

#258

Post by gray_-_wolf »

bdangubic wrote: post #221
Terr_ wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

a company would run this… Not your company taking over candidate’s computer, an intermediary that candidate and potential employer are using. candidates are already using Slack/Teams/Zoom/… now they get to use Pouixy or whatever BS name someone in SF comes up with. guarantee you this will be a thing in 2025, some stanfords are on the case

If you (the company) send me a company laptop to use for that shit, sure, we can interview that way. It is the same deal with Teams and Zoom. None of that shit is touching my personal devices, it is strictly limited to the work machine.

Re: I automated my job application process

#259

Post by lordnacho »

Aurornis wrote: post #168
salomon812 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

God, I wish I could respond to denied applicants like a human, but the threat of legal action prevents me from giving good feedback. I know it sucks, but I'm not sure what to do about this, and I'm already so burnt out from the hiring process as it is, it's hard to work up the strength to do this fight as well. Not to mentioned I spend forever doing it, there's so many and I wouldn't want to do it halfway...

I tried giving honest and actionable interview feedback at first. A scary number of candidates did not take rejection well and tried to use my feedback against me. I had people trying to argue that my feedback was wrong, someone stalking me across social media and trying to argue everything there, and eventually someone who threatened to use my feedback as the basis for a discrimination lawsuit. So now we’re back to…

The line isn't between detailed feedback and brief, uninformative feedback.

The line is between saying something brief and saying nothing.

Somehow, it has become standard to say absolutely nothing instead of telling people a simple no.

I've even had situations where people said they wanted to keep talking to me, and then went completely silent.

Re: I automated my job application process

#260

Post by itronitron »

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…

Most (not all) position descriptions for software engineers include requirements for experience with particular tools, applications, or 'frameworks'.

Would you hire a statistician that didn't have 'n' years of MS Excel experience, or had never used Pandas?

If I were a statistician with 20 years experience, would I even apply to positions listing those as requirements?

It's an interesting problem, as giving information on the position requirements clues applicants into the game they need to play and also runs the risk of turning some otherwise qualified people away.

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