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I automated my job application process

blog.daviddodda.com

341–350 of 884 posts

Re: I automated my job application process

#341

I'm seeing a lot of back in forth in the comments between hiring managers and employees discussing who is more responsible for the current situation, but from the perspective of someone looking for a job what should I be doing? I've been pretty aggressively looking for a job for the past six months or so. I have 10+ years of professional software dev experience so I've mostly been looking at senior dev positions. I h…

Doesn't seem like your resume or approach in applying to open positions is your problem. It seems like you're not connecting well with the interviewers in some way.

Re: I automated my job application process

#342
The current hiring situation is so broken. Because of AI and automation.

One developer job on LinkedIn - 1100 applicants, 1000+ don’t even live in the right region, so clearly it’s automated and they’re not reading even basic requirements.

Next time - video interviews all the way through. Any hint of AI in the interview process, they’re done. If a different person shows up for the first day of the job, they’re done.

Re: I automated my job application process

#343
post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with this approach. In this field, unless you're hiring a junior engineer, you can have a reasonable expectation that a potential candidate will fly out for an interview even if it's a 100% remote job. If they refuse, well, there's a chance it's just because they can't afford to. The chance is far greater, though, that you dodged a bullet.

What do you mean by "can't afford to?" Because you can't possibly mean you think candidates are going to fly out for an interview at their own expense. Traditionally (i.e. pre-Covid) flying out a senior candidate was the standard signal that both sides were taking the process seriously. And for competitive hires, the quality of the hotel and the restaurants they were taken to and the seniority of the people who joine…

> the quality of the hotel and the restaurants they were taken to and the seniority of the people who joined for dinner were all very important indicators.

I maybe once misinterpreted this. I was flattered to be having dinner with the well-regarded co-founder and two other highly-ranked people, but I thought the nice hotel and the fancy restaurant was just their everyday extravagant lifestyle.

Despite being obviously unfamiliar and uncomfortable with the affluent lifestyle conventions, I did get the offer. Had I known that the nice restaurant and VIPs might be specifically to say that they valued me, I would've been more likely to accept the offer.

Re: I automated my job application process

#344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with this approach. In this field, unless you're hiring a junior engineer, you can have a reasonable expectation that a potential candidate will fly out for an interview even if it's a 100% remote job. If they refuse, well, there's a chance it's just because they can't afford to. The chance is far greater, though, that you dodged a bullet.

I can’t imagine you actually work in the US in software and expect candidates to pay to fly out for an interview. I would withdraw from the process immediately if I encountered a company so cheap

Not only withdraw, but post publicly about said company. That's so beyond the pale it's gotta be a joke

Re: I automated my job application process

#345

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 had a recruiter basically hold onto me after I passed more than one technical screen, even though I clearly did get all the way through the hiring process at either role. They were maintaining a pool of competent people.

If only they could crowd source/gpg web of trust such a designation.

We solved this for email by aggregating spam/not spam ratings from tons of recipients. It’d be great if we could do that here.

Re: I automated my job application process

#346

I'm seeing a lot of back in forth in the comments between hiring managers and employees discussing who is more responsible for the current situation, but from the perspective of someone looking for a job what should I be doing? I've been pretty aggressively looking for a job for the past six months or so. I have 10+ years of professional software dev experience so I've mostly been looking at senior dev positions. I h…

If you can't stand out from an LLM then why can't it do your job? Also, not using LLMs might be a red flag. I wouldn't want a dev that is not open to this technology...

What company have you hired developers for?

Re: I automated my job application process

#348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes we can. Resume spamming is not a new phenomenon. Ten years ago we were already struggling to sift through the nonsense at the big co i worked for, llms just expanded the “tam”.

I don't understand why more companies don't leverage in person events. It's something my state does for government jobs and as an applicant, it's so much easier to chat up an agency rep about what they're looking for and schedule a formal interview.

It’s used by every single big co and a lot of smaller ones too. It just doesn’t scale well when you need to hire hundreds of engineers every year. I never actually seen public job postings bring in many leads that actually convert to offers. It’s one of the worst channels which is why candidates are getting such crap experience going that route

Re: I automated my job application process

#349
post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with this approach. In this field, unless you're hiring a junior engineer, you can have a reasonable expectation that a potential candidate will fly out for an interview even if it's a 100% remote job. If they refuse, well, there's a chance it's just because they can't afford to. The chance is far greater, though, that you dodged a bullet.

What do you mean by "can't afford to?" Because you can't possibly mean you think candidates are going to fly out for an interview at their own expense. Traditionally (i.e. pre-Covid) flying out a senior candidate was the standard signal that both sides were taking the process seriously. And for competitive hires, the quality of the hotel and the restaurants they were taken to and the seniority of the people who joine…

Positive reading: cannot afford the time (off from their current employer, away from family, …)
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