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I automated my job application process

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Re: I automated my job application process

#351

Post by belinder »

MrMember wrote: post #314

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…

I was hiring manager for 3 positions about 4 months ago and the amount of fake applications out there was mind boggling to me. I would say 90% were either entirely fake or had the exact same generated ai text. It got so bad that we started only looking at resumes that had a working LinkedIn link.

Also after so many bad resumes I started being very forgiving for the ones that didn't fully match the job requirements if they had something in them that made it seem like a real person, e.g. a personal hobby section. I think a lot of people discourage writing that but I argue it makes you stand out in an ocean of fake and copy pasted junk.

Re: I automated my job application process

#352

Post by rachelgunn »

randomNumber7 wrote: post #329
MrMember wrote: post #314

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...

[dead]

Re: I automated my job application process

#353

Post by OutOfHere »

internetter wrote: post #319
OutOfHere wrote: post #315

As a candidate, I strongly believe in not applying, in letting the company find you. Applying is a waste of time. Also, one can get falsely accused of using ChatGPT in online interviews, so just don't start if the role doesn't have at least one on-site round. If you get ghosted or falsely accused anyway, report it on Glassdoor at once. Always also report the questions you were asked.

> As a candidate, I strongly believe in not applying, in letting the company find you. Applying is a waste of time. Easier said than done, innit? I'm privileged enough to have a relatively highly trafficked blog, as well as some social media following, so this could possibly for me, but plenty of candidates who are arguably more qualified than me don't have either.

There are simpler ways besides the standard social media, namely: LinkedIn, StackOverflow, GitHub. Among these, LinkedIn ought to be sufficient for 99% of candidates. It has landed me all of my new jobs over the last decade.

Re: I automated my job application process

#354

Post by jeffrallen »

sroussey wrote: post #209
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.

Or hand out business cards at meetups.

Re: I automated my job application process

#355

Post by lethal-radio »

MrMember wrote: post #314

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…

Just wanna say keep at it! You’re getting interviews and sometimes it just takes time for the stars to align into an offer.

Re: I automated my job application process

#356

Post by jland10 »

codegeek wrote: post #40
nsxwolf wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s our alternative? It doesn’t seem to be “carefully consider and apply to a handful of highly relevant postings”. I don’t see the downsides for candidates to play the numbers game.

The downside is that if all candidates are thinking like you, you are now hoping that the hiring team can sort through 100s of garbage Resumes to may be find you who may be a good fit. Your odds of being called for Round 1 is now much lower due to all that noise. Doesn't matter whose fault it is. Your probability of being called for Round 1 just went down significantly and this hurts you.

But this is a classic prisoners dilemma then... If I don't do it and everyone else does then I am only hurting my own chances.

Based on what you're saying, the only way to actually fix this is to fix the underlying systematic problem. No idea how you do that, but seems like the only logical way I can think of

Re: I automated my job application process

#357

Post by bdangubic »

Gigachad wrote: post #286
bdangubic wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There's a much simpler solution. You do the interview in your office and watch them answer without typing the question in to chatgpt.

too expensive - no one is doing that anymore

Re: I automated my job application process

#358

Post by Mawr »

jakewins wrote: post #328
swang wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i saw a tiktok where the guy had his phone propped up but not in view of his webcam, and basically the interviewer's mic was going through his phone on some llm and the llm was spitting out responses for him to reply to the soft questions his interviewer was asking. the interviewer also made him "quickly" turn on his screen sharing so he could see that his computer didn't have anything assisting him. i haven't done a…

But like.. what happens after this supposed trick? I don’t understand how they wouldn’t just be fired after the first week if they can’t actually do the job? Is it that they are applying to places where you don’t pair program?

That's assuming the interview process tests for job performance with any sort of accuracy.

Re: I automated my job application process

#359

Post by maccard »

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #293
maccard wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is that that had been my experience hiring in a 10 person company and a 30k person company, and that the “suggested” AI screening isn’t happening - it’s probably that your application is the same as the other 300 applications that went in.

I haven't experienced it myself (haven't applied for a job in a long time), but there are lots of reports here on HN of people getting online applications rejected withing minutes, or late at night - definitely some companies are using software to filter resumes. This has been going on for a long time - it's not just a recent "AI" thing - resumes used to get rejected for not having the right keywords on them.

> lots of reports of people getting online applications rejected within minutes

Possibly the single most distracting alert on my phone and pc is my work email. It’s probably prioritised wrong, but if I have 200 candidates for a position, and I get an application that doesn’t meet the tech stack or YOE requirements when I have 20 who do, I’m just going to reject them.

> or late at night ATS let you schedule emails. I used to send mine at 4am EST despite being in the UK

> definitely some companies are using software to filter resumes

I don’t doubt it, but I doubt that it’s rampant to the degree you’d believe on this site. I’d instead that it’s far more likely that the hiring manager, or a recruiter, is spending about 15 seconds looking at “does the tech stack match, how much experience, and how many other candidates are there that I think have an edge”. The people on this site are a small minority of very smart folk, but if you spend any time in a comment section of a topic you are an expert in, you’ll quickly realise that you shouldn’t take everything you read on here as absolute.

Another suggestion - Reach out to two different recruiters and get them to review your resume. (You might need to pay them to do it). You’ll get two totally different responses. Both might work, and neither might work. At the end of the day, a human makes the call, and even if the ATS is automated, a human set those criteria. Honestly, having spent so much of my time hiring over the past 5 years, it wouldn’t surprise me if there was literally no ATS scanning, and everything that was sold to fix that problem was snake oil.

Re: I automated my job application process

#360

Post by Seattle3503 »

mlloyd wrote: post #203
pknomad wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

I think there is a sort of just world fallacy employed here. It seems more like that there opportunists everywhere, and always have been. LLMs have amplified their destructive potential.
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