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I automated my job application process

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Re: I automated my job application process

#491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

How is it too expensive? It takes the same amount of time for the interview, and you presumably have a room available in the office to book for the occasional interview.

And it instantly filters out all the spam applicants and chat GPT cheaters.

Re: I automated my job application process

#492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI has made hiring especially in technical industry an absolute shit show. I agree with parent comment that ideally government could do something about it but agree with you on how would you even do that. Maybe if they required all the job board companies like indeed and glassdoor and LinkedIn to properly vet candidates else those companies would be fined, but it's hard to imagine a solution that doesn't also hurt un…

And then you run into problems on the corporate side: fake job listings to build up resume databases for comparison shopping of applicants. Regulations in this area should have to cut both ways.

Yea, I couldn't tell if the original comment was satire but the number of phishing ads that existed in the past for bogus positions, to pool candidates for later hiring, to farm market rate data, and who knows what else… makes me have very little empathy for the employer side.

It’s been a mess for awhile due to economies of scale benefiting the hiring side to manipulate and abuse the market. The fact it’s become more affordable for job seekers to do a bit of the same is just ironic.

Re: I automated my job application process

#493

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 have 10+ years of professional software dev experience so I've mostly been looking at senior dev positions. Is the job market just as bad for juniors, people looking to enter the field right now?

Probably worse from what I understand. Seniors are more specialized but also (hopefully) have a network.

Re: I automated my job application process

#494

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…

> So why should I keep doing what I'm doing when it's getting me nowhere? I'd go the other way, towards more schlepping and less automation[0]. Are you reaching out to anyone in your network and asking if they know anyone who needs your skills? Are you joining communities (online or offline) that match up to your skills and interests? Doing either of these, so that you can be warm intro-ed to hiring managers by someo…

This is generally how I've gotten jobs. People who know people, or gladhanding at an event.

Re: I automated my job application process

#495
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…

Yeah, flying someplace for interviews used to be pretty much the necessary stage for interviews after (maybe) a phone interview.

Re: I automated my job application process

#496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I kind of feel like it is the inverse in many ways. As an experienced engineer, I know how to describe what I want which is 90% of getting the right implementation. Secondly, because I know what I want and how it should work, I tend to know it when I see it. Often it only takes a nudge to get to a solution similar to what I already would have done. Usually it is just a quick comment like: "Do it in a functional style…

I'm not making numbers up here; the controlled studies that have been done agree with me. See here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4945566 Worse/less experienced developers see a much greater increase in output, and better and more experienced developers see much less improvement. AI are great at generating junior level work en masse, but their output generally is not up to quality and functional…

interesting paper and lots of really well done bits. As a senior dev that uses LLM extensively: This paper was using copilot in 2023 mostly. I used it and chatgpt in that timeframe, and took chatgpts output 90% of the time; copilot was rarely good beyond very basic boilerplate for me, in that time period. Which might explain why it helped jr devs so much in the study.

Somewhat related, i have a good idea what i can and cannot ask chatgpt for, ie when it will and wont help. That is partially usage related and partially dev experience related. I usually ask it to not generate full examples, only minimal snippets which helps quite a bit.

Re: I automated my job application process

#497

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…

With automated hiring spam and our industry's tenuous grasp of basic integrity with actual HN posts proudly boasting of their apps to help you cheat during interviews using LLMs, several of my friends who assist in hiring at their companies have already returned to "on site" interviews to cut down on the proverbial chaff. The kicker? These are 100% remote jobs - the interviews are being performed at shared workspaces…

> with actual HN posts proudly boasting of their apps to help you cheat during interviews using LLMs

I mean, I don't disagree emotionally, but this is a lot closer in spirit to what the OG hackers did than most of the stuff you see on the front page.

Re: I automated my job application process

#498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear, you expect candidates to fly out on their own dime just for the interview?

I think the expectation is that any travel is paid for by the company. I've even had a per diem given to me to pay for meals as well.

That was always the norm for me.

Re: I automated my job application process

#499

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...

LLMs just lie way too much.

Like completely fabricate what they need for a plausible answer from thin air.

As of now they do more harm than good.

Re: I automated my job application process

#500

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 really am interested in the specific job I'm applying for.

Are you doing anything that shows and differentiates your interest isn’t the same as all the automated “interest”?

Ex: understand deeply some parts of the industry the company is in and how it can be improved w/tech? Or is it just “rust is cool”?

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