Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I automated my job application process

blog.daviddodda.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

641–650 of 884 posts

Re: I automated my job application process

#641

Post by [deleted] »

Aurornis wrote: post #511
fasa99 wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just the first pass. There are second pass strategies that could improve and are even more insidious: - review your generated CV pre-submission, make changes, do this a lot. Eventually you'll have a training set to fine-tune the model - throw 100-200 CVs at a job and see what sticks. That's your training set for that job. Now you have tuned the hiring manager's preferences. Follow up with your actual CV. Side…

This is just fear mongering. If a job posting got spammed with 200 fake resumes from multiple fake applicants then the first thing we’re doing is cancelling our job postings with whatever service is so poor that it can’t reject basic spam attacks like this. Honestly, I think people vastly overestimate how much hiring managers use AI for filtering. Blaming AI for rejections has become a common coping mechanism because…

[deleted]

Re: I automated my job application process

#642

Post by codiogo »

This is the second post I read talking about the current state of hiring. I haven't applied for a job in 15 years. I have 20+ years of experience and chose the worst time to find a job. I had to hire several people over the years and always felt it was hard. But now from the perspective of someone applying, I see it's way harder. Maybe there is also an opportunity there.

Re: I automated my job application process

#643

Post by josephg »

ta_1138 wrote: post #521
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…

Today, the hardest part is to get to said first interview, because we are all flooded with fake resumes. Incomprensible amounts. So what you have to do is not send blind resumes, but get a warm intro from someone with a connection to the company that vouch that interviewing you will not be a total waste of time. Networks have never been more important. Now, if on interview you pass rate is low, it's hard to say what…

> Now, if on interview you pass rate is low, it's hard to say what you are doing wrong.

Yep. But this question has answers. You just don’t know what they are. Ask some friends to help you practice by getting them to give you mock- interviews and get feedback about what you need to do better. If you’re unemployed, you have time. Be resourceful and you should be able to figure out where the problems are.

(That said, solving your problems may be much harder - especially if you’re going for senior roles. I have met plenty of people who have 10 years experience who are nowhere near qualified to work as a senior engineer.)

Re: I automated my job application process

#644

Post by josephg »

bb88 wrote: post #613
margalabargala wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If your code is already correct, you don’t need the unit test. I don't know where you work where code is written once and is never changed again, but enjoy it while it lasts...

Worse is when a protocol or shared state condition is modified. E.g. suddenly some fresh out of college know-it-all sent crap into your function that you weren't expecting. Then he went to management to blame you for writing such shitty code. Thing is you wrote unit tests around that code and the shitty know-it-all deleted them rather than changing them when he modified the code This is why management needs to unders…

What? Is that a real example? Are you seriously working with people who delete your tests, misuse your code then complain about you to management?

Is your workplace filled with high school students? I’ve never seen anything so petty and immature in my professional career. I hope management told them to grow up.

Re: I automated my job application process

#645

Post by dgfitz »

Aurornis wrote: post #515
roenxi wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I didn't know better I'd think this was satire. As far as I can tell the advocacy is for either companies to be empowered to sue people who apply to work with them (seems like madness) or to set up a situation where the government enforcement arm pro-actively goes out and harasses unemployed job seekers. Either way that sounds like a recipe for disaster for unemployed persons.

> If I didn't know better I'd think this was satire. It’s actually a constant them on HN to imagine that passing laws will magically make problems disappear. The realities of enforcing the law or even identifying perpetrators are imagined to be the easy part.

People seem to want to pass laws that treat the symptoms, not the cause.

“You keep getting the stomach bug. Here take this, it’ll calm your stomach. No no, you can keep eating that expired cheese, it’s all good”

Re: I automated my job application process

#646

Post by dennis_jeeves2 »

shortrounddev2 wrote: post #630
captainmuon wrote: post #617

When I see posts like this, I think either I'm doing something wrong or they're doing something wrong. I never wrote hundreds of applications. When I'm looking for a job, I investigate a couple of companies where I'd like to work, write a handful of thought-out applications, and generally get at least a response, in most cases an invitation for an interview. Granted, I have a university degree but I guess many people…

There is an abundance of tech workers. There is a shortage of good tech workers. It is incredibly difficult, at the resume stage, to tell the difference. When you post a job online, you get hundreds of applications in a few days. Imagine you are a good tech worker. You applied to a company, along with 200 other people. Your resume gets swept into the trash because they had to automatically delete several applicants a…

>There is a shortage of good tech workers.

I wish someone quantified what 'good' is. Ask 2 tech workers to rate each other and they are most likely to rate each other mediocre by each's standards. Each would nitpick on what the other didn't know.

Re: I automated my job application process

#647

Post by dgfitz »

nosioptar wrote: post #517
biztos wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> What do you mean by "can't afford to?" Cat boarding is pricey. I couldn't afford it right now, even for a very short trip. I doubt any job would offer to pick up the tab.

I presume your cat is like all other cats and shits inside the house.

Get an automated food/water dispenser, save yourself some money.

Re: I automated my job application process

#648

Post by dennis_jeeves2 »

n_ary wrote: post #502

Without reading any comments below, I want to praise the author for fighting fire-with-fire. From what I hear from my new colleagues and ones laid off, the landscape got pretty dystopian. HMs want to minimize their effort to 1% by happily renting LLM services which work 10% of the times and put up weird garbage(please record a 10min video to tell us why we should hire you, please also upload a cover letter that we cl…

Good summary. Wish I could upvote you many times over.

Re: I automated my job application process

#649

Post by geye1234 »

redmajor12 wrote: post #629
celdon25 wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone affected by this and in the US might consider calling or writing to their congressman. The time to do that is now when the demand is high to bolster jobs but low for excessive laws. Nobody innocent is going to be wronged if this is made into a crime or otherwise regulated to put a stop to. The fake job applicants are only siphoning resources from the economy at the high expense of all other parties involved. T…

But this chaos fits Big Tech's claim that there are not enough American workers, so they can then turn around and onshore H1Bs from the hiring manager's hometown back in the old country.

Hundreds of comments, and this is the first one that mentions perhaps the primary root cause of the situation.

Re: I automated my job application process

#650

Post by chefandy »

celdon25 wrote: post #542
chefandy wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This the end game that Silicon Valley created. An automation arms race between two competing groups that were initially trying to save a little time or cut down on staffing but escalated it to the point where the default approach would be considered unforgivably assholish 15 years ago, people that don’t buy into it at least somewhat are drowning in bullshit, and nobody’s happy— but on paper everybody’s got record pro…

This has already happened long ago with Google search results. The first tier of results is won by reasonably well-funded entities that provide a legitimate service, and have the means to optimize the signals feeding the search rankings, putting them higher than the next tier. The second tier of search results tends to be dominated by imitators that don't really add anything of value (SEO spam, blog posts that tell y…

Yes, that’s a good example, and I share your concerns.

As an aside, I shudder thinking about what a heavily ‘SEO’d’ LLM experience would be like.

Post reply on HN