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I was interviewed by an AI bot for a job

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Re: I was interviewed by an AI bot for a job

#421

Post by jonpurdy »

hansvm wrote: post #392
manfre wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any take home test trivial enough to complete in under 20 minutes could be completed by an AI. The only signal you get from a take home test is whether or not they can submit answers. It doesn't let you know if the candidate is capable of passing the test unassisted. Take home tests were never a worthwhile signal. Pre-AI, people would search for solutions or have another person complete it.

Cheating is possible in the abstract, but I found a tight correlation between interview and take-home performance. For whatever reason, candidates didn't seem to cheat much. The AI point is worth diving into a little. This was a year ago, so SOTA was worse, but I didn't find it terribly hard to write questions AI couldn't solve, whose answers you couldn't search for, and which good candidates could solve. The test wa…

Your description of the test and your replies to questions indicate you've come up with a pretty great assessment for the role(s) you hire for. Especially where you mentioned:

> The test was a few of those questions and a few which were easier to cheat, and almost nobody had good scores on just the cheatable section

I also like how you allow/encourage self-assessment, where if a candidate can't do the test in ~20 minutes under zero pressure, they probably won't be a good fit in the role itself.

Re: I was interviewed by an AI bot for a job

#422

Post by k4m1 »

Is it possible to hijack the AI in an interview?

- Ask it what it's instructions are? - Which questions it is supposed to ask? - Give it new instructions like ... - Make it compose a positive assessment - Let you review the assessment - Submit the assessment

Re: I was interviewed by an AI bot for a job

#423

Post by GuinansEyebrows »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #336
GJim wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We solved this by stating we would only accept applications by snail mail. Magicly, the spamming stopped, and we only had applications from good genuine candidates with a real interest in the role. The job of any technology (like email and "apply now" buttons) is to make life easier and better. If it doesn't do that, then don't use it!

IRL proof of work. Elegant solution. I recall seeing one where you had to send a specific payload to an https endpoint to apply (or it might have been an automated screen immediately after the application was submitted). Forcing potential candidates to briefly open the curl manpage seemed like a similarly elegant solution to me. I doubt it works as well in the era of LLMs though.

similarly, i remember at least one organization (pre-Songtradr Bandcamp, i think) who didn't publish some of its open technical roles anywhere except in HTML comments on their website. they only wanted to attract folks who liked to poke around and look under the hood.

Re: I was interviewed by an AI bot for a job

#424

Post by jacquesm »

nradov wrote: post #417
jacquesm wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Call your building's insurance company. That will get you a very precise response pronto because they're going to use this as an excuse not to pay out if anything should happen to the building.

How would a tenant identify the insurer?

Minutes of HOA is where I would normally get that kind of info. They have to justify the amount you pay and the insurance invoice is normally divided across all of the tenants.

Re: I was interviewed by an AI bot for a job

#425

Post by array_key_first »

dice wrote: post #76
eikenberry wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Small companies are an obvious 3rd place to escape to and there should be a good number of them given all the big companies behave as you indicate.. unless it really hard to start a new business in India. Do you know if this is the case or why else wouldn't you consider small businesses as a alternative?

I'm hiring at a small company and it's a nightmare. 1,000+ applicants for a software engineering position and we have essentially no help from recruiting. I'm filtering based on keywords, giving each resume a max of 90 seconds, and anything that even slightly seems off gets rejected. I only have the bandwidth to talk to a couple 10s of candidates since I have the entire rest of my job to do, so I can see the appeal o…

At this point just save yourself the 90s per resume and just throw out 50% or more of the resumes. At least then you might get more time to assess how good the remaining resumes are.

Re: I was interviewed by an AI bot for a job

#426

Post by altruios »

9rx wrote: post #233
altruios wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear and understand your point. It is not purely a social construct. But how much available farmland to allocate to grow food from the available farmland becomes a political issue. Pricing, distribution... same deal. And considering our (humanity's) food production outmatches our total food calorie/nutrition requirements... any argument using food as an example for scarcity indicates that you may be working with in…

> It is not purely a social construct. What else is involved? Despite the inane ramblings of the parent comment, scarcity isn't actually a factor. Allocation occurs because of scarcity. Without scarcity, there is no such thing as allocation. It is the reason for why resource allocation exists entirely a social construct.

While food is not scarce in total, logistics are (at some limit) physics bound. Other resources are currently in higher demand than their current supply: silver for example.

So there is nuance.

Re: I was interviewed by an AI bot for a job

#427

Post by eloisant »

rendaw wrote: post #236
JohnFen wrote: post #2

> If your potential employer is dehumanizing you before you’re on the payroll, how will they treat you once hired? For me, this is the key point. If a company can't even be bothered to show up for my interview -- when everyone is trying to put their best foot forward -- that bodes very ill for how I'll be treated if I were to work there.

I hate that it's the case, but generally the ones doing the dumb stuff during the hiring process are HR, and you'll not be interacting with them for 99% of the job once hired. Even before LLMs they were using AI and dumber applicant screening, causing people to fill their resumes with keywords.

HR have always had dumb ways to filter resumes, which can unfairly reject good candidates but might not be an issue for the company as long as they find enough good candidates. Also, at least they don't waste candidates' time.

With AI interviews, not only they're wasting all the candidates times, but they're starting the relationship on the wrong foot for the candidates they'll end up hiring!

Re: I was interviewed by an AI bot for a job

#428

Post by sethammons »

roenxi wrote: post #327
sethammons wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You chose to sell the apple. The most eager and capable buyer buys it. Capitalism. You could choose to give the apple to the hungry person. You might choose that because you want their help in a different way. Or because you feel it is right. Or they are your kid. Or you give it to the strong person to have a better alliance. Or you could have the apple taken from you. You might even have more taken, like your life.…

... and then the dust settles and you discover that despite running though 7 scenarios the most any person has is 1 apple. And if one person has an apple, the other persons do not. Suggesting that affordability is not entirely a social construct. I'm on board with people getting excited about living in a society, it is all pretty magical. But affordability isn't some random social construct, it is in great part about…

Scarcity and affordability are different things; that’s the whole point. Scarcity is physical. Affordability is the social mechanism governing who gets it. We choose. Money, property rights, divine right, strength, moral frameworks. All of those are human agreements, not physical laws. Roenxi, you keep conflating the two. Nobody is claiming scarcity is a social construct. The claim is that how we allocate scarce things is. Those are separable questions.

Scarcity is a physical phenomenon. Only one $thing exists and more than one person wants it. Scarcity. The agreement to transfer that $thing to someone is based on humans respecting made up rules. Society. Social constructions. How we define affordability is different. You can "pay" in different ways, some that don't have physical mapping t real world like "social standing."

The laws of supply and demand and scarcity still apply, yes. But how that plays out is social. People have to agree or fight. "Affordability" is based on what we agree is worth an exchange. You may value the approval of the recipient more than money. What does affordability mean here? To curry favor later with someone else or because your moral framework lets you sleep better (they were a hungry kid and you don't want kids hungry - another kind of scarcity where we define affordability by how hungry you are).

Like you said, unless we redefine words. Then you can have affordability and scarcity mean the same thing.

Edit: snark reduction

Re: I was interviewed by an AI bot for a job

#429

Post by eloisant »

wordpad wrote: post #123
JohnFen wrote: post #2

> If your potential employer is dehumanizing you before you’re on the payroll, how will they treat you once hired? For me, this is the key point. If a company can't even be bothered to show up for my interview -- when everyone is trying to put their best foot forward -- that bodes very ill for how I'll be treated if I were to work there.

I have a junior position open and got 1,300 applicants in 1 week before we took it down. Many of the candidates with strong resumes are just lying and doing so well enough to pass HR screens. I doubt any sort of AI screen would help though as many of the lying candidates are already using AI assist tools making it just a cat and mouse race... I don't know a good solution to give everyone a fair chance.

You can't give everyone a fair chance, but at least don't waste their time with a stupid AI interview.

Also, at the end of the day, in your 1,300 applicants maybe you have 200 who are a perfect fit and as equally good. But you just have one position. So even with a perfect system that gives you complete information, you'll still have to reject 199 strong candidates.

Re: I was interviewed by an AI bot for a job

#430

Post by eloisant »

rkomorn wrote: post #306
stainablesteel wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's a filtering step, they want people who are willing to work like slaves and it's fairly dystopian

I don't have any positive feelings about AI interviewers, but I don't believe your take is correct. I agree that it does filter as you describe, but it's just a side effect. I think the actual reason is simply that they're lazy and don't care.

Add to that the AI fad where somehow they find it cool to have AI do something they (or their employees) used to do.
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