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The early hiring funnel is now breaking on both ends

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Re: The early hiring funnel is now breaking on both ends

#151
post #37

Hiring has always been broken.

Dunno, the old school "we'll get you started in the mailroom, and you can work your way up by gaining knowledge about the organization while demonstrating competence and professionalism" sounds like a pretty solid hiring strategy. Although tbf I kind of doubt if this was ever really the case - probably this is imagined nostalgia for idealized bygone times. And given that this is a strategy that requires, y'know, long…

The old school strategy was to hire a student as a summer intern and if it's recognized as a good fit by the end of the summer then ask them to apply after graduating. The second step (for people past that stage) is to trust but verify the work experience they list on their resumes. The difficulty these days is that companies want candidates to be a perfect match for the company's current tech stack.

Re: The early hiring funnel is now breaking on both ends

#152
post #78
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This has always been a problem: Candidate applies with an amazing resume but then flails when you ask them questions or “can’t remember”. Yeah, but it's now 1000x worse. Before you needed actual skill (or luck) to create a good looking CV, especially for niche positions. Now you take their job description, the company's "About us" webpage, your old CV and have LLMs generate a CV with pretty solid grammar and most o…

We ask for something stupid like "3 years of Pascal experience." If the resume has it, it goes straight to the trash unless it has specific real-world Pascal experience.

I hope you are clearly marking this as "nice to have".

Re: The early hiring funnel is now breaking on both ends

#153
post #117

I don't understand why tech companies are so reluctant to go back to in-person interviews. This used to be the norm before COVID and it would solve most of these issues. It's also ironic that the authors are from Microsoft/Amazon and Meta which have very structured interviews that tend to be about just hitting the right keywords during the interview itself. None of these places even really care about what you've done…

One thing is that it costs money to fly people out and that's a big investment when the person might arrive and not know jack.

Re: The early hiring funnel is now breaking on both ends

#154

I wonder how much talent is out there who, like me, simply isn’t interested in debasing themselves to go through the interview process so just nopes out of employment. It’s all such an absurd joke at this point.

In my experience, networking also helps sidestep a lot of that stuff.

Re: The early hiring funnel is now breaking on both ends

#155
post #153
post #117

I don't understand why tech companies are so reluctant to go back to in-person interviews. This used to be the norm before COVID and it would solve most of these issues. It's also ironic that the authors are from Microsoft/Amazon and Meta which have very structured interviews that tend to be about just hitting the right keywords during the interview itself. None of these places even really care about what you've done…

One thing is that it costs money to fly people out and that's a big investment when the person might arrive and not know jack.

$2,000 to fly a candidate out and put them up for a day and stuff is a tiny investment for a company the size of Google.

Re: The early hiring funnel is now breaking on both ends

#157
post #117

I don't understand why tech companies are so reluctant to go back to in-person interviews. This used to be the norm before COVID and it would solve most of these issues. It's also ironic that the authors are from Microsoft/Amazon and Meta which have very structured interviews that tend to be about just hitting the right keywords during the interview itself. None of these places even really care about what you've done…

you still need filter phone/remote interviews to select which candidates to have for on-site interviews, and this article centers on this initial interview being broken

Re: The early hiring funnel is now breaking on both ends

#158
post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing is that it costs money to fly people out and that's a big investment when the person might arrive and not know jack.

$2,000 to fly a candidate out and put them up for a day and stuff is a tiny investment for a company the size of Google.

I guess it's a question of how many times you want to do that.

Re: The early hiring funnel is now breaking on both ends

#159

I wonder how much talent is out there who, like me, simply isn’t interested in debasing themselves to go through the interview process so just nopes out of employment. It’s all such an absurd joke at this point.

There is are loads.

They do not apply on the job application as they know of the AI screener will just filter them out.

It is no wonder why HR and businesses cry "Hiring is hard" and in reality, the talented people are:

+ Making their own startups / businesses.

+ Joined a much more attractive company and they don't bother go through the process.

+ Networks their way through other people.

+ They are fed up of the interview process and they check out of the job market altogether.

Also lastly, these people do not want to talk to HR, it wastes their time and creates friction.

Re: The early hiring funnel is now breaking on both ends

#160
post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do understand there are job applicants who don't want to travel and/or don't want to do an in-person interview. But . I also do think that (mostly) post-COVID I mostly want to meet with a candidate in person.

I think the point is that people have different preferences: those didn’t matter before COVID but they do matter now. There are at least a couple of trade offs here. 1. Companies compete for applicants, and applicants - even good applicants - will often prefer companies with less arduous hiring processes except where they specifically want to work at that company. 2. Filtering out applicants who don’t want, or for wh…

I'm not sure putting the onus on COVID is quite right. There are certainly remote jobs today for a variety of reasons. But as someone who has been on hiring committees, I'd like to meet someone in person.

They can certainly refuse to travel but unless they're someone exceptional, my attitude would probably be that there are plenty of fish in in the sea.

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