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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

#161

Post by exabrial »

My favorite "funnel" so far was applying for certain company in Colorado. It twas I think 10:45p in the evening, and I got a reply about 15mins later indicating that I was invited for an "interview". Scratching my head, I mean who was up working at this time, I looked into it...

It wasn't an interview, even though they insisted it was. It was a completely automated skill assessment "interview" with an AI. Or put better... it's a CAPTCHA that takes roughly 60mins to complete. If you just happen to pass their CAPTCHA, you might get to then talk to a real person.

I laughed and of course did not continue. This is the biggest honkin piece of baloney I've seen yet. It puts 100% of the burden on the candidates, so the HR department at the company can go back to trimming their hangnails or whatever they do.

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

#162

Post by lovich »

exabrial wrote: post #161

My favorite "funnel" so far was applying for certain company in Colorado. It twas I think 10:45p in the evening, and I got a reply about 15mins later indicating that I was invited for an "interview". Scratching my head, I mean who was up working at this time, I looked into it... It wasn't an interview, even though they insisted it was. It was a completely automated skill assessment "interview" with an AI. Or put bett…

I recently took a “one way interview”(I’ve had multiple recruiters use that term) where I had to be on camera, and talk to a machine that interpreted responses completely incorrectly causing me to have to try and negotiate with a fucking clanker that when I said I could work in the US I actually meant I could work in the US.

2 days later they replied back that I hadn’t had a long enough tenure in my career and couldn’t trust me enough to hire.

I don’t know what companies plans are because they are creating an environment where even the people they do end up hiring are going to resent them from day one based on the dehumanizing treatment they are applying to the interview process.

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

#163

Post by BuyMyBitcoins »

II2II wrote: post #112
somenameforme wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It goes the other way as well though. Companies are increasingly filtering resumes/candidates in a sufficiently aggressive fashion to the point that they're strongly incentivizing, if not actively selecting for, people that are gaming the system in some way or another. Quite odd this is all happening when ostensibly the unemployment rate is very low, which should make it an employee's market.

> Companies are increasingly filtering resumes/candidates in a sufficiently aggressive fashion to the point that they're strongly incentivizing, if not actively selecting for, people that are gaming the system in some way or another. The gaming of the system has been happening for a very long time. When I was a teen looking for my first job, companies were being flooded by resumes due to cheap laser printing (either…

I’ve worked with HR in order to assist at a job fair. I don’t think people truly appreciate how inundated with resumes HR can be once a position is announced. About a fifth of the way through the pile I started zoning out because they all seemed to blend together.

We wound up trudging through the stack. In order to lighten the mood I told I joke I heard from somewhere else:

“We should shuffle the pile and throw half of them in the trash. I don’t want to hire unlucky employees”

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

#164

Post by lovich »

maccard wrote: post #89
uberdru wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly the problem is hiring teams -- they have created this whole issue. They ask for a resume and cover letter. Fine. But don't make applicants put in the work if you're not even going to provide a response, or any sort of feedback -- even when the position stays open for months. The result is that people looking for jobs have to submit huge numbers of custom cover letters, and tweaked resumes, with no feedback,…

Hiring manager here - the last job I posted was open for 6 weeks. We waited 2 weeks for initial applications, and it took 4 weeks to schedule interviews with our shortlist and get to an offer, including a very unfortunate 2 week holiday from someone that allowed us down. We got 350 applications for it. We listed in the JD that remote was ok but needed to be in specific countries for us to hire. I’d guess 90% of the a…

Hiring teams don’t actually have to interview every single applicant. I was a “hiring manager”(quotes because I effectively wasn’t due to my director involving himself in every decision) for a team that took 8 months to fill a role.

It wasn’t for lack of applicants but because the company as an org was acting like maybe there was an even better option amongst the remaining applicants despite finding people perfectly suited for the role.

I compared it to the family guy skit where Peter chose a mystery box over a boat saying “the mystery box could be anything, it could even be a boat!” to managers in my social circle in other companies and it resonated with them so it didn’t appear to be a rare situation.

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

#165

Post by lovich »

zulux wrote: post #78
oblio wrote: 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.

This is also why candidates have turned towards the pattern of just putting whatever is necessary on their resume.

There’s no difference between a bait question like that or an ignorant HR employee whose following company policy on minimum number of years on any technology when said technology hasn’t even existed this long.

You put inaccurate information on your job description you shouldn’t be surprised at inaccurate information on the application.

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

#166

Post by BuyMyBitcoins »

maccard wrote: post #10
ungreased0675 wrote: post #3

Good hiring almost certainly has to be a significant competitive advantage. It makes me wonder why so many otherwise successful companies let HR bungle the hiring process.

I’ve worked with places that have had HR bungle the hiring and places that haven’t. The only difference is whether it’s HR or Engineering bungling the hiring. Writing a job description that actually matches what you want is hard work. Sifting through 300 applicants that don’t meet the requirements or lie on the application form is hard work. Doing 10 30 minute intro calls is hard work. Desigining “standard” questions…

>”Writing a job description that actually matches what you want is hard work.”

My employer embarked on a yearlong effort to standardize job title, roles, and responsibilities.

The first problem was that every manager inserted responsibilities specific to their own teams into the expectations intended for the entire organization.

The result is that no one is realistically expected to fulfill this laundry list of duties, but, this extensive list can now be weaponized if they want to PIP or fire someone. We also suspect that this will be used against us when asking for raises or promotions. All bullet points are weighted equally. I may get called out for not mentoring junior developers, even though there are none on my team.

Second, the entire job description itself is far too flowery - even accounting for corporate puffery. It reads like a wishlist.

Corporate is thrilled, but I sense nothing valuable came from the effort.

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

#167

Post by maxnevermind »

tptacek wrote: post #103
thesumofall wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it is really hard to reliably hire good people. Almost all typical signals & methods (CVs, experience based interviews, …) have very low reliability. An IQ test has the highest reliability according to studies but would be illegal in most jurisdictions. Plus, hiring managers frequently don’t know what they want or they believe they want something that they actually don’t

IQ tests in employment are not illegal. This is an Internet myth. Several large corporations (with deep pockets for employment lawyers to go after) openly use them. The reason more companies don't use IQ tests in candidate qualification is that they don't work well.

Don't big tech ask meaningless LeetCode problems because it serves as a proxy for IQ?

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

#168

Post by 1123581321 »

atoav wrote: post #114
maccard wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hiring manager here - the last job I posted was open for 6 weeks. We waited 2 weeks for initial applications, and it took 4 weeks to schedule interviews with our shortlist and get to an offer, including a very unfortunate 2 week holiday from someone that allowed us down. We got 350 applications for it. We listed in the JD that remote was ok but needed to be in specific countries for us to hire. I’d guess 90% of the a…

I once casted volunteer actors for short movies. It costed me literally nothing to write: "Deadline for application is $DATE, you will hear from us within X days. You will either get a rejection or an invitation to a casting on $CASTINGDATE1 or $CASTINGDATE2." And on the casting I personally guaranteed for a date when they will get a result. Rejections included feedback that helped candidates understand our decision…

I like your practice there but productions are known to be on a schedule in a way that many job postings are not. If you apply for positions with more turnover (e.g. manufacturing line) you’ll see more predictably timed communication.

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

#170

Post by trhway »

madarco wrote: post #127
somenameforme wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It goes the other way as well though. Companies are increasingly filtering resumes/candidates in a sufficiently aggressive fashion to the point that they're strongly incentivizing, if not actively selecting for, people that are gaming the system in some way or another. Quite odd this is all happening when ostensibly the unemployment rate is very low, which should make it an employee's market.

It had already been like this long before widespread LLM adoption: quality hiring was only really possible through manual candidate scouting on LinkedIn, at conferences, through word of mouth, and so on. Sending a CV had already become mostly useless 3–4 years ago because of the huge amount of noise: candidates applying from all over the world, often even spoofing their actual location, FAANGs firing, flooding the ma…

In US it is at-will employment. What would be the difference really between a trial period and just letting an employee go 2 months or 4 months of 7.83 months down the road. I mean, in at-will employment trial period sounds just like an artificial gimmick that the employer forces onto the employee's mental state.
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