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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

#111

Post by titanomachy »

neilv wrote: post #56

> When the earliest filters in your hiring process stop working, your organization begins to systematically select for candidates who are best at performing the hiring process, rather than those best equipped to do the job. Isn't "performing the hiring process" theatre what Big Tech hiring has been demanding for ~20 years? And gifted to most smaller companies? (Because people already knew Google frat-hazing student s…

I thought Google interviews were kind of fun, back in the days when they were done in-person. Most of my interviewers were engaged and helpful, and seemed genuinely excited when I got on the right track. They would get up and write on the whiteboard with me.

The experience really made me want to work there, because I’d never encountered coworkers like that before. I didn’t get hired the first time but went back for a redo as soon as I was allowed.

Online interviews are a lot less fun, but still seemed more or less fine until the recent cheating epidemic.

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

#112

Post by II2II »

somenameforme wrote: post #35
Aurornis wrote: post #11

> “There is a growing gap between the candidate’s written persona and their live presence. I’ll see a cover letter that is poetic and a résumé that is flawlessly structured, but then the person on the video call struggles to explain their own bullet points. This has always been a problem: Candidate applies with an amazing resume but then flails when you ask them questions or “can’t remember”. I can remember a few int…

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 custom to the employer, or simply duplicated en mass). A few years after that, it was being flooded by online applications or applications via email. Each time businesses had to take a more aggressive stance at filtering since they had more applicants per opening than before.

I suspect that we are going to have to go back to the bad old days of relying on real social networks (not the imaginary ones people create build around finding work) or applicants walking door to do with printed resumes in hand (simply because it is going to be easier to vet someone who walk in the door than false positives from software that filters applicants out).

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

#113

Post by NooneAtAll3 »

Aurornis wrote: post #46
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. Which itself is a symptom of companies getting drowned in AI generated resumes. It's becoming more common for people to use AI tools that will operate browsers to mass-submit resumes for…

I'm pretty sure filtering resume by beauty was a problem long before ai, and stems from hiring people rushing this part of the job as "useless" or smth

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

#114

Post by atoav »

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…

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 and improve their craft.

This is in my opinion how you do things when you have a shred of respect for the people on the other side. Actors greatly valued how we did things.

If you can't live with the insecurity of knowing whether you're able to keep those dates, just make a pessimistic guess and add a few days on top. It is really not that hard.

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

#115

Post by oblio »

toast0 wrote: post #81
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…

> Before you needed actual skill (or luck) to create a good looking CV, especially for niche positions. Sure, resume writting is a skill, but it's probably not relevant for the position unless the position involves a lot of grant writing or enterprise sales.

Ummm.. my point was that before LLMs an utterly unqualified person would not even be able to write a decent CV.

They wouldn't be in the candidate pool because they would fail at step 0.

Now the village idiot can generate a reasonable CV for very complex jobs.

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

#116

Post by NooneAtAll3 »

oblio wrote: post #65
Aurornis wrote: post #11

> “There is a growing gap between the candidate’s written persona and their live presence. I’ll see a cover letter that is poetic and a résumé that is flawlessly structured, but then the person on the video call struggles to explain their own bullet points. This has always been a problem: Candidate applies with an amazing resume but then flails when you ask them questions or “can’t remember”. I can remember a few int…

> 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…

> Before you needed actual skill (or luck) to create a good looking CV, especially for niche positions.

so useless skill that says nothing about your actual fit for the job was changed for automatic half-skill that still says nothing about your actual fit for the job

oh no, where are my tears?

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

#117

Post by cloche »

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 previously, for better or worse.

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

#118

Post by IshKebab »

Pretty much all of their suggestions sound like things that should already be being done (and mostly are in my experience). I was asked a "tell me about a time" question for a job interview recently and it really took me by surprised because nobody asks those questions in tech anymore! They literally asked me what my strengths and weaknesses are. Wtf.

I didn't get that job but it was a blessing in disguise - I got a MUCH better job a few months later.

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

#119

Post by cloche »

prepend wrote: post #93
cyanydeez wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the secret: it's still just gambling. Elon musk isn't a trillionaire because he brought something special to the table; it's because he was able to perform the martigale enough times and he arbitrarily reached the top. Hiring is exactly the same thing, even when trying to do it on merit, people are simply poor judges of character, ability and the rest. Most of society is governed by people who simply kept gett…

There’s certainly luck involved, but it’s not random. Why aren’t there more Elon Musks? It’s not like the universe just picks a rando every 1000 years and it’s Elon Musk now and Mansa Musa last time. I think similarly, there are random elements but hiring is not random. People aren’t randomly successful or not. There are many factors, most based on individual decisions and group alignments, I think.

Imagine you have a coin-flipping tournament with a large number of people - perhaps even billions. 2 people face off in rounds and the winner advances. By the end someone will have won all their rounds. Is this person skilled or lucky?
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