A new obstacle to landing a job after college: getting approved by AI • Hacker News Board

Re: A new obstacle to landing a job after college: getting approved by AI

#121

Post by bsenftner » Sun, Jan 19, 2020, 3:24 PM UTC

john_moscow wrote: post #91

While I agree that using AI to rank the candidates based on their responses to pre-recorded videos is dystopian, I would like to point out that it only works in the environments where: a) The supply of candidates greatly outweighs demand. b) There is no clear way to assess the individual candidate's impact on the business' ability to make money, and the employees are essentially commoditized. These environments have…

"I would like to point out that it only works in the environments where"

No, it does not work at all. It is fraud, and needs to be treated as a criminal enterprise.

Re: A new obstacle to landing a job after college: getting approved by AI

#122

Post by bsenftner » Sun, Jan 19, 2020, 3:29 PM UTC

jmull wrote: post #31

jimbob45 wrote: post #4

This has got to be a fake. The only way AI would be able to make any sort of correct judgment about someone's probable future performance is if it had some training set of data of employees who had their interviews recorded and who were known to be bad in some way. However, it's still a massive leap in logic to be able to correlate anything an AI could observe to some tangibly bad behavior later on. I'm thinking the…

You're right in that there's no reason to believe AI can do this effectively. However, in my experience, HR departments and hiring processes are anything but rational. HRs buy any kind of snake oil by the barrel, and hiring managers generally reach their position for reasons entirely unrelated to the ability to identify and hire above average employees.

HR departments are by definition on the defensive, that is a large part of what "human resources" is - a legal shield department to make sure employees stay in their lanes, with employment and legal threats as guardrails. All they need is a few pop culture articles saying these "truth/personality/job filtering AIs" are liability traps, and they will cease to be popular instantly. HR is a fear driven department, play on that.

Re: A new obstacle to landing a job after college: getting approved by AI

#123

Post by bsenftner » Sun, Jan 19, 2020, 3:33 PM UTC

LeftHandPath wrote: post #26

jimbob45 wrote: post #4

This has got to be a fake. The only way AI would be able to make any sort of correct judgment about someone's probable future performance is if it had some training set of data of employees who had their interviews recorded and who were known to be bad in some way. However, it's still a massive leap in logic to be able to correlate anything an AI could observe to some tangibly bad behavior later on. I'm thinking the…

I am not sure where I heard it, but I keep coming back to the quote "There is no algorithm for absolute truth". People who aren't in-the-know about AI tend to lend it much more credit, when it comes to its ability to accurately measure something, than is due.

There is no scientific method to recover, access, or identify another consciousnesses mental state short of asking them, and then you must deal with the possibility of their answer being incorrect due to a entire complex world of reasons. This class of "AI" is pure fraud.

Re: A new obstacle to landing a job after college: getting approved by AI

#124

Post by bsanr2 » Sun, Jan 19, 2020, 4:41 PM UTC

clarry wrote: post #118

bsanr2 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer is simple, but you're not gonna like it. 1) Set minimum qualifications 2) For everyone who passes step one, run a lottery 3) That's it Most interview processes are about as good as a coin flip at determining if a candidate is a good fit. People are biased (especially people who think they're objective, which describes a lotnof hring managers), and so are the systems built on our decision-making. So, apply…

> 1) Set minimum qualifications This is where things will go south for most big organizations anyway. They don't know what they need, or they can't specify what they need, and often this part is done by someone other than the team that actually needs people. So you find jobs where the requirements are 3 years of experience with C# and at least BSc in comp sci while the team needs someone to work on embedded C & Ada a…

Right, so then the question is if the other processes currently in place serve as mitigating factors to the inadequacy those qualifications present to the selection system's efficacy. I'd argue that they don't, in which case you're spending a lot more time and money for the same results.

If they do, then would fixing the qualification issue be less expensive than interviewing et al.? Again, assuming that you have a choice of similar outcomes at different price points.

Re: A new obstacle to landing a job after college: getting approved by AI

#125

Post by DanBC » Sun, Jan 19, 2020, 7:52 PM UTC

danpalmer wrote: post #71

52-6F-62 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had never heard of these video interview analysis methods prior to this thread. I think it’s at the very least way too early to rely on this and at the worst just... terrible. AST’s are already notoriously bad and this is just a whole new level of just plain bad. Time is precious, sure, but so are human relationships if time means anything. It’s like nuance was completely disregarded in the pursuit of corporate con…

They do sound terrible and I hope to never encounter one, but my brother made a good point: the NHS get something like 12k applications per week, they have an average of 25k job openings each month. They apparently can't deal with that manually, which does make some sense. I personally think they _should_ handle it manually, and if the system breaks we should fix it in another way because this way sucks, but I'm not…

Which NHS organisations in the UK are using automated video interviews?

I've done interviewing for a couple of NHS organisations, from band 6 positions all the way to very senior leadership, and automated interviews were not used and would not have been used by these organisations.

> the NHS get something like 12k applications per week,

It's not really "The NHS". It's a bunch of different companies. They each have their own corporate structure and boards of directors. They have their own HR teams that advertise and recruit to positions.

There were (in 2017) 207 clinical commissioning groups, 135 acute non-specialist trusts (including 84 foundation trusts), 17 acute specialist trusts (including 16 foundation trusts), 54 mental health trusts (including 42 foundation trusts), 35 community providers (11 NHS trusts, 6 foundation trusts, 17 social enterprises and 1 limited company), 10 ambulance trusts (including 5 foundation trusts), and 7,454 GP practices.

The largest is probably Barts Health NHS Trust, which employs about 15,000 people. The smallest is probably Weston Area Health NHS Trust which I think employs about 1,700 people.

Re: A new obstacle to landing a job after college: getting approved by AI

#126

Post by Enginerrrd » Sun, Jan 19, 2020, 11:32 PM UTC

danpalmer wrote: post #119

Enginerrrd wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this is how it works in almost every industry. Even if that's how they try and force hires into the pipeline, if you're simply accepting that instead of circumventing it, you're success rate must be abysmal. I don't work in tech. But I've got about a 60% lifetime success rate (Job offers to applications). 100% once I got to the interview stage. And that's in a variety of industries: EMS, academic research, the en…

> you'd be better off figuring out where you want to work and then waiting at a nearby lunch spot for an obvious group of employees to come in around lunchtime (or after work drinks) and start chatting them up I'm going to go out on a limb and guess you're either a US citizen, or at least base this advice on the US. I have only known 1, possibly 2 people who can make this sort of thing work here in the UK, people jus…

Yeah, I am American, and I definitely understand there's certain informalities available to us here culturally.

I think the key for new graduates is to have been thinking about getting a job for the last 4-5 years. Don't start looking and preparing when you graduate, you're already behind.

I kept a job I started as a teen as a lifeguard for like 6 or 7 years even though there were much better opportunities available to me financially because I knew the stability was one of the best things I could bring to the table. Resume building.

But in addition to that, I started networking long before I left school. It's essential. Despite the fact that culture may differ in other countries, I don't think that fundamentally changes my advice. The tactics may differ, but the strategy is the same because human nature is the same.

Re: A new obstacle to landing a job after college: getting approved by AI

#127

Post by thewileyone » Mon, Jan 20, 2020, 2:58 AM UTC

Soon it would just be via a blood test, like Gattaca.

Re: A new obstacle to landing a job after college: getting approved by AI

#128

Post by chayesfss » Mon, Jan 20, 2020, 11:34 AM UTC

I’ve thought for years a SaaS app could be created that elevates a prospects chances of a call. I’d have to hire folks to work alg but we could take their resume and apply to job with a very high score

Re: A new obstacle to landing a job after college: getting approved by AI

#129

Post by 52-6F-62 » Mon, Jan 20, 2020, 1:06 PM UTC

m4rtink wrote: post #104

52-6F-62 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had never heard of these video interview analysis methods prior to this thread. I think it’s at the very least way too early to rely on this and at the worst just... terrible. AST’s are already notoriously bad and this is just a whole new level of just plain bad. Time is precious, sure, but so are human relationships if time means anything. It’s like nuance was completely disregarded in the pursuit of corporate con…

I actually think these are a marvelous idea. Because if you ever encounter a company using one of these, you know for certain you don't want to ever work for them, as they don't value you even to just give you a normal interview, instead opting for an impersonal faulty machine. Imagine the horror if you actually started working for them! If their hiring is this bad, their working conditions must be even worse! So it'…

Haha you’ve got a point. I have ruled out companies for their hiring practices before, so I guess that would be par for the course.

Re: A new obstacle to landing a job after college: getting approved by AI

#130

Post by jimthrow » Tue, Jan 21, 2020, 2:15 AM UTC

rapind wrote: post #11

jimthrow wrote: post #7

The vast oversupply of talent has gotten so large employers can’t even be bothered to read resumes anymore: Ai will. This is what happens when ever larger percentage of society gets more and more degrees

If there's an oversupply of talent in tech then are H1Bs no longer being awarded? Seems like a constant gripe about talent shortages but then conflicting stories about how to filter an overwhelming supply of talent. I'm honestly curious how both can be true. Who's lying, or is it simply unwillingness to train local talent?

Talent shortage is a myth. Companies place themselves in the worst locations which are the least accessible places in the US (extremely high rent and commute distance) and then wonder why they only get a modest number of applicants.

Also, I’ve noticed many companies are terrible at highering