Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I was interviewed by an AI bot for a job

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 496 posts

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

#121

Post by davnicwil »

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…

just thinking about this, if you had the latitude to explain it more or less exactly as you have here, in human language, and frame it as a screen stage of the application and not an interview, and add: 'hey, I know this is really far from ideal but if you're legitimately interested this probably works in your favour', good people might not mind it.

I think most of the issue with this kind of thing, practical stuff aside like extra time invested and potential unpleasantness of actual experience, is what it implies about the culture and your relationship. If you level with people a lot of that gets addressed, and you're left with 'only' the practical inconvenience.

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

#122

Post by Teever »

tmoertel wrote: post #103
ossa-ma wrote: post #9

Perfectly encapsulates the state of the job market. Interviewing is genuinely a hellscape at this point and I've experienced many interviews where there was a complete breakdown of etiquette/guidelines and good faith. One was so bad I had to write about it: https://ossama.is/writing/betrayed

I'm sorry you had such a bad interviewing experience. You asked for feedback in your blog post, and since your blog doesn't allow comments, I hope you won't mind my responding here. You wrote something that I think is untrue of most tech companies, so I'd like to discuss it: > [As I and a friend spoke], I realised something: Three technical interviews went well, I was feeling confident going into the behavioural inte…

> Here's what I think. If you have a public blog, it's fair game at an interview. If you write mostly about data science stuff but you apply for a software engineering job, you ought to be prepared to explain the contrast. Understand that, for most top firms, hiring good people and getting them to stick is hard. Most employers will want some assurance that you are serious about the position you're applying for. If you send signals that you might want some other position, be prepared to get asked about those signals.

This is kind of absurd. Could you imagine a registered nurse being asked to expain why they have a blog about astronomy and not nursing?

"What do you mean you don't write about dressing wounds in your spare time? How much could you really know about it then?"

"Managing Type 2 Diabetes isn't interesting enough for you to blog about? I'll have you know most of the patients htat you would be dealing with at this long term care facility have T2D. I'm skeptical that you'd be able to care for them."

Why do we allow this kind of BS in the tech industry? Whens the last time a nurse did a whiteboard interview?

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

#123

Post by wordpad »

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.

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

#124

Post by esafak »

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.

> when everyone is trying to put their best foot forward

Except they're not. A significant fraction of applicants are people you would not want in your company. Outright frauds. You find out when you are on the hiring end and you can see the raw applications without any filters. The question is are you going to reject them based on whatever information you can glean without a call or interview, or are you going to give them a chance? A looser screen is more democratic, but it calls for scalable solutions like this. Perhaps a middle ground is to screen only the suspect candidates with AI.

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

#125

Post by gozucito »

kazinator wrote: post #77

> But as we’ve covered again and again, a bias-free AI system is an impossible-to-achieve standard, since models are trained on large swaths of the internet, which contain sexism, racism, and other biases. LLM trained on texts from before 1913 (Source: https://github.com/DGoettlich/history-llms ): Q. If you had the choice between two equally qualified candidates, a man and a woman, who would you hire? A. I should pre…

That is a great way to illustrate it!

Unfortunately, the message will not sink in because it is unpleasant. Almost ll of us want to think we're fair and unbiased.

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

#126

Post by georgemcbay »

hsuduebc2 wrote: post #108

Do not miss the video in the article. Horrific. https://youtu.be/mtIUQhb2h3A?is=0uwTOJdsHmCq69Ai

The Humanly AI bot in that video kinda morphs into a similar looking but different person at about 2:30 into the video. Creepy and distracting.

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

#127

Post by ejpir »

hunterpayne wrote: post #111
ncr100 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Need to say versions of this more often, "That is not how it works here." A very powerful and clarifying comment made by a European reporter, to a US Envoy of the Trump administration, during the first Presidency. (January 2018 press conference involving Pete Hoekstra) It was in response to the Envoy bullshit and lie about how he didn't say some anti-Islam thing (claiming that the Islamic movement had brought "chaos"…

"That is not how it works here." Right, how it works in Europe is there are just no jobs or economic growth at all. Works great for those late in their career who have jobs and basically can't be fired. Not so much for anyone younger though. Better hope your employer doesn't go out of business before you retire. Better hope your government doesn't go bankrupt before you die. Stop injecting politics into a non-politic…

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php... pretty much contradicts anything you said.

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

#128

Post by Octoth0rpe »

skeuomorphism wrote: post #95
arctic-true wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had this experience when I was trying to find an apartment - multiple different buildings very clearly had AI-generated responses. (To all you builders out there: quick replies are great. Instant replies are suspicious.) I immediately stopped considering them as options. If you can’t be bothered to have a human respond to my email when I’m trying to give you my money, what level of service can I expect once I’m alr…

This is more or less the go-to standard in the usa. One property manager handles possibly hundreds in an association, or dozens of townhomes, and will refuse to speak to you directly, except through a maintenance request system. Its incredibly depressing

But at least they're passing on all the savings to the renters, right?

....Right???????

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

#129

Post by dmitrygr »

plagiarist wrote: post #15
CoastalCoder wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree in principle. However, having been unemployed for over a year with a family to feed, I learned a little about what I'd put up with to get a job.

Yeah this. I hate this planet. So many problems would go away if people could actually afford to make choices.

> So many problems would go away if

Writing it like you did implies that a magical solution exists and we are all maliciously withholding it from you. It does not and we are not.

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

#130

Post by switchbak »

hunterpayne wrote: post #86
bbkane wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Employers are also inundated by applications so they're applying higher bars to meet as a sort of back pressure. I hate it from the candidates' perspective, but it's not illogical from the employer perspective. No, I don't know how to fix it.

And why would this be the case? Maybe the solution is to ban AI from the hiring process. This seems like companies being hoisted by their own petard. This is because they are the ones who drove the hiring market to be this way. They are the ones who started using AI in the hiring process. They are the ones who decided to make applying so much work driving applicants to use AI to survive. Also, if you are having troub…

> charging $1 to apply for jobs

Yeah, I don't see anyone lining up to game that system. Maybe you ought to think about that a little longer than 30 seconds.

Post reply on HN