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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

#141

Post by brianwawok »

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…

It’s not worth a lawsuit for the reason to turn someone down. It’s also not worth hearing them argue back “yah I know JS you just asked bad question XYZ”… just not worth it

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

#142

Post by danaris »

oblio wrote: post #124
NooneAtAll3 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

It's astonishing how many people working in tech don't realize the impact of automation in this regard. This basically kills any "cold job application". Now it's all back to references and nepotism. I've gotten almost all my past jobs by applying to a job I liked, someone figuring out my CV was decent and then passing interviews. Now the same people filtering CVs have to wade through so much crap that it's almost imp…

Counterexample: I've never gotten a single job through nepotism and references, and I'm in my mid-40s. Indeed, I just got a new job—on a different continent!—this year by applying blind, interviewing well, and impressing them with my actual skills and knowledge. Didn't know a single person here, didn't get recommended or introduced by anyone.

Perhaps it makes difference that my jobs have not been in "the tech industry"—they've all been technical jobs within non-technical organizations (mostly in higher education).

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

#143

Post by bartread »

ghaff wrote: post #140
bartread wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't understand why tech companies are so reluctant to go back to in-person interviews. Tech companies probably aren’t that reluctant, but I’d bet a lot of job applicants are.

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 whom it will be impractical, to attend in person interviews will meaning losing out on good applicants, but also reduces the applicant pool (e.g., to a geographic region).

I could see a world where we’re slowly forced in this direction though simply because I can see that even the kind of dynamic reasoning interview recommended in TFA will become gameable by AI before too much more time passes.

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

#144

Post by nottorp »

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.

I have Pascal experience :) My first job was a Delphi application...

For that time and task (accounting app), Pascal was great.

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

#145

Post by itronitron »

jppope wrote: post #85
thih9 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this really battle-tested, as in: did you see this work in practice or do you have a reliable source? Or is this something you came up with?

No, this is 100% battle tested. I can't drop numbers but we just did a study at work comparing referrals to non-referrals... its night and day. Referrals are out performing across the board. the only problem is that eventually you run out of referrals

>> Referrals are out performing across the board

I expect a lot of that is due to the referral being familiar with an already ensconced employee, as well as the referrer being incentivized to ensure the referral's success.

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

#146

Post by lokar »

cloche wrote: 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…

There were phone screens before Covid

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

#148

Post by chongli »

watwut wrote: post #130
oblio wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I have seen flawless CV from people who were bad in practice or in the interview. The interview completely changing which person looked the best was not unusual.

Yes, and those dud candidates waste the company precious time and money, as well as wasting the candidate’s time.

If you have to interview more than a handful of candidates to hire for a non-specialist role then something is seriously broken in either your hiring system or hiring for those positions in general.

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

#150

Post by lokar »

titanomachy wrote: post #111
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…

I had fun on both sides of that process. As both a candidate and interviewer I prefer the in person whiteboard because it makes it more clear this is about ideas, not exact syntax.
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